Marie Martijn Martin

Research note: did Marie really die in 1681?

The family tree gives Marie’s death as 25 August 1681 at Piscataway, New Jersey, but no record for it has been found, and it may be a mix-up:

• The date belongs to another event. 25 August 1681 is the date recorded for the drowning of “Mary Marshall and Ann Marlett” when their canoe overturned (Abstracts of Wills, Liber 19 B, p. 427). The tree gives Marie’s daughter Ann a death two days earlier, at Hell Gate. A careless reading of “Mary … Marlett” could have turned that record into a death for Marie, who was often called Mary in English records.
• The place is too early. In 1681 the family was still on Staten Island: Gideon is listed among its first settlers that year, and a Staten Island court ordered him to pay a debt that December. He first appears at Piscataway in 1684.

If Marie did not die in 1681, then the widow “Mary Murlet” who married John Tailler at Woodbridge, New Jersey, on 7 December 1685 may well have been Marie herself, remarrying about two years after Gideon’s death, rather than a second wife. This is not proven. The drowning record itself, any record of Marie alive after August 1681, or the Woodbridge marriage record could settle it. See The Staten Island Years.