Mary Taylor

Research note: second wife, or Marie herself?

This entry rests on one record: on 7 December 1685 “Mary Murlet, widow,” married John Tailler at Woodbridge, New Jersey (Joseph W. Dally, Woodbridge and Vicinity, 1873, Appendix E, p. 348). She has been taken to be a second wife whom Gideon married after the death of his first wife, Marie Martijn Martin, in 1681. No record of such a marriage, and no birth date for her, has been found; the birth range shown here is an estimate.

There is another possibility. Marie’s own death date, 25 August 1681, matches the date of a drowning in which “Mary Marshall and Ann Marlett” died, and it places her at Piscataway years before the family is known there. If her death in 1681 is a mix-up, then the widow Mary Murlet of 1685 may simply have been Marie, often called Mary in English records, remarrying about two years after Gideon died. In that case this page and Marie’s page would be the same woman.

Until a record settles it, both entries are kept. The drowning record, any record of Marie alive after August 1681, or the original Woodbridge marriage entry could decide the question. See The Staten Island Years.