Mary Mason Heath Seeley was born 1588 in Westminster, London, England to Richard Mason (1576-1608) and Elianora Baldwin (1581-1610) and died 10 March 1647 New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut of unspecified causes. She married William Heath (1687-1620) 1609 in St Stephens Church, London, England. She married Walter Mason (1556-1625) 1619 in St Stephens Church, London, England. She married Robert Seeley (1602-1668) 15 December 1626 in St Stephens Church, London, England.
Biography
Internet source: Seeley Genealogical Society; “The English Ancestry of Robert Seeley (1602-1666),” by Alan J. Phipps, M.A., Accredited Genealogist, March 1987
Mary Mason Heath Seeley; her husbands and children:
Though there was a 12-year age difference between Mary Mason Heath and Robert Seeley, as a new freeman of the Company of Cordwainers, Robert was fortunate to have a house and shop awaiting him; and they both shared the same Puritan religious beliefs.
Mary must have been a remarkable woman. From the St. Stephen Coleman Street registers, it is learned that she was living in the parish as early as 1610, when her son Ambrose was baptized. Her first child was probably Rebecca, who was buried in 1623. Since no baptism for Rebecca occurred at St. Stephen's, it is likely she was the first child and was baptized in the same parish where Mary and her first husband, William Heath, a weaver, were married. They had at least seven children before his death in 1620, one of them a stillbirth. One other child died before the father. While a widow, her children Judith and Ambrose Heath were buried, reducing her surviving children to three. About 1621, she married Walter Mason, also a weaver. Neither of her first two marriages took place at St. Stephen's and have not been found despite many genealogical searches.
To Walter, she bore at least three more children. While married to Walter, two more Heath children died, Rebecca and Phillip, plus one of Walter's, and then on 1 Sep 1625, Mary attended the burial of not only her husband Walter but two more of her children, one a Heath and one a Mason.
The number of burials each month at St. Stephen's Coleman Street in 1625 tells the story more completely: 16 in January, 3 in February, 11 March, 10 April, 5 May, 9 June, 78 July, 256 August, 93 September, 8 October, 8 November and 6 December. Mary's family had been wiped out by the plague. She was left with a single child, Elizabeth Mason, who was baptized 2 May 1624, but who also was buried at St. Stephen's 14 Mar 1625/6.
Thus, when Mary married Robert Seeley on 15 Dec 1626, although she had given birth to at least ten children, she was childless. But nine months and one day after the marriage, she gave birth to her eleventh child, Nathaniel, who was baptized 16 Sept 1627. Nathaniel did not die in infancy and was not baptized at St. Stephen's 1 May 1629, as erroneously first reported in "The American Genealogist" of January 1946, volume 22, page 94, which states under "Notes":
Children
Name | Birth | Death | Joined with |
Nathaniel Seeley (1629-1675) | 1 May 1629 St Stephens Church, London, England | 19 December 1675 Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island | Mary Turney (1631-1675) |
Elizabeth Seeley (1634-1728) |
Siblings