Family Information
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Great Migration surveyed the various theories on William Brewster's wife Mary, and concluded her maiden name remains unproven: "The quest for the identity of Mary, the wife of William Brewster, has attracted the attention of many genealogists, but as yet without a definitive result. For some time she had been thought to be Mary Wentworth, daughter of Thomas Wentworth of Scrooby, and in 1965 John G. Hunt presented his case in favor of this identity [TAG 41:1-5, 63], but this claim was rejected by Rubincam and others, and Hunt himself has now given up this position. He has, however, published a pamphlet claiming that she was a certain Mary Wyrrall, based on the appearance in a will of a bequest to "Mary Butho," which Hunt took to be a variant of Brewster resulting from a speech defect in the person dictating the will [John G. Hunt, Of Mary Brewster: The Identity of Mary, Wife of Elder William BREWSTER of the Mayflower Voyage of 1620 from Plymouth, England, to New Plymouth, New England (Bowling Green, Virginia, 1984)]. Eugene A. Stratton reviewed this volume negatively in 1985 [DSGRM 48:135-36], to which Hunt responded with a supplement to his pamphlet [Of Mary Brewster, part two (Bowling Green, Virginia, August 1985]. The maiden surname of Mary, wife of Elder Brewster, remains unknown." See Mary's page for more analysis.
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