July 2012 Register Editorial
Editor’s comment: It is not unusual to find valuable new information in Register articles, even when it is outside the original scope of the article. Footnote 2 of Updating Two Ezekiel Fullers, Father and Son, of Attleborough, Massachusetts, Lebanon and Hebron, Connecticut, and Smithfield, Rhode Island, by Frederick C. Hart, Jr., contains an important identification found during the course of preparing the article for publication in the April 2012 Register.
Mary Fuller’s maiden name is based on a deed by Mary Darling, daughter of John Darling of Salem, “with the consent of my father, administrator to my grandfather Richard Bishop’s estate and with the consent of my mother Mary Darling,” dated 19 November 1680, and acknowledged 29 November 1680 by the grantor and John Darling (Essex County Deeds, 5:102, 473). A second acknowledgment was added to the deed on 14 September 1682 by Benjamin Fuller of Salem, bricklayer, “the now husband of the said Mary with the consent of my said wife” (Essex County Deeds, 6:390).
Chronology, however, shows that John Darling must have been the stepfather of Benjamin Fuller’s wife Mary — who evidently was born Mary Barnett 30 8th month 1662 in Salem, daughter of John and Mary (Bishop) Barnett (Vital Records of Salem, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849, 6 vols. [Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1916–25], 1:67; Robert Charles Anderson, George F. Sanborn Jr., and Melinde Lutz Sanborn, The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634–1635, Volume I, A–B [Boston: NEHGS 1999], 310).
Thus, Benjamin Fuller, bricklayer, son of Robert1 Fuller, bricklayer, married Mary Barnett between 29 November 1680 and 14 September 1682.
Even though Benjamin Fuller’s wife is often shown online as Mary Darling or Mary Barnett, it appears that this article is the first publication to identify her definitively. Mary was the mother and grandmother of the two Ezekiels treated in the article.