Puzzle Solved: Joanna Morton

Joanna Morton is my 7th-Great Grandmother on the Crosby side and until recently, she was the end of a branch. With a single bit of information I was able to move three generations past Joanna.

For quite awhile I have known that Joanna Morton was a 7th-great grandmother of mine.  On 9 Dec 1686 she married John Gray and together they had seven children. Their second daughter, Anne, is my 6th-great grandmother.  The General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD) has previously documented the relationships between John Gray and his parents, Joanna Morton and John Gray and their children.

Missing from my tree were Joanna Morton’s parents. The website Ancestry.com has many “hints” indicating that Joanna’s parents were Ephraim Morton and Ann Cooper. However, there was no solid documentation provided. Some months ago I set out to confirm the information about Joanna’s parents and I located George Morton of Plymouth Colony and Some of His Descendants (John K. Allen, 1908).  In the George Morton book I found Ephraim Morton and his wife Ann Cooper. Absent from the list of their children was the name of Joanna.  I searched the book for Joanna Morton and for John Gray, both with negative results.  My finding led me to add a note for Joanna Morton, in my genealogy database, that “no evidence could be found confirming” that her parents were Ephraim and Ann (Cooper) Morton.

Recently I was reviewing my approved applications to the GSMD. In two applications, Peter Browne and James Chilton, I noticed the parents of Joanna Morton were named (without any details) as Ephraim Morton and Ann Cooper. The citation provided directed me to: Mayflower Families,  James Chilton, Volume 15 (page 37 to be exact).

The Mayflower Families series, also referred to as the “Gray Books” or the “5 Generations books”, is published by the GSMD and lists the first five generations of those who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620.  John Gray is a 4th generation descendant of James Chilton, therefore his wife (Joanna Morton) and children are recorded.

… [John Gray married the] dau. of Ephraim and Ann (Cooper) Morton. *

The asterisk at the end of the sentence explained that Joanna Morton was not named in the will of her father, Ephraim. (This confirmed the George Morton book.) However, the will of Nathaniel Morton — son of Ephraim and Ann (Cooper) Morton — named Ann Gray, the daughter of his sister Joanna Gray.

Nathaniel Morton’s will provided the information needed to prove that Joanna was in fact the daughter of Ephraim and Ann (Cooper) Morton.  With the confirmation of Joanna’s parents, I was able to move back three generations further.  Ephraim’s parents were George and Juliana (Carpenter) Morton and Juliana was the daughter of Alexander Carpenter, born 1560.  (The documentation for the more distant generations was found in the The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, published 1995 by the New England Historic Genealogy Society)