This article is distilled from a longer research paper, which is shared below: “First Findings in the Identification of Mary Bowdoin, wife of William Bowdoin (b. ca. 1740) as Mary Magdalene Mallet: New French Huguenot Connections through DNA and Records”
In the past few weeks, I believe I have identified an ancestor that until now has been shadowy and largely misidentified: Mary M. Bowdoin, the wife of William Bowdoin (b. ca. 1740) of Randolph County, North Carolina, and grandmother of most of the people I’ve met named Bowdoin today. There is strong evidence that she was Mary Magdalene Mallet (b. ca. 1742), daughter of Stephen Mallet (b. ca. 1706) and Olive Magdalene Salle (b. 1710), from French Huguenot families who immigrated to Manakin Town, Virginia, in 1700.
I had actually stepped away from my work on the Bowdoins for a couple of weeks after the New Year, when I went back to look at it again. And suddenly a few things I had observed before clicked into a place: a glaring DNA cluster I hadn’t known how to classify; a record whose full significance I hadn’t realized.
A Mallet DNA Cluster on Chromosome 1
The DNA cluster, mapped to a 55 cM segment on Chromosome 1, centers strongly on the descendants of Stephen Mallet (b. ca. 1706). I have identified more than 50 Mallet descendants who match my grandfather, Robert P. Richardson, and more than 300 other descendants of William and Mary Bowdoin who share the match. The Mallet matches include descendants from at least four different children of Stephen Mallet, and share matches with descendants of each of the children of William and Mary Bowdoin.
The matches I have been able to map clearly intersect, with the same DNA segment shared both by descendants of Stephen Mallet (b. ca. 1706) and descendants of the children of William and Mary Bowdoin.
Mary M. Bowdon
The vast majority of online family trees have got it wrong. Due to a combination of name creep and Ancestry’s viral “hints”, the “consensus” of trees have the wife of William Bowdoin (b. ca. 1740) as Martha Elizabeth Macon. I don’t know where the “germ” first originated, but a glance at older family trees makes it clear enough what happened. The International Genealogical Index, the now-archived LDS family database containing family trees submitted from the 1970s up until 2012, contains at least ten entries for William Bowdoin (b. 1740)—all of them, it happens, wrong about the name of his wife. But eight of those entries have her name as “Martha,” no maiden name, and two have her name as “Elizabeth Macon,” no Martha. At some point in the Ancestry era, name creep caused the names to be merged, since obviously, they both referred to the same person.
But in fact, there are a good handful of primary source records that spell out the name of his wife: Mary M. Bowdon or Bowdoin. A 1786 deed in Granville County is the clearest source. In selling 120 acres of land, Mary signed with her husband. Her name also appears in several court records in Granville County, when she appeared to give testimony on behalf of her husband. The last reference I have found is the criminal complaint brought by Mary Bowdown in February 1808 in Randolph County, charging that Susannah Macon, second wife of John Macon, caused the death of James Macon, Mary’s grandson. Mary died sometime between 1808 and about 1819, when William Bowdoin moved to Georgia and married a second time.
Mary Mallet (now Bowdon)
And then, this record, which I discovered in a court order book for Lunenburg County, Virginia, which until 1765, bordered on Granville County, North Carolina:
On the motion of Mary Mallet (now Bowdon) a witness for Stephen Mallet Senr. against Pinkethman Hawkins, it is ordered that the said Mallet do pay her for three Days attendance at this Court, and twice coming and returning twenty-six miles according to Law. (8 Mar 1764, Order Book 9, 293)
A record a few months earlier, 16 Jul 1763, contains a similar reference to “Mary Mallet, a witness for Stephen Mallet Jr.” with no mention of Bowdon. So it would appear that Mary Mallet married Mr. Bowdon in late 1763 or early 1764. This is exactly the time we believe William Bowdoin would have married his wife; their son James Bowdoin was born about 1764. Stephen Mallet Sr. in these records was Stephen Mallet (b. ca. 1706); Stephen Mallet Jr. was his son, Stephen Mallet (b. 1731).
The “twenty-six miles” reference is important. If this Mary Mallet married William Bowdoin, where would she be traveling from and to? The original, colonial Lunenburg Courthouse was in what is today Mecklenburg County, Virginia. I found its location on a 1755 map. And where was William Bowdoin living in 1764? Looking at the 1762 (surveyed 21 Nov 1761) land grant in Granville County, North Carolina, in the name of William Bowden, it included 700 acres “on both sides of Hawtree Creek”. Hawtree Creek is still called by that name, and is today in Warren County, North Carolina. Drawing a line from the approximate location of the original Lunenburg Courthouse to Hawtree Creek, just over border into North Carolina, results in a length of almost exactly twenty-six miles.
Marie Magdalene Mallet
Who was Mary Mallet? How was she connected to Stephen Mallet? I did not have to look very far. Stephen Mallet (b. 1706) and his wife Olive Magdalene Salle (b. 1710) had a daughter:
[Baptized] 10 Nov 1742—Marie Magdelaine, dau. Etiene and Olive Mallet. (The Douglas Register, Records of King William Parish, Virginia, 383.)
Marie Magdelaine—or Mary Magdalene Mallet—was born presumably about 1742 and baptized 10 Nov 1742. And this is exactly around the time we expect Mary M. Bowdon to have been born. In an age when middle names were uncommon for English speakers, they were perhaps more common for French speakers. Most middle names were still part of double names, named for namesakes. Mary Magdalene was one such common namesake that a name a woman named Mary M. could be expected to have.
Thomas Mallet bound to William Bowdoin
On 14 Feb 1770, Thomas Mallet, aged eleven, “a base born child of the body of Esther Mallett” was bound to William Bowdoin “to learn to read and write and the planter’s business” (Bute County, Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, ed. Holcomb, 67). Esther Mallet was an older sister of Mary Magdalene Mallet. In an undated Granville County tax list, probably dating to around 1780, William Bowdoin is shown paying taxes for Thomas Mallet. This is the clearest direct link between William Bowdoin and the Mallet family. Thomas Mallet would have been his nephew.
Other Bowdoin-Mallet connections
Though the case for Mary Magdalene Mallet being the wife of William Bowdoin (b. ca. 1740) is still circumstantial, we have a growing number of pieces of the puzzle.
Other records in Lunenburg County and Mecklenburg County, Virginia (created from the southern part of Lunenburg in 1765) indicate some family or neighborly connection between the Stephen Mallet family and the Farrar and Nichols families—to whom the Bowdoin family is also connected. Two of the siblings of William Bowdoin (b. 1740) married into those families: his older brother John Bowdoin married Judith Farrar (though I do not have firm documentation of her maiden name), and his sister Sarah Bowdoin married William Nichols. Stephen Mallet appears in court records with William Farrar, apparently the father of Judith Farrar, and also with Julius Nichols, apparent brother of William Nichols (William and Sarah also named a son Julius). Julius Nichols, the brother, also settled on Hawtree Creek in North Carolina.
Conclusion
I am convinced by this evidence: I believe, based on the great weight of the DNA cluster, combined with the documentation of “Mary Mallet, now Bowdon”, the 1742 baptismal record giving her full name, and the Thomas Mallet being bound to William Bowdoin as an apprentice, that Mary Magdalene Mallet (b. ca. 1742) was the wife of William Bowdoin (b. ca. 1740). I present this distilled article and the attached paper as evidence. I will continue my work with DNA, and I hope to be able to offer additional support in the future.
This Mallet connection establishes a new French Huguenot line for the Bowdoin family, whom family legend has long held to have French Huguenot origins. It also perhaps might reveal some breadcrumbs in the sparse trail of where the elder William Bowdoin (b. ca. 1715) might have been, or at least passed through, before settling in Granville County.
Read the research paper this article is based on: