Mary (Prettyman) Day (abt. 1682 - bef. 1741)

Born about 1682 in Accomack, Virginia [uncertain]

Ancestors

Descendants

Died before Mar 1741 before about age 59 in Sussex, Delaware

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Biography

This profile is part of the Prettyman Name Study.

Mary Prettyman was born about 1682, the daughter of John Prettyman II, Esquire and one of his three (poorly-identified) wives. Considering Mary's birthdate, her mother was probably John's second wife, Mary Unknown, wed in 1671. (Wife three, Temperance, married John in 1690, long after Mary's birth.)

Mary's father, John Prettyman II, Esquire, was born in 1653, in Accomack Virginia, British Colonial America. He, along with his family of four sons and daughter Mary, moved to Delaware in 1695, and settled near Lewes, Delaware. Again, considering her birthdate, this likely means that she was born in Virginia, but the actual place is unknown.

We can confirm both Mary's relationship to her father and her married name because she received a bequest in her father's 1723/24 will as "my daughter ... Mary Day."

Prettyman Family History

Mary's father John II Prettyman, Esquire, was the son of John Prettyman I, an 1638 immigrant from England to the New World and the founding patriarch of the Prettyman family in America. The immigrant-American John Prettyman descended from the John Pratyman who held land at Bacton, England in 1361.

From wills, we know that Mary's father John Prettyman II possessed a large estate. In 1741, he had purchased White Oak Hill, which contained fifty acres. (At that time it was supposed to be in Somerset County, Maryland, but the settlement of the Lord Baltimore-William Penn Boundary dispute placed it about three miles south of Georgetown, Delaware in the County of Sussex.) The land where the Alms House stood, south of Georgetown, was a part of his estate^[1].

Marriage and Offspring

Mary Prettyman wed William Day and they had four children., one of whom was named Prettyman:

• Prettyman Day 1700–1767 (named in father's will, made executor of the estate)
• Margaret Day Hill Brereton 1702–1749
• George Day ? –1744
• Mary Day West - Deceased (Named in father's will)

Mary is not mentioned in husband William Day's will, so she likely predeceased him.

Sources

1. ↑ ,The Prettyman Family In England And America 1361-1968, by Reverend Edgar Cannon Prettyman, cited in full below

• Will of John Prettyman II in "Delaware Wills and Probate Records, 1676-1971": Sussex: Wills Book A: Image 392. Database and images published by Ancestry.com. Image

• Birth of grandson Prettyman Day to son Prettyman Day: "Delaware, Church Records, 1707-1939," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLB2-1W3W : 9 October 2019), Prettyman Day in entry for Prettyman Day, 2 Feb 1748; citing Birth, Sussex, Delaware, United States, Delaware Bureau of Archives and Records Management, Dover.