Matthew Wing, son of Stephen

Matthew Wing was born January 1, 1673/74 at Sandwich. He died before July of 1724. Matthew married the widow, Elizabeth Mott Ricketson, on September 4, 1696 at Dartmouth, Massachusetts. At the time of their marriage Matthew Wing was 22 or 23 years old, his bride was 37 years old.

Elizabeth Mott was born August 9, 1659, the daughter of Adam Mott Jr. and Mary Lott who were step-brother and sister. Adam Mott Sr. was first married to Elizabeth Creel who was the mother of Adam Mott Jr., after Elizabeth's death, Adam Sr. married Sarah (Jennings)(maiden name not proven) Lott who was the widow of Unknown Lott and had a daughter, Mary.

(Could this possibly be Jeremy Lott, of Clare, Suffolk, about 10 ESE of Horseheath, Cambridgeshire, the town in which his widow was remarried? According to a patrons’ submission record in the IGI, this man had a daughter Mary, bapt. 22 Oct. 1630 in the parish church of Clare, who was of exactly the right age to be our Mary Lott. The preposterous identification of this man with Englebert Lott of Flatbush, Long Island, which has been made by some Mott family historians and is rampant in the IGI and LDS Ancestral File, is critiqued in the 1942 Lott genealogy.) No. 1 An Ancestor Table for the Hon. Duff Roblin, Premier of Manitoba By John Blythe Dobson...

In 1635, Adam Mott and his wife, Sarah Lott, arrived in New England with their children. Young Mary Lott was 4 years old at the time of their arrival, her step brother and future husband, Adam Mott Jr. was 12.

When Matthew married Elizabeth he inherited quite a family of children; Elizabeth married William Ricketson on May 14, 1679, just prior to her 20th birthday. William Ricketson and Elizabeth Mott had six children, all of them born approximately two years apart, the first child, Rebecca Ricketson, being born May 4, 1681. So, while Elizabeth Mott Ricketson was delivering her first child at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, her future husband, Matthew Wing was an 8 year old boy, playing in the lanes of Sandwich, Barnstable, Massachusetts. About 1682 or 1683 William Ricketson moved his young family to Dartmouth, Massachusetts where he built a home and where they lived when William Ricketson died, March 1, 1692.

By all accounts, the house that William Ricketson built for his family was a beautiful home. About the only things known about William Ricketson are that he was a Quaker and that he was a skilled carpenter. His skill at carpentry was evident in the home he built. In the words of Mr. Arthur Wing:

"The house of Matthew Wing, built about ten years after King Phillip's war - when, as Increase Mather wrote, 'Dartmouth did they burn with fire and barbarously murder both men and women' - stands on the east side of Acoxet or Westport River. Facing south on the upland, it commands a fine sweep of of river, bay, and good old New England country. The sunset softens the time-worn shingles and the crumbling stone of the massive chimney, with its crude pilasters. Within, in spite of its pathetic desolation, the brave old beams and fine wood work bespeak an early New England craftsman at his best. The wedding room with its attractive corner buffet and great fireplace, in the simplicity of its appointments, was in accord with the assembled Friends, and if the sun streamed through the many-paned windows on that spring day - 200 years ago- it must have been a rare, quaint picture.

Up winding stairs, in the great chamber above, was a chimney piece (now in the rooms of the Old Dartmouth Historical society at New Bedford) called by experts the finest of its time extant in Massachusetts. Clamboring up to the loft to watch the last rays of the setting sun upon the hills, the river and the far-off islands, you feel your ancestor, William Ricketson, builded well."

Of course we will never know how or why Matthew Wing met and married Elizabeth Mott Ricketson. Matthew and Elizabeth were both Quakers, so perhaps Rev. Conway Wing is correct when he suggests that they met at meeting. Another suggestion is that Matthew met Elizabeth while living or visiting with his sister Sarah who lived at Dartmouth with her husband, Robert Gifford. .

Matthew Wing's sister, Sarah, married Robert Gifford in July of 1680 and moved to Dartmouth sometime after their marriage. It is more than likely that Sarah Wing Gifford and Elizabeth Mott Ricketson formed a friendship. They were both about the same age, both were young mothers, both were Quakers and both had just recently moved to Dartmouth. In all likelihood Matthew Wing knew both William and Elizabeth Ricketson and their children. Sandwich to Dartmouth is about 25-30 miles as the crow flies, although the trails they had to travel added to the length of time it took to get from one place to another. When families and friends visited one another at distances they probably went to visit for awhile, not just for the day.

A fourteen year age difference would seem a lot greater in 1696 than it does in the new milleneum. Life was hard for even those wealthy individuals who could afford to hire help. Giving birth in those days took a toll on the mothers. The calcium that was robbed from the mothers by their babies usually cost the mothers' their teeth (a tooth for every baby was the rule rather than the exception). When Matthew Wing married Elizabeth Mott Ricketson she had been married for 12 years , widowed for 4 years and was the mother of 6 children. In fact, Matthew's oldest step-daughter, Rebecca Ricketson, was 15 years old when he married Elizabeth, only 7 or 8 years younger than Matthew.

What was the attraction that Matthew had for Elizabeth that caused him to marry her instead of another young lady, closer to his age, without six children? We could and do propose that Elizabeth Mott Ricketson was unusually lovely for her age. Perhaps the six children she bore to William Ricketson did little to detract from her appearance and perhaps she looked much younger than she really was. Unfortunately, at this writing, nothing seems to have survived the ages that note Elizabeth Mott Ricketson's beauty or unusual lovliness. Did she have a loving, maternal attitude that attracted a young man like Matthew Wing who had lost his own mother at the age of 16? Was that the attraction?

Another thought that crosses one's mind when ruminating over the reasons for the marriage between Matthew and Elizabeth is that Matthew may have recognized a good bargain when he saw it. Perhaps Elizabeth was attractive enough and left well enough by her dead husband that the combination was attractive enough to Matthew to throw convention aside. There is little speculation that the marriage between Matthew and Elizabeth caused tongues to wag. Even now.. when a woman marries a man 14 years her junior gossips speculate about what he sees in her or what she sees in him. It is hard to imagine what must have been whispered behind their backs when they married on September 4, 1696 at Dartmouth, Massachusetts among their Quaker friends and family.

However, there seems to have been little, if any, objection to the marriage of Matthew and Elizabeth. In fact, 4 years later, Matthew's father, Stephen Wing, conveyed his homestead and other lands in Sandwich to Matthew and his older brother, Ebenezer. In addition Matthew was chosen as a Grand Juryman for the Superior Court at Bristol on August 22, 1700. It was on April 25, 1704 that Matthew and Elizabeth held the wedding of Elizabeth's oldest daughter, Rebecca, at their home:

"In ye town of Dartmouth on ye 25th day of ye snd month (called April), 1704, a meeting was appointed on purpose at ye house of Matthew Wing'. So reads the worn marriage certificate signed by Matthew Wing and others - - for the 'purpose' was the marriage of his step-daughter, Rebecca Ricketson, to John Russell - 'there being nothing to hinder and their intentions being duly published.'

It has been a mystery to many Wing researchers about why Stephen Wing would have left Matthew Wing as much as he did in his will when Matthew was married and living in his own home. The issue is though, Matthew was probably not living in his own home when Stephen Wing died. Matthew was living in the home of his wife, who was the widow of William Ricketson. The home that Matthew shared with Elizabeth Ricketson Wing was the home that William Ricketson built. That home would revert to her oldest son at the time of his 21st birthday and that was when Matthew Wing and Elizabeth Ricketson Wing would move to their own home. (In fact, Elizabeth's oldest son died at the age of 21. (Just previous to the marriage of Rebecca Ricketson to John Russell, Elizabeth Ricketson Mott Wing's oldest son, John Ricketson, died.) The records state that John Ricketson died January 27, 1704/05 at the age of 21, her 2nd old son, William, for some unknown reason did not get the house, it was her 3rd son, Jonathan Ricketson who claimed his inheritance about 1710).

So it seems that for the most part Matthew Wing's life did seem blessed, as described by one Wing researcher: "Matthew Wing seems to have lived a life that 'glided on like rivers that water the woodland." In 1710, Matthew Wing and Elizabeth built their own home in Dartmouth while Elizabeth's son, Jonathan Ricketson moved his new bride, Abigail Howland, in the home that became his inheritance from his father, William Ricketson. Through their son Jonathan, Jr. Jonathan and Abigail are the ancestors of Gerald R. Ford, President of the Unites States.

Matthew Wing bought the house and 100 acres at Shinuet, just north of the Ricketson homestead:

"This house was a great two-storied double one, of the lean-to type, rare in Dartmouth, and faced south - as well-behaved colonial houses should. Family tradition says that it was begun by one Landers of Sandwich, and left unfinished. When Matthew bought it the floor timbers had sprouted and small trees were growing up toward the scond story. in the stone wall, near the front of the house, is a large flat stone serving as a stile. In it is a deeply-cut 'B.W - 1771', none other than Benjamin Wing, who with Joseph, were Matthew's only two sons. It is the home which Benjamin Crane, the old Dartmouth surveyor, means when in his quaint journal about 1720, he writes: 'steyed one night at Matthew Wing's. A slight glimpse within this old house may be seen by selections from its master's inventory in 1724: "My bible, 19 chairs, a round table and another table, one grate table and 17 napkins, 12 pewter plates, 10 platters, 4 porringers, one tankard, 13 silver spoons, knives and forks, a case of drawers, 5 feather beds with furniture well completed, 7 pairs of good linen chests, a cradle and a spinning wheel."

'It seems from the above inventory that Matthew and Elizabeth were prepared to entertain their family and friends at any notice. By the time that inventory was taken only Abigail Wing would have been still living at home.Their home must have been a welcoming place for all of the grandchildren that probably visited and stayed there with Matthew and Elizabeth, a family full of Ricketson's and Wing's. It is believed that Matthew Wing died about 1724 and that Elizabeth may have died just the year before him in 1723. At this writing there is no positive date of death for either one of them. If those dates are correct, Matthew died at about the age of 50, and Elizabeth would have been about 64 or 65. The old house was torn down some years ago. Just in the rear is the old family burying ground where, as from the house, are beautiful views. Here, when the nearby orchard is in full bloom, the wind from the river below sometimes scatters the petals over the graves of Elizabeth and Matthew Wing."

On January 4, 1704/05, Matthew was also given the debatable honor of being one of five persons who would report yearly to the selectmen of Dartmouth which householder would have to pay a penalty for not killing their share of blackbirds, or adversly, which householders would be paid for killing more than their share of the 12 blackbirds allotted to be killed between January and the middle of May of every year.Those on the blackbird committee were Joseph Tripp, Matthew Wing, Nathan Howland, John Russell, Jsn Spooner. In March of the same year, Matthew was appointed a constable of Dartmouth along with Nathianel Howland and Thomas Tabor Jr. On January 28, 1709, Matthew was chosen a surveyor of highways and held the office for three successive terms. He was a "fence viewer" in 1721 and 1722.

Matthew Wing and Elizabeth Mott Ricketson Wing had the following children:

1. Joseph Wing, born February 27, 1696/97 at Dartmouth, Bristol Co., Massachusetts at the Ricketson House.

2. Benjamin Wing, born February 1, 1698/99 at Dartmouth, at the Ricketson House.

3. Abigail Wing, born February 1, 1701/02 at Dartmouth, at the Ricketson House.

Matthew Wing, son of Stephen Wing & Sarah Briggs