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Notes for Grace PRATTE:
Osmund married Grace three months after Margaret's death. Tilton reports that there was only one Pratt family in the Bridport register from 1600 to 1630 and from that she surmises that Bennett Pratt and Ann Primrose (married May 12, 1601) are probably her parents even though her birth is not recorded. The first child of Bennett listed was John who was baptized Jan 15, 1609. Tilton surmises that Grace was older and just not recorded, which is possible. However, she could also be a niece or cousin to these Pratt's.
Grace was a midwife and often testified in court. She was listed (Tilton does not say where, but possibly in a deed or court hearing) as being 42 in 1658 and "about fifty" in both 1660 and 1664. Edmond Marshall accused her, "Goody Dutch," of witchcraft in 1653, but he was forced to "make acknowledgment of his sin of defamation in the meeting-houses of Gloucester, Ipswich and Salem. Forty years later Grace would have been in deadly danger." In the Elwell section of his work, Davis reports that her daughter, Esther Elwell, was jailed for witchcraft in 1692. See notes on Esther.
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