When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will.”
Suppose Master Sullivan had obeyed his mother’s wishes and remained in Ireland, or suppose Providence had not concealed him from his mother’s search after she repented of her rash act, and he had been found and induced to return to Ireland, what a difference there would have been in the management of affairs and the history of New Hampshire.
Margery Browne was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1714; she died in Berwick, Me., in 1801. Nothing is known of her ancestry, but the name is essentially English, hence we may conclude that her parents, or their ancestors, crossed over from England and settled in Ireland. She came to this country in the same ship with Master Sullivan; she was nine years old and he was thirty-two; they never had met before boarding the ship. Why a girl of nine years should start on such a voyage alone is a mystery that will never be solved.
Her parents may have started with her and died on the way, or she may have taken a freak and stowed herself away among the freight and kept concealed till the ship was well at sea. Whatever may have been the cause of departure, she had no money to pay her passage, so the captain had to sell her service at auction in Portsmouth to get his pay. The tradition is that she was so young and so small that nobody would bid for her services. At last Master Sullivan consented to raise the sum the captain wanted for her passage. It is said that he finally paid it in shingles, which he cut himself in the forest and carried to Portsmouth in a boat.
It is not known where she spent the twelve years from 1723 to 1735, but probably in York, as a house girl on some farm. Master Sullivan does not appear to have taken any interest in her till a short time previous to their marriage, when he heard that the young men of York were falling in love with her and one had gone so far as to propose. He went over from Somersworth to York to see about it. He found a keen-witted, handsome and attractive young woman; the thought of the girl he had left in Ireland twelve years ago began to fade from his mind. She was equally impressed with his fine appearance; the result was she told the other young men they need not call any more. Master Sullivan and Margery Browne were married soon after.
She is described by those who saw her in the prime of womanhood as short of stature, beautiful in form, face and manners. She was a great worker, quick tempered, and quick to repent of what she did wrong in her madness. Her tongue was equal to her temper. If tradition can be relied on, she could have given Xantippe several points to start with and then have won easily in a scolding match, although Socrates’ wife has the standard reputation of being the greatest scold the human race has yet produced. Margery Sullivan did not scold all the time; it happened occasionally, like volcanic eruption, when she could not hold in any longer.
Governor Samuel Wells of Maine wrote to a friend as follows about his great-grandmother:
Master Sullivan’s wife was as well known as he was, and when reference was made to her distinguished sons she was more frequently alluded to. She has been uniformly represented as a woman of considerable native strength of mind, yet entirely uncultivated, having the strong passions common to her country women, of which some are good and some are bad, wholly unsubdued by habit. These marked traits of character show a wider contrast between her and her two distinguished sons than between them and their father, and furnish a theme for remark, with anecdotes not a few, brought up whenever allusion was made to the family. That she was a masculine, energetic woman, with the resolution of a man, there is no doubt. That she performed out-door labor in the field, suitable only to men, in order that her husband might not be diverted from his occupation of teaching, was recently told me as coming from herself, in the presence of my informant, one of the few who now (1855) survive to remember her.