Colonial Graveyards

Mary (Gardner) Boylston died 304 years ago today, July 8, 1722.
She is interred at the Old Burying Ground, Brookline, Ma.

HERE LYES INTERRED Ye BODY
OF Mrs. MARY BOYLSTON
WIFE OF DOCtr. THOMAS
BOYLSTON DECD. DEPARTED
THIS LIFE JULY Ye 8th
1722. AEtatis Suae 74

Mary (Gardner) Boylston of Brookline, Massachusetts (1648–1722)
Mary Gardner was born on April 9, 1648, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the daughter of Lt. Thomas Gardner and Lucy Smith.

On December 13, 1665, she married Thomas Boylston Jr. in Charlestown. Thomas, a chirurgeon* and one of the earliest physicians in the Muddy River area (now Brookline), passed away in 1695/6. Mary lived as a widow for nearly three decades and died on July 8, 1722, in Brookline at the age of 74.

Thomas Boylston Jr. was a pioneering figure in early Brookline. He settled in Muddy River around the time of his marriage, becoming the first physician to practice in the area. In addition to his medical work, he served as a chirurgeon during King Philip’s War (1675), participated in the Narragansett campaign, and later became Brookline’s first Town Clerk after the town’s separation from Boston. He built a substantial homestead overlooking what is now the Brookline Reservoir and helped establish the Boylston family as one of the prominent early families in the region.

Mary and Thomas were the great-great-grandparents of John Adams, the 2nd President of the United States, through their son Peter Boylston and granddaughter Susanna Boylston Adams.
*Chirurgeon is an arcane word for surgeon