There really was an Ocean Born Mary. History reports she was born at sea on July 28, 1720 to James and Elizabeth Wilson. Legend tells us they were passengers on a ship filled with immigrants to New England when privateers appeared.
The pirate captain reportedly promised not to harm the passengers if the Wilsons named their new baby after his mother (or was it his wife?). The Wilsons disembarked in Boston and moved to Londonderry, NH where red-haired Mary wed James Wallace in 1742, wearing a dress made from the silk presented to her at birth by the unnamed privateer.
This much of the story may be true. Mary had four children and was in her 70s when her husband died. She moved in with a son in Henniker, NH until she passed away in 1814 at the ripe old age of 94 (quite long lived by todays standards, almost unimaginable 200 years ago).
Mary did not, as one version of the story goes, marry the pirate himself. She also did not live in the old colonial in Henniker often called The Ocean Born Mary House. That building, still standing, was owned by another of her sons, and was exhibited to tourists for an admission fee by the owner during the 20th century. In 1930 her first house in Londonderry was moved piece-by-piece to Little Compton, Rhode Island, reassembled and stands with other homes of its era. It is now called the "Sea-Born Mary House."
Imagined tales of ghosts and treasure were offered to tourists as facts, and the legend grew. In 1939 popular children's author Lois Lenski published a fictional biography of Ocean Born Mary.
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