Mary Catherine Dudley's family in York County, Maine — her parents John H. Dudley and Lydia Jane Voudy, and her Dudley siblings. Her marriage into the Schmidt family is covered on the Schmidt Line; this page follows her own ancestry. The Booker family, which married into this line through the Voudys, has its own page.
Mary's Boston birthplace was confirmed through her 1882 marriage record to John A. Tucker — the first documentation of her remarriage after Edward's death, and the record that later explained why her 1912 widow's pension application was rejected. Her own roots, though, are in York County, Maine, through her parents John H. Dudley and Lydia Jane Voudy.
Mary's parents. York's own vital records show John Dudley and Lydia Jane Voudy filing a marriage intention on June 3, 1840, with a certificate issued June 17, 1840 — the town's authorization for the marriage to proceed. That's the earliest documented step toward their marriage; the record of the ceremony itself (a "return of marriage") hasn't yet been located, so the exact wedding date is still unconfirmed. The 1850 census confirms John Dudley as her father — a detail that matters, since his given name is recorded differently across other family records (see Open Questions, below).
Five confirmed siblings of Mary Catherine Dudley (six children in all, counting her), established through census and vital records. Two have individual death records on file so far.
Seven independent records — four census entries, his gravestone, and two of his own children's marriage records — name Mary's father "John" or "John H. Dudley." Two records — a 1919 DAR application and a son's 1935 death certificate, both secondhand family memory recorded decades after his death — name him "William Dudley" instead. The weight of evidence favors John H., but since "William" recurs independently across two unconnected descendant lines, this is kept as an open question rather than a settled correction.
York's own vital records (also independently confirmed via the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 119, p. 224) show the marriage intention was filed June 3, 1840, with a certificate issued June 17, 1840 — not 1839, as earlier family research had assumed. The intention and certificate are documented; the actual date of the ceremony is not yet confirmed.