Katherine Marbury Scott (born approx.1607-1610, died 1687) was a Quaker advocate and colonist of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Unusually for the era, the Marbury daughters were taught to read and write, and Katherine was likely educated by one of her older siblings: Susan (the only surviving child of Marbury's first marriage to Elizabeth Moore), Anne, Francis, Emme, Erasmus, Bridget, Jeremuth, Elizabeth, Thomas, and Anthony.
During her trial, she shocked authorities by declaring, “You have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harm—for I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah, my Saviour… Therefore take heed how you proceed against me—for I know that, for this you go about to do to me, God will ruin you and your posterity and this whole state.”[4] For her rebelliousness, she was imprisoned, then banished from the colony as “a woman not fit for our society.”[5] In 1638, Governor John Winthrop reported that “a sister of Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of one Scott, being infected with Anabaptistry, and going last year to live in Providence, Mr. Williams was taken (or rather emboldened) by [Anne] to make open profession thereof....”[6] In the 1650s, Katherine and her husband converted to Quakerism, and are thought to be the first Quaker converts in New England.
Anne, a midwife, assisted Mary Dyer during her labor, and authorities explicitly connected the stillbirths of Anne and Mary to the fact that they "had vented misshapen opinions, so she must bring forth deformed monsters... And those [opinions] were public, and not in a corner mentioned.”[13] Katherine may have been a midwife, as well, given that her mother, Bridget Dryden, taught midwifery to her daughters.
[14] When asked if she was prepared to face the death penalty, Katherine replied, “If God calls us, woe be to us if we come not, and I question not but he whom we love will make us not to count our lives dear unto ourselves for the sake of his name.