Martha was a daughter of George Knott, one of the ten founders of Sandwich, and his wife Martha. Mr. Knott had died about a year before this marriage, leaving a will in which he anticipated that Martha would marry Thomas Dunham, who had "pretended" to be "contracted" to the girl ; but the family disapproved of the match, and Dunham married another maiden while Martha yielded to the wooing of "Thumas Tobie," and became the mother of seven sons who lived to maturity and whose descendants have done credit to her.
Mrs. Knott, Martha's mother, lived in Sandwich some years, as the records show; her life was not free from trials, for she was one of those persons who, hav- ing attended religious services away from the regular place of worship (Quakers or Baptists), were brought before the court for " non-attendance," a fiction which persecutors in Europe had long practised and from which Puritans did not at first cut loose. Samuel Knott, a brother of Mrs. Tobey, survived his brother- in-law, and was remembered in his will.