It is clear that Welshman Thomas Carrier, aka Morgan, arrived in Billerica before 1674, because he married Martha Allen, sister of Mary (Allen) Toothaker, in March of that year. The Allens were early settlers in Andover, Massachusetts; Martha appears to have followed her sister to Billerica and lived with Mary and her husband, Roger Toothaker, in the remote, northern part of town. It is not known how Martha met Carrier, twenty years her senior, as he lived in the southern part of Billerica, somewhere along the Shawsheen River, an area known today as Pinehurst. Thomas and Martha had their first child, Richard, two months after their wedding, and four more children, born over the next 15 years, lived to adulthood. Another child, Jane, died in infancy.