Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Your Pilgrim/Puritan colonial roots (Individuals' stories)

 
The Goshen, Massachusetts, town hall.
John James is your 5G grandfather


This page contains the profiles of the ancestors of your great-grandfather Donald James. 
It starts with your 4G grandparents and tracks each line back to the immigrants, the earliest of whom that I have found arrived in America in 1624.
 
With only a few exceptions, the immigrants in this group were Puritans who came from the British Isles--mostly England, with a few from Wales and Scotland. They arrived in New England--mostly Massachusetts, mostly between 1630 and 1640, each playing their part in the Great Migration, a central event in the creation of the United States.
 
They left Great Britain both for religious/political and economic reasons. At that time, England required people to practice the Anglican religion, but your ancestors thought the King's religion was too much like Catholicism. Some (the Puritans, who settled Massachusetts Bay Colony) wanted only to reform, or 'purify' the Anglican Church and were comfortable with making civil rights contingent on church membership. Others (the Separatists, who settled Plymouth Colony) were adamant that religion and government should be separate. They didn't want to reform the Anglican Church; they wanted out. 

The Anglican church, however, did not want any of them. Religious 'nonconformists' could be denied livelihoods and legal protections, arrested, or even executed. For example, your 14G grandfather Thomas Carman was burned at the stake in 1558, during Queen Mary’s rule, for his religious beliefs. In 1606, the first group of English Puritans moved to the Netherlands, where some of their kids married locals, including your ancestors (see 3085 & 3086).
  
Economics also mattered to both groups. The Puritans resolved the problem of seeking both salvation and money with a concept they called "competency." To live a good life, you were justified in earning enough money to enable you to carry out divinely mandated responsibilities to your family and to have enough time for contemplation and worship, but not so much that you enriched yourself enough to offend God or your neighbors. Living in cooperative community with each other was very central to their values.
 
Notes:
  •  Immigrants to the Americas are highlighted. Men who fought in the American Revolution are marked with (AR).
  • The General Court is the colony's legislature, similar to a state legislature today. You'll see that many of your ancestors served as representatives to, and leaders within, the General Court. I saw it so often, in fact, that I did not even always include it in the individual profiles.
  • A deacon is the lay leader of a local congregation. I cannot tell if it was a lifelong appointment or if once given, the title of deacon was used for the rest of a man's life. There are more deacons in this list than I've indicated. I generally dropped all the titles (except Reverend) when compiling this blog, but you'll see titles, especially deacon, in the clippings I copied here. 
  • In 1751-52, the legal calendar was changed. Before the switch, a calendar year started on March 25, so that a date like January 1, 1750 (as recorded in the old system) would be January 1, 1751 (as recorded in the new system.) In some records created after that switch, dates like that were often noted as January 1, 1750/1751. I'm not doing professional-quality research, so I mostly just ignored this and picked up only the earlier year if there was any ambiguity. 
  • Long Island is now part of New York, but from 1625, when English settlers first arrived, through the late 1600s, control of the settlements bounced back and forth between the Netherlands and England, and when governed by England, between the colonies of Connecticut and New York. Many of your ancestors were born and died there during the 1600s; I've noted all those events as occurring simply in "Long Island," without bothering to look up who was in control at the time of each event.
  • Inconsistent spelling: Spelling of neither names nor of words was yet standardized in colonial times. When a family name was inconsistently spelled (e.g., Worick, Warrick, Worwick) I rather arbitrarily chose one and tried to use it consistently in this blog, without including all the alternatives. If anyone tries to check my work or to dig deeper, keep that in mind.
  • Numbering system: To find anyone's father, double their number and add one; to find anyone's mother, double their number and add two. To find any father's kid, subtract one and divide by two; to find any mother's kid, subtract two and divide by two. If you notice a missing number, it's because: a) Ancestry.com had no information about that person; b) the person/couple is a duplicate--that is, somewhere down the line, cousins married or c) for those in the earliest generations, they stayed in England.

 
Notes to myself are highlighted in green:

  • Sort out who died in which attack/battle, starting with the Pequot War (1636-1638--I don't think we lost anyone in that short war, though John Plumb #1569 played a key role); King Phillip's War (we lost a lot: Bloody Brook 1675; Brookfield 1675; Turner's Falls 1676; and through 1678); Queen Anne's War (1702-1713; Deerfield 1704); other skirmishes and massacres; and the French & Indian Wars (1754–1763), and the Revolution (I think we lost two.) 
  • Make a list of all the New England towns for which one or more of these individuals is listed among the founders. 
  • After everything else is done: Work forward in time from Roger Ludlow to see if you can find Mary Sanford's parents. 
Your 4G grandparents
 Born between 1764 and 1816

47 & 48 - Malachi James b.1767 Hingham MA; d.1849 Goshen MA and Elizabeth Lyman  b.1771 South Farms MA; d.1856 Goshen MA
Malachi was a captain in the Massachusetts militia and an aide to General Ebenezer Mattoon during Shay's Rebellion in 1787.

49 & 50 - John Wells b.1764;  d.1835 and Sarah Warner  b.1767 and d.1837. Both were born and died in Hatfield/Williamsburg.  (The town of Hatfield split in 1777 to create Williamsburg.)
Regular-people color
 
51 & 52 - William Smith Bellows II  b.1811 Good Ground NY; d. 1891 Setauket NY and Mary Sanford  b.1816 Amagansett NY; d.1895 Setauket NY


 
53 & 54 - James Mortimer Tichenor b.1816 Irvington NJ; d.1893 Clinton NJ and Julia Ann Roberts b.1815 Essex NJ; d.1886 Clinton NJ  
Regular-people color
 
Records are skimpy but intriguing for James and Julia. We have the basic official documents: birth, marriage, census, death.
Early records show James's occupation as shoemaker. Their lives look entirely normal until after Julia died in 1886 at age 71.  
 
Then on August 4, 1889, there's a new marriage certificate from Fulton, Michigan, showing James at age 73 marrying Anna Hull, a British woman 20 years his junior. His occupation on this marriage certificate is listed as 'manufacturer.' 
 
James died four years later in New Jersey. His will (not available in full online) apparently includes Anna, her three children from a previous marriage, and your 3G grandmother Harriet Tichenor Bellows, but none of Harriet's three sisters.
 
Anna died in 1918 in Michigan.
 
 
 
 Your 5G grandparents
 Born between 1729 and 1794
 
95 & 96 - John James  (AR)  b.1744; d.1804 and Lois Beal  b.1746; d.1810
In his will, John James left $100 to the town of Goshen, "if the town will accept so trifling a sum", on the condition that it be invested, with capital and interest left untouched for 100 years, and after that, that the interest be spent "for the support of the poor and building of such publick buildings as the case may be." 
 
Regular-people color
Here's the town hall that Goshen constructed 100 years after John James' death.
First a town hall, the James Memorial building is now a library.

97 & 98 - Elias Lyman (AR)  b.1740; d.1816 and Hannah Clapp  b.1742; d.1813 
Both Elias and Hannah were born and died in Northampton, MA.
Military action
I don't know why Elias served with the New Hampshire forces, but I don't think he is the only one of our Northampton ancestors who did. Must have been the way they organized in those days.  
He fought at Saratoga, at least, and perhaps at Ticonderoga (the first battle there was in 1775, before Lyman arrived, but the second battle was July 2-6, 1777.) 
Image from SAR Membership #11177; application filed 1898

 

99 & 100 - Benjamin Wells  b.1729; d.1802 and Lucy Graves  b.1734, d.1815  Both were born and died in Hatfield, MA. 

101 & 102 - Jonathan Warner (AR)  b.1743 Northampton; d.1826 Williamsburg and Eliza Sheldon  b.1745 Northampton; d.1828 Williamsburg
Regular-people color, military action

In April 1775, Jonathon was a private in Captain Abel Thayer’s Company, a militia organized from men in Hampshire County, MA. His service record indicates he was a minuteman. (Minutemen were militia men who were selected and trained to be instantly deployed.)

The alarm of April 19—the one that Paul Revere spread and that, after he was captured, spread out from Lexingtonreached Hampshire County 80 miles away, on April 21.

Captain Thayer’s Company immediately marched and joined John Fellow’s regiment in the growing force that surrounded Boston. The Siege of Boston successfully prevented the British from leaving Boston overland.

Over the course of the war, Warner served in multiple engagements, including Bennington and the Saratoga campaign (he was shot in the shoulder at Saratoga). He advanced to the rank of 1st Lieutenant by 1779. After the war, in 1781, he was promoted to captain, and saw more action with Shay’s Rebellion in 1787, when he was captured by Shay’s men and held for several days. 

If you're curious about the prayer Capt. Warner allegedly prayed every day, it's on page 21 (digital 43) of this History of Williamsburg Massachusetts. It's not a prayer you'd hear in many churches today (whew).
 
103 & 104 - William Smith Bellows  b.1782; d.1857 and Olive Youngs  b.1784; d.1861  Both were born and died in Suffolk, NY.
  
Military 'action'
William, at age 31, served at Sag Harbor during the War of 1812, but he did not get hurt. No Americans did. According to an account in an 1896 history book, Early Sag Harbor, the locals had built a fort when the war broke out, anticipating that their town and its harbor would be attractive to the enemy. In July 1813, a British fleet had been resting in the bay for several days, so when five smaller boats with about 100 men landed on the wharf and tried to attack the town, the locals were able to respond quickly and effectively. An official report stated:

Sir: about 2 o’clock this morning, five barges from the British squadron came and made an attack upon Sag Harbor, took three vessels, set fire to one, but met with a reception so warm and spirited from our militia there stationed, who are entitled to much credit, as also many citizens of the place, that they abandoned their object and made a very precipitate retreat. They threw some shot almost to the extreme part of the place, but fortunately no lives were lost or injury done except to the vessels which they had in possession, one of which was bored through and through by an 18 lb. shot from the fort.

The British retreated in such haste that they left a large quality of guns, swords and other arms  behind.

105 & 106 - The parents of #52 Mary Sanford are unknown to me and everyone else on Ancestry.com. 
Her missing information creates the largest missing branch from our tree, but there's no obvious reason it should be missing. She and her parents lived when and where records were well-kept, and we know all the normally helpful identifying dates for Mary (Marie in some records). We even have her photo (see above). 
 
We can deduce that she came from an affluent, or close-to-affluent, family. Her parents lived in Amagansett on Long Island when Mary was born in 1816. There's just no logical reason why her parents are invisible in the records. But until we know her parents' names, we are blocked from finding out anything more about anyone who came before her.  
 
Another problem: Working backwards--that is, finding an early 'Sanford' immigrant (there was one on the Winthrop Fleet of 1630) and trying to follow his descendants to Long Island, finds huge number of other Sanfords, Sampfords, etc.  It's a Sampford swamp. 
 
One possible good lead: Mary and her descendants used the name "Ludlow" as a given name in the way that many families did to remind the world of an esteemed ancestor. Roger Ludlow was a leading colonial light, with lots of towns and streets named after him. I'm guessing he could be among Mary's forebears. Perhaps studying Ludlow's descendants, rather than our ancestors, could locate Mary's parents.
 
107 & 108 - James Tichenor  b.1789 New Jersey; d.1864 West Milford, NJ and Mary Vreeland b.1794 New Jersey; d.1864 New Jersey
The 1850 census was the first federal census to show names other than the head of household, and the first to include other information, which in James' case was occupation: farmer and value of land: $9,000 in Passaic, New Jersey. I thought that seemed like a lot, so I browsed several pages of the census before and after James--no one else in the area owned land worth more than $3,000. 

109 & 110 - Elias Wade Roberts  b.1788 Newark,NJ; d.1858 Essex County, NJ and Phoebe Clark Lyon  b.1793 New Providence, NJ; d.1835 French Creek, PA
The New Jersey census shows Elias was a farmer, but they seemed to have moved around a bit in New Jersey (Clinton, Pennington, Newark) and visited Europe at least once, in 1829. I cannot see why Phoebe died at age 42 in northwestern Pennsylvania.
 
Your 6G grandparents
 Born between 1684 and 1764
 
Note: Many of these people, both men and women, were married several times. In colonial times death rates were high and life without a partner was very difficult. For most, I've included only the spouses from whom we are descended.  
 
Note:  If  you haven't seen the 1992 film, The Last of the Mohicans, watch it to get a feel for the lives of your 6G and 7G grandparents, who would have been the settlers depicted in the first third of the movie. 

191 & 192 - John James b.1712; d 1768 & Deborah Bates b.1716; d 1768 - all in Hingham, MA.
Deborah buried three husbands before she died at age 89. She married Canterbury Stoddard when she was 18; he died when she was 26. She then married your 6G grandfather who lasted until she was 52; and finally she married John Turner, who died when she was 70.
 
193 & 194 - Adam Beal  (AR) b.1725; d.1796 & Jael Worrick (Warwick) b.1725; d.1745. Both were born in Hingham and died in Goshen.
Adam appears on both minuteman rolls and as a soldier in the Revolutionary War.

195 & 196 - Elias Lyman  b.1710 South Farms, MA; d.1790 Northampton, and Hannah Allen  b.1714; d.Oct. 1791  Northhampton
 Elias Lyman's full, detailed, 4-page will is saved on the online tree. Our ancestor, oldest son Elias, got the house, the "tracts and parcels" of land in Northampton, Pashomic Meadow, and Southampton, and "all the appurtenances thereon." Son Jonathan got so many animals Elias didn't bother to count: "...all the cattle, horses, sheep, swine, and stock of every kind, and all the tools and implements of husbandry...".
              
197 & 198 - Jonathan Clapp  (AR)-ish    b.1713 Northampton; d.1782  Easthampton, MA and Submit Strong b.1712 Northampton; d.1788 Easthampton
 
Military service
Jonathan's military record is official, but cute. He enlisted to serve the cause of independence at the age of 65 and was immediately given the rank of major (perhaps based on earlier military experience in the French & Indian Wars?), and released soon after based on "infirmities of age." Nevertheless, Jonathan made himself useful:

199 & 200 - Jonathan Wells   b.1684; d.1735 and Mary Hoyt  b.1703; d.1750. Both Jonathan and Mary were born and died in Deerfield, MA
 
Mary, as a small child, survived the Deerfield Raid with her mother (#402), but not her father (#401). Jonathan was old enough to have fought with the small militia band (90 men), organized by his father #399, which faced 288 French soldiers and Native warriors in defense of the village on that night. 
   
201 & 202 -  Elnathan Graves b.1699; d.1785 and Martha Dickinson b.1701; d.1756 Both Elnathan and Martha were born and died in Hatfield, though in 1771, Hatfield split off Williamsburg into a separate town. 
Regular-people color
Martha's story is told in A History of Williamsburg in Massachusetts
Many of the industries can be recorded only under men's names, but much of the actual industry was carried out by their wives. To one of these women belongs the credit for the origin of the covered-button business in this country. Mrs. Elnathan Graves noticed that a button on her husband's coat was worn through. She covered a button and sewed it back on--and devised a new plan. Shepard and Pomeroy of Northampton, who employed a relative of hers, were pleased with samples she showed them and offered to help her. From time to time she sewed a gross to them, and they in turn supplied the New York market. Incidentally, Mrs. Graves was also the inventor of a circular chisel to stamp out the button covers, a procedure which proved to be a tremendous saving of material. The chisel has ever since been in general use.
 
203 & 204 - Mark Warner  b.1712; d.1755  and Experience Wright b.1714; d.1768  Both Mark and Experience were born and died in Northampton, MA
 
205 & 206 - Israel Sheldon (AR) b.1715 Northampton; d.1791 Southampton, and Naomi Warner b.1719 Northampton; d.1750 Southampton
Mark #203 and Naomi #206 are brother and sister; Mark's son Jonathan and Naomi's daughter Eliza (first cousins) married. Their daughter Sarah is your 4G grandmother.
 
207 & 208 John Bellows (AR) b.1750 Brookhouse, Long Island; d.1831 Good Ground, Long Island and Mary Smith b.1760 Long Island; d.1835 Good Ground, Long Island
 
209 & 210 - Daniel Youngs (AR) b.1753; d.1802 in Suffolk, NY and Catherine Brown  b.1741; d.1786 Suffolk, NY
 Daniel's occupation was cooper. I can see a record of the pension Daniel drew for serving as a private during the war, but I cannot see any other record related to his military service. 

215 & 216 Joseph Day Tichenor b.1762; d.1847 Passaic, NJ and Jane Brown (dates unknown)
It's clear that Joseph was married to Jane Brown, but other than that, Jane is a dead end. There is no information visible on Ancestry.com about her birth and death dates or places, or her parents' names. 

217 & 218 James Freeland b. 1766 New Jersey; d. 1840 New Jersey and Jane Beam b. ~1770; d. mid 1800s
See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990. 
 
219 & 220 John Roberts  b.1756; d.1820  Newark, NJ and Sarah Wade b.1764  Elizabeth, NJ; d.1800 Newark
 
221 & 222 - Ebenezer Lyon  (AR) b.1746; d.1816  Washington Valley, NJ and Sarah Wilcox  b.1749; d.1795  New Providence, NJ
 

Your 7G grandparents

Born between 1656 and 1741

 

383 & 384 - Thomas James b. 1669; d.1724 and Patience Tower b.1678; d.1741 Both Thomas and Patience were born and died in Hingham, MA.


385 & 386 - Joseph Bates III b.1687; d.1750 and Deborah Clapp  b.1686; d.1783 

Slave holder

Both Joseph and Deborah were born and died in Hingham, MA.

 

Slavery was practiced in Massachusetts from 1630 to 1781 and although its ports saw few slave sales, it was a link in the Triangular trade and its ship owners got wealthy from that. But in the homes and farms of Massachusetts, the practice of slavery was not like southern-style slavery. The people were owned as property with no planned release date, but they were also recognized as real people before the law. They could marry, and they could and did sue their owners in court. In fact, it was several of these lawsuits that ended slavery in Massachusetts in 1781. Anyway...

Joseph is one of two of our ancestors who owned slaves. His 1747 will reflects the nature of slavery as practiced in Massachusetts:
"...to my beloved wife, ... my negro girl Phillis and...as for my negro woman Pegg, I give her either to my wife or to either of my daughters whom she shall choose to live withall."
 
So he was 'giving' both Phillis and Pegg to other people as if they were property, but he was letting Pegg choose who she wanted to 'live with.'  

The 1776 will of Hugh Roberts #879 is similar: Rather than emancipate his one slave, Hugh instead bequeaths "the labor of my negro, Toby" to his wife as long as she lives and after that, Toby is given the choice of which of Hugh's sons he wants to live with. 


387 & 388 - Andrew Beal b.1685; d.1762 and Rachel Bates b.1696; d.1780 Both were born and died in Hingham, MA


389 & 390 - Chasling Worrick b.1697; d.1749 and  Hester Bates b.1697; d.1739 Both were born and died in Hingham, MA

Chasling, a shoemaker, died of drowning at age 52 while fetching water. 


391 & 392 - John Lyman (younger) b.1660; d.1740 in Northampton and Mindwell Sheldon b.1665; d.1735 in Northampton


Mindwell's older brother John (your 7G granduncle) was a hero of the Deerfield story--or at least its aftermath:

  Another Sheldon brother, Ebenezer, is #411 in your family tree.
 
393 & 394 Samuel Allen b.1675; d.1739 and Sarah Rust b.1675; d.1746. Both were born and died in Northampton, MA

Like quite a few other men among our Puritan ancestors, Samuel was a deacon of the church, and he is usually identified with that title in the records. 


395 & 396 - Capt. Roger Clapp b.1684 Northampton, d.1762 Dorchester and Elisabeth Bartlett b.1687; d.1767 - Northampton, MA

Roger has a lengthy, detailed will saved to the online family tree.


397 & 398 - Waitsill Strong b.1677, d.1762 and Mindwell Bartlett, b.1682, d.1741 - Northampton.


399 & 400 - Jonathan Wells b.1658 Springfield, MA; d.1738 Deerfield, MA and Sarah Strong b.1656 Hartford. CT; d.1738 Deerfield

 

Had you known him, you would NOT have predicted Jonathan would die an old man. He seems to have been drawn to combat from an early age, and lived at a very combative place (the Connecticut River frontier) at a very combative time. 

 

As he reached his teenage years, previously peaceful relations with the Natives were giving way to hostilities as English settlements grew; as tribes continued to contest each other; and as France and England competed for control of America. Someone was always ready to fight someone else.


Jonathan's recorded martial exploits start at age 16, in King Phillip's War. Read the details of his harrowing escape in this history, which seems to have entered colonial folklore. I saw the incident mentioned in some histories that have nothing to do with our ancestors as "the Falls Fight from which young Jonathan Wells escaped," or some other similar reference. Your other ancestors who saw action at the Falls Fight were your 8G grandfathers Preserved Clapp and John Lyman, and your 9G grandfathers Nathaniel Dickinson, William Clark, and David Hoyt (the elder, #803).

 

Jonathan fought in other skirmishes and led the 90-man militia that vainly fought to protect the village of Deerfield in 1704.  

 

Sarah and Jonathan were each other's second marriage. A local history, written in 2012 by Edward Barnard, reports: “Sarah must have been stylish and well dressed, for in 1675 at 18 years of age she married Joseph Barnard, the well-educated son of early Puritan settlers of Hartford, CT. Joseph Barnard was a tailor, surveyor, and farmer. In 1676, Sarah was indicted, along with 37 other women and 30 men for wearing silk, contrary to law. (She was fined 2 shillings and 6 pence).  

 
Joseph and Sarah moved to be among the first settlers of Deerfield, MA, where Joseph was mortally wounded in an Indian ambush in 1695 as he rode with five other men taking bags of grain to the mill. Sarah was left with nine children living at home and gave birth to a tenth in March of 1696, six months after Joseph’s death. In 1698 Sarah married a second time to Captain Jonathan Wells, a hero in King William’s War.”

 

401 & 402 - David Hoyt b.1676 Hatfield; d.1704 Deerfield and Mary Edwards b.1675 Northampton, d.1747 Deerfield


Mary and their infant daughter (#200) survived the Deerfield Raid, which started in the dawn hours of February 29, 1704, described in the highlights post in this blog. David was one the seven men who defended the Stebbins house for more than two hours, in which his and several other families were sheltered and that was burned after the attackers left. David then joined the party that pursued the French and Indians who were holding the captives, and was killed later that day in the "field fight." 


403 & 404 - John Graves b.1664, Hatfield; d.1746 Hatfield and Sarah Banks b.1666 Chelmsford, MA; d.1709 Hatfield


Someone on Ancestry. com contributed
this as a portrait of Nathaniel Dickinson,
but did not cite a source.

405 & 406 - Nathaniel Dickinson b.1670, d.1745 and Hannah White, b.1679; d.1756. Both were born and died in Hatfield.

Nathaniel was a deacon of the church . 


407 & 408 - Mark Warner b.1677 Hadley, MA; d.1766 Northampton and Lydia Phelps b.1683, d.1765 in Northampton.

 

409  & 410 - Jonathan Wright b.1681; d.1743 in Northampton and Experience Edwards b.1691 Westfield; d.1721 Northampton

 

411 & 412 - Ebenezer Sheldon b.1677; d.1755 and Mary Hunt b.1679; d.1767. Both Ebenezer and Mary were born and died in Northampton.

Ebenezer is the brother of #392 Mindwell Sheldon

 

 415 & 416 - John Bellows b.1728 Groton CT; d.1793 Suffolk, NY and Zopher Elizabeth Williams b.1733 Groton; d.1803  Suffolk

 

 417 & 418 - John Smith b.1732 England; d.1775 Long Island and Mary Slowby b.1736 England; d.1775 Long Island

These two were born in Porlock, Somerset, England, and were married in England, which means that they immigrated sometime between the mid-1750s and 1760, when their daughter, your 6G grandmother Mary Smith was born in New York. 
 
I don't know enough about history to understand why anyone would have relocated from England to America in those troubled times. When I finish this part of the family tree, I'll check back, but right now they are the most recent immigrants for this part of your family tree, the ancestors of Donald James.   

I didn't see any sign that John served in a military capacity once he got here, so he wasn't sent by the Crown to help maintain order. He and Mary died within a month of each other in 1775; it might have been disease.
 

 419 & 420 - John Fitz Young b.1722; d.1754 in Suffolk and Mehitable Cleveland b.1724 Suffolk NY; d.1808 New York, New York


421 & 422 Benjamin Brown b.1720; d.1774 and Mary Tuthill b.1722; d.1770. Both Ben and Mary were born and died in Suffolk, NY.

 

431 & 432 - Joseph Tichenor b.~1740 Morris County, NJ; d.unknown and Susannah Day b.1741; d.~1820, probably New Jersey for both

 

435 & 436 -John Vreeland b. 1735 New Amsterdam; d. .... and Marritje Kidney (Kittney) b. 1739 Barbados; d. 1795, New Jersey

See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990. 

 

 

439 & 440 - Moses Roberts b.1724; d.1804 (AR) and Mary Coe b.1726; d.1791 Both Moses and Mary were born and died in Newark, NJ.

Moses's will indicates that Newark then is a lot different than Newark now:

Notice also the presence of other surnames from our family tree: Tichenor and Lyon. The communities were close and intermarried.


 441 & 443 - James Wade b.1730; d.1774 and Hannah Hinman b.1731; d.1792  Both James and Hannah were born and died in Newark, NJ. 

 

 It looks like James had time to write a quick will before he died in 1774 at age 44.


444 & 445 - Peter Lyon b.1722; d.1784 and Joanna Clark b.1725; d.1783 Both Peter and Joanna were born and died in Elizabethtown, NJ

 

445 & 446 John Willcocks (AR) b.1727; d.1776 both in New Providence NJ and Massy Ross  b.1727 Elizabethtown, NJ; d.1801 New Providence

 Military action

The website of Union County, New Jersey has an inventory of "Deserted Village Cemeteries." It includes this information:

The Willcocks family cemetery is also located in the Deserted Village. There are an estimated 24 graves in this little modest cemetery. There are headstones of three Revolutionary War Patriots. The original headstone is of John Willcocks who died November 22, 1776. John Willcocks was a member of “Captain Marsh’s Light Horse Troop,” and was killed defending General George Washington's retreat across New Jersey.

According to one historical account: On November 16, 1776, Fort Washington fell to an overwhelming assault by the British forces who captured over 2,000 American troops. Following the fall of New York City to British occupation, the Continental Army crossed the Hudson River and scaled the Palisades to man the fortifications on the bluffs of Fort Lee. 

General Washington, realizing that with the loss of New York’s Fort Washington, Fort Lee was of little military value, and made preparations to evacuate his remaining army through New Jersey. An orderly retreat, however, was not in store for the Americans. On November 20, General Cornwallis ferried between 6,000 and 8,000 men across the Hudson River north of Fort Lee. When word of the crossing reached Washington, he ordered the abandonment of Fort Lee and an immediate retreat before his army was cut off and captured by the British. Most of the American supplies and artillery had to be left behind. During these darkest days for the Revolution when it seemed as though the Continental Army could not survive, Thomas Paine, who was in Fort Lee with Washington’s army, wrote the famous words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

  Your 8G grandparents

 Born between 1605 and 1713

 

767 & 768 - Francis James b.1632; d.1684 and  & Elizabeth Hyland b.1632; d.1688. Both Francis and Elizabeth were born in Hingham, England and died in Hingham, MA.


769 & 770 - Ibrook Tower  b.1644; d.1732 & Margaret Harding b.1647; d.1705 Both Ibrook and Margaret were born and died in Hingham, MA


771 & 772 - Joseph Bates II  b.1660; d.1714 & Mary Lincoln b.1662; d.1752. Both Joseph and Mary were born and died in Hingham, MA

The History of the Lincoln Family (published 1923) says: 

Joseph was by trade a brick mason; constable in 1705; and one of the seven men who with Mr. Hobart first signed the covenant of the First Church. Rev. Jacob Flint wrote that he was "a man of some distinction from his piety and useful accomplishments." 
 

773 & 774 - Samuel Clapp b.1642; d.1730 in Scituate, MA & Hannah Gill b.1645 in Hingham; d.1721 in Scituate

Community leader

Clapp was elected to public office consistently for many years.  Clapp served in the Plymouth legislature for many years, until it was merged with Massachusetts, and then served in the Massachusetts legislature for many more years. 


An 1884 history of Plymouth mentions Grandpa Clapp in the first column on this page, but I think the second column is more interesting, showing how the people of Plymouth felt about losing their special identity when the two colonies merged.


775 & 776 - Jeremiah Beal (younger) b.1655; d.1703 & Hannah Lane b.1658; d.1719 Both Jeremiah and Hannah were born and died in Hingham, MA. 

Jeremiah was a blacksmith.


777 & 778 - Joshua Bates b.1671; d.1754 & Rachel Tower b.1674; d.1695 - Both Joshua and Rachel were born and died in Hingham, MA.  

Joshua was a bricklayer.

 

783 & 784 - John Lyman b.1623 in England; d.1690 in Northampton and Dorcus Plum, b.1626 in England; d.1725 in New Haven. 

Pioneer conflicts

Lieutenant John Lyman was with the militia defending the Massachusetts frontier during King Phillip's War. He is mentioned several times in this account of the disaster at Turner's Falls in 1676, along with your 8G grandfather Isaac Graves #807 and your 7G grandfather Jonathan Wells #399, who made a harrowing escape. 


785 & 786 - Isaac Sheldon  b.1629 in England; d.1636 in Northampton and Mary Woodford b.1636 in Roxbury, MA, d.1683 in Northampton.  

Coming to America in 1652, Isaac was a relatively late arrival among this bunch. His parents seem to have been with him on the crossing, but they died at sea.

 

787 & 788 Samuel Allen b.1632 in Braintree; d.1718 in Northampton & Hannah Woodford b.1642 in Hartford, CT; d.1719 Northampton



Regular-people color

This marriage got off to a dramatic start. The couple were engaged when Hannah was only 17--young for marriage among the Puritans. In September 1659, two months before their marriage, Samuel sued John Bliss, also of Northampton "for unjustly stealing away the affections of Hannah Woodford, my espoused wife." Samuel later withdrew the suit "for that he found himself defective in his testimony."

Samuel Allen (b.1632) in 1704

789 & 790 - Israel Rust b.1643 in Hingham; d.1712 in Northampton and Rebecca Clark, b.1649 in Dorchester MA; d.1733 in Northampton 

Israel died without a will, so an inventory of his belongings was filed with the town when he family divided up the property. His property seems to be very typical of the other wills I saw from around this time (1712). In addition to 18 acres, a house, a barn, 2 yokes of oxen, 2 cows, and three horses, he owned:


791 & 792 - Preserved Clapp, b.1643, d.1720 in Northampton and Sarah Newbury b.1650 in Windsor, CT, d.1716 in Northampton

Community leader, Pioneer conflict
One of Preserved's descendants wrote the preface to the published memoirs of Preserved's father, Roger Clapp. It said:
Seven of Roger's children lived to become persons of more than ordinary ability and influence. Samuel, Preserved, and Hopestill were Ruling Elders in their church and representatives to the General Court, and Samuel and Preserved were captains in their respective towns, an office considered of great importance in those days, to which none could attain but pious as well as brave men.

The Clapp's home and barn, and that of several of their neighbors, was burned to the ground in King Phillip's War.  Preserved saw much action against the Indians, and eventually "died from the effects of a gunshot wound received from an Indian." 

793 & 794 - Samuel Bartlett b.1639, d.1712 in Northampton, and Sarah Baldwin b.1653 in Milford Connecticut, d.1717 in Northampton

Witches
Sarah must have been brave. She married Samuel in 1676, less than two years after his first wife, Mary Bridgman, died as a result of witchcraft!
 

795 & 796 - Thomas Strong, b.1637; d.1689, Northampton and Rachel Holton b.1637 in Northampton; d.1689 New Haven. 

Some records show Thomas Strong as a "trooper under Major Mason in 1658." The images that some Ancestry members shared with that information have to do with cavalry. That is as much as I know.


799 & 800 - Thomas Welles b.1620 England; d.1676 Hadley, MA and Mary Beardsley, b.1631 Hartford, CT; d.1690 Hadley, MA

I don't know who Fredrick B. Wickman of Amherst was, or why he kept a record about the Wells family or when he wrote it (some of the spelling is archaic), but a document on Ancestry contains this detailed account of making a living on the colonial frontier:

 
In 1659, Thomas Welles joined the group of engagers in Wethersfield who were going to Hadley. In this group were also his mother and his step-father, the Colemans, and his younger brother John. Thomas Wells was present at the first meetings, but did not go up to Hadley itself until 1660, since his wife was pregnant again.Thomas was listed in the 150 lbs category,which meant he was considered a prosperous yeoman.
 
Thomas and Mary Wells had two more sons with them before they moved to Hadley. John was named after his dead brother and his uncle and had been born on April 3, of 1660. Mary, however, was able to remain in Wethersfield in their home, since Thomas had no intention of selling the home lot there. He had time to build their new house in Hadley before moving his wife and infant children up the Great River.
 
As a farmer, Thomas Wells grew the usual crops: oats, wheat, barley, pease, and flax. He also harvested hay for the winter feed of his animals, for he had a yoke of oxen, some cows and heifers, as well as sheep and hogs.Thomas, however, is one of the few people in Hadley to own bee hives. Bees were not native to New England and the familiar fruit trees would not bear fruit without bees to pollinate them. They were a double source of income. During the flowering season, he could rent the hives to farmers who had planted fruit trees and he could sell the honey the bees produced. Two bee hives with bees were valued at 1 pound 10 schillings, which put them in an expensive class of objects.
 
Filling a need, the residents of the east side of the river agreed with Thomas and his long time friend John Hubbard to carry their grain over the river to the mill, have it ground into meal, and bring it back again. So, on certain days of the week Thomas and John went from door to door with their carts, gathering bags of wheat, or corn, to be ground. They brought all these sacks to the north end of town, loaded them onto a boat and sailed across the river to the mill located near the mouth of Mill River. There the miller ground the meal and sacked it. Thomas and John then reversed the trip.They were to be paid in one of three ways: in cash at three pence per bushel; in wheat valued at 3 shillings 6 pence; or in Indian corn at 2 shillings 3 pence per bushel.
 
Thomas was still in the militia and in good health when he fell ill. On September 30th, he called his old friend and business partner John Hubbard, and another old friend Francis Bernard to his side and dictated his Last Will and Testament. He was 56 years old. He lingered on throughout the Autumn months before dying.
 
When Thomas died he left a good estate in Hadley and Wethersfield, and a house and lands in Evesham, Worcestershire, England, on the River Avon. (Note: Many immigrants did not sell their land in England when they moved, but left them in the management of a trusted party, who rented them out and sent the proceeds to America, in the form of either money or goods.)
 
The widow Mary Beardsley Wells found herself in charge of a large and unlikely household. She had ten underage children, ranging from Jonathan at 19 who might or might not live from the wounds he had received six months earlier, down to Joshua who was only 4. There was also her son-in-law David Hoyt and his two orphan children. And undoubtedly, there was also her mother-in-law Frances [Wells] Coleman who, since the death of her second husband, had spent more and more time with her "beloved Mary", and less and less time with her Coleman step-children with whom relationships seemed cool indeed. Also in the house, or perhaps in a little house of their own, were her oldest son Thomas Junior and his Hepzibah and their two children. She was a widow and the burden was heavy."
 
Mary remarried.

801 & 802 - John Strong, b.1605 in Somerset, England; d.1699 Northampton, MA and Abigail Ford, b.1605 Somerset, England, d.1688 Northampton

Community leader

John seems to be among the most honored and respected of our ancestors among the early settlers of Massachusetts. This book, The History of the Descendants of Elder John Strong, is not the only book such book written. In brief, he was a successful tanner and planter and had a hand in either the original settlement or the early development of Dorchester, Hingham, Taunton, Windsor, and Northampton. He served in the General Court (the colonial legislature) and as a church leader. He was among the early patrons of Harvard University.
 

All that aside, as I skim his biographies, I cannot help but think that part of the reason he is so well-remembered is that he and Abigail had 16 kids, many of whom grew to adulthood and had many kids of their own. As a result, they had many descendants to get caught up in the late 19th-century local-history-writing craze.  One of these histories begins:

His descendants have numbered over thirty thousand persons. Among these are four hundred college graduates, over thirty college professors, as many authors, four governors, over thirty judges, over thirty members of the US Congress, sixty officers of the Revolutionary army; Professors Dane, Whitney, and Goodrich of Yale; Newberry and Dwight of Columbia; Robinson of Union Theogogical Seminary, etc. etc. etc.

 
John and Abigail are also your 9G grandparents on a different line; one of their 4G grandchildren married one of their 5G grandchildren, and their son, William Henry Harrison James, is your 2G grandfather. It's possible that Lewis Lyman James and Cerintha Wells didn't even know they were distant cousins.

803 & 804 - David Hoyt b.1651 Windsor, CT; d.1704 Coos, VT and Sarah Wells b.1655 Wethersfield; d.1676 Hatfield 

The circumstances of David's tragic death completely dominate the stories told about him in the family histories. As a result, I could not find the answer to a question I had about his early life: Both of his parents died in July 1655, when David was only four years old. I don't know who raised him.

 

Sarah was David's first wife. She had died before the Deerfield Raid, as had David's second wife. David and his third wife, Abigail, and two of their children were taken captive. A third child escaped by hiding in a corn bin. Abigail was taken but eventually ransomed, and one of the children stayed with a Mohawk family. David and the youngest child did not survive the march to Canada.


 

805 & 806 - Joseph Edwards b.1647 Springfield; d.1690 Northampton and Hannah Atkinson b.1653 Boston, d.1735 Northampton

 

Joseph and Hannah had settled in Deerfield, and Joseph died before the 1704 raid. Hannah had remarried. She survived the raid and was not captured, but her husband, Benoni Stebbins, died defending their house.


 

 

807 & 808 - Isaac Graves b. ~1620 in England; arrived 1637, d.1677 in Hatfield and Mary Church, b.1662, Duxbury, MA; d.1695 in Hatfield

Pioneer conflict

Isaac is another ancestor we lost in hostilities on the Massachusetts frontier.  

 
 
Another history reports that following the "Bloody Brook massacre, the town of Hatfield built a stockade to protect from Native attacks, and although the houses of Isaac and his brother John were within the stockade:
Unfortunately for them, on the 19th of September 1677, they were both employed in building a house for John Graves, Jr. about a half a mile north of the stockade on a lot adjoining that of Sergeant Benjamin Waite. Without any warning or thought of danger they were attacked by Indians and Isaac and John shot down while engaged, as one tradition has it, in laying shingles on the roof, and with them likewise two other men who were working with them, John Atkinson and John Cooper. Eight others were killed and, we presume, scalped, as the account speaks of them being disfigured, and seventeen were made prisoners. All but one, Obadiah Dickinson, were women and children.

809 & 810 - John Bank b. unknown date in Scotland; d.1683 Chelmsford, MA and Hannah Jenkins (dates and places garbled.)
 
Present for history
I was unable to find birth date and place for either of these two. We know their names from their daughter Sarah's documents, which identify "John and Hannah (Jenkins) Bank of Chelmsford" as her parents. Hannah is hard to track because she married three times (not uncommon for that period), which gives her different names in different records.

John's story is more interesting. We know it thanks to only one 1653 record, a list of Scottish men working at the Saugus Iron Works in Lynn, Massachusetts. 

In November 1649, English Parliamentarians beheaded King Charles I (in the presence of your 10G grandfather Henry Lyon--see his story at #3551). The Scots were not on board with that, and they recognized his son as King Charles II. So Oliver Cromwell's forces invaded Scotland, and the two armies met at the Battle of Dunbar in September 1650. The Scots were defeated, and John Bank was among 10,000 Scots taken prisoner.  


He had better luck as a prisoner than as a soldier, which is how he came to be our American ancestor.  

On a forced march to England, many of the prisoners died of their wounds, disease, starvation, or being shot. But enough remained alive to cause a headache for the English government. Keeping them in prison would be expensive; letting them go dangerous. So England offered the prisoners for sale as indentured servants, required to work in bondage for seven years without pay.

Most were sold to English coal or salt mines. But one small group went elsewhere. Representatives of an iron works in Lynn, Massachusetts negotiated to take possession of “150 prisoners who are well and sound and free of wounds,” and in November 1650, a boat carrying POW John Bank sailed to America. 

The merchants planned to keep some prisoners for the iron works and sell the remaining men for between 20 and 30 pounds, which would have made a tidy profit, since they paid only five pounds for each. However, the wintry ocean voyage took a toll on the men's health. One died, and the others, sickly, did not fetch that high a price.

John was among 65 prisoners retained at the iron works. He and the others took their lodgings in the “Scotchmen’s house”, a single building one mile from the iron works. This house, now open to tourists, is believed to have had two rooms around a central chimney with a cellar oven. Eleven beds and bolsters there suggest that they slept two to a bed. 

If lodging wasn't great, the food was good enough to prompt one of the company’s investors to complain:  “As for the dietting of the Scotts men … (they are) haveing ther plenty of fish, both fresh and salte and pidgions and venison and corne and pease.” The company was even supplying them with “strong Waters” and tobacco.

Records of other local businesses indicate that the iron works was buying clothing, shoes, soap, and medical care (such as it was in the 17th century) for its workers.

The Saugus Iron Works at Lynn was huge, covering 600 acres, and is now a national historic site run by the National Park Service. Most of the indentured Scots worked as woodcutters to supply raw material to colliers, who made charcoal for the furnaces. Others had jobs within the factory as forgers and blacksmiths. Some worked on the company farm, the source of all that food the investor complained about.

We don’t know how old John was, but he might have been quite young. Many of the prisoners had been teenagers when they were conscripted into the Scottish army.  Company records indicate that they were taught trades during their time at the iron works, including blacksmithing and carpentry. One owner wrote that although the men had arrived as unskilled laborers, they “would neare have managed the Companie’s business themselves, and (had we been free to use them in that way) would have saved many hundreds of pounds in a yeare.

One contemporary observer wrote: “At the Iron Works wee founde all the men with smutty faces and bare armes working lustily. The headmen be of substance and godly lives, but some of the workmen be young and fond of frolicking, and sometimes doe frolicke to such purpose that they get before the magistrates. And it be said, much to their discredit that one or two hath done naughtie workes with the maidens living thereabouts.

The prisoners began assimilation almost immediately. They were included in the colony’s military training as early as 1652, and by the time their indenture was complete, their Americanization was too. They married local women, both before and after being released from indenture, to take their place in thousands of American family trees. 

The Saugus Iron Works today, operated as a historic site
by the National Park Service

 811 & 812 - Joseph Dickinson b.1630 England; d.1675 Northfield and Phebe Bressey b.1632 England; d.1711 Hartford. 

Pioneer conflict
Joseph was killed by Indians  at the beginning of King Phillips WarWhich battle or attack?
 

813 & 814 - Daniel White b.1642 Hartford CT; d.1713 Hatfield and Sarah Crow b.1647 Hartford, d.1719, Hadley MA

 

Regular-people color 



 

 815 & 816 - Mark Warner b.1646 Ispwich, MA; d.1738 Northampton and Abigail Montague b.1633 Wethersfield, CT; d.1705 Northampton

Like #799 & 800 and #1600, these two were likely in Hadley during the legendary attack of 1675. (Details with #1600, Francis Belcher.)


817 & 818 - Nathaniel Phelps b.1653 Hartford, CT; d.1705 Northampton and Grace Martin (adopted name Marsh) b.1650 England; d.1727 Northampton

 

Regular-people color

Your 8G grandmother Grace  has an interesting backstory:


819 & 820 - James Wright b.1639 Springfield; d.1707 Northampton and Abigail Jess b.1645 Springfield; d.1707 Northampton


821 & 822 - Nathaniel Edwards b.1657; d.1731 and Hepzibah Janes b.1665; d.1691. Both Nathaniel and Hepzibah were born and died in Northampton.


825 & 826 - Jonathan Hunt b.1637 England; d.1691 Northampton and Clemence Hosmer b.1642 Hartford; d.1691 Northampton

 Pioneer conflict

Three generations are captured in the screenshot, below, of the Hunt family history. I highlighted our direct ancestors. Notice, too, that it identifies another uncle of some level (Mary's son Joseph, near the bottom of the first column) whom we lost in the Deerfield raid of 1704. 

 


Here's what a maltster did, from a colonial brewing book:

"The right kind of barley being chosen, no care can be too great in the making it into malt. The first operation is the covering it with water, to soak it in the cistern; for this clear water of a running brook or small river should be chosen … In this water the barley is to lie about three days and nights … to know when it is soaked enough take up one corn from the middle of the quantity and hold it between the forefinger and thumb of the right hand by the two ends, press it gently and the softness will show whether it is enough…. The grain being soaked enough the water is to be drawn leisurely from it. After this it is to be put into a hutch, and lie together thirty two hours: after this it is to be turned up on the floor; when it begins to spire it must be turned every four hours and spread thin on the floor … when the malt is made thus far without any accident, it is the common practice to lay it on the kiln at once … the time of drying malt varied according to the kind intended to be made, for the difference of color depends on the drying quick or slow. For brown malt, four hours will be sufficient, because the briskness of the fire that is used. For amber malt, the fire being smaller, there will require about seven hours; and the pale malt, the fire being very weak, the time will amount to about twelve."

 

831  & 832 - John Bellows b.1705 Groton, CT, d.1793 Marlboro, MA and Mary (unknown)

 

833 & 834 - David Williams b.1692; d.1762, both in Groton and Experience Bailey b.1698 Groton; d.1762 Hartford


839 & 840 - Daniel Youngs b.1680; d.1743 Suffolk, NY and Judith Frink b.1680 New London, CT; d.1740 Suffolk, NY
 
841 & 842 - Ichabod Cleveland b.1695; d.1768  and Anna Moore b.1697; d.1785  Both Ichabod and Anna were born and died in Southold, Long Island. 
Community leader
 A family history from the 1800s reports: Ichabod Cleveland resided always at Southold, well known and much esteemed. He owned and operated a fine farm and was by trade a ship carpenter, a workman of skill and reputation.

843 & 844 - Joseph Brown b.1695; d.1751, both in Suffolk and Dorothy Tuthill b.1694; d.1774 both in Southhold
In some records, Joseph is referred to as Justice Joseph Brown, but I have no more information than that. 
 
855 & 856 -  John Tuthill b.1683; d.1743 and Elizabeth Brown b.1688; d.1750, both John and Elizabeth were born and died in Oyster Ponds
 
871 & 872 - Jacob Vreeland b. 1705; d. 1802 .... and Metje van Ryper b. 1711; d. 1752
See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990. 
 
873 & 874 - Jacobus Kidney b. 1712 Albany, NY; d. 1795 ... and Annaatje Hagedoorn b. 1714; d. ... 
 See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990. 
 
879 & 880 - Hugh Roberts b.1696; d.1776 and Abigail Brown b.1697; d.1776. Both Hugh and Abigail were born and died in Newark, NJ.
 Slave holder
Hugh was one of two slave holders among our ancestors. Like Joseph Bates #385,  he failed to emancipate the enslaved person in his will, but instead gave him a choice of which family member he would live with. Slavery was made illegal in New Jersey in 1804, more than 20 years after Massachusetts (1780)--but still before England (1834). 
Notice that Hugh leaves his son Daniel only an insulting five pounds. In addition to this will, Hugh and Abigail filed an affidavit with the clerk saying that if their son Daniel, after their death, produced any will giving him more than this one does, the clerk was not to believe it.  Daniel and his wife, Mary Campbell, had been indicted and acquitted for murdering a farmhand, but Daniel was convicted for counterfeiting. 

881 & 882  -- Benjamin Coe b.1702, Queens, NY; d.1788, Newark and Abigail Woodward, b.1702, Queens, NY; d.1761, Newtown, NY

883 & 884 -  Robert Wade b.1707 in Elizabeth, NJ; d.1756 NJ and Elizabeth Hamilton b.1705 in Maryland; d.1744in New Jersey.
 Military action
The Wade Family Genealogy, available online, tells an interesting story about Robert. The author, a grumpy Stuart Charles Wade writing in 1900, reported:
Robert Wade was engaged, it is said, as a soldier in garrison at Old Oswego when it was taken by General Montcalm on August 14, 1756; was taken prisoner; and it is alleged was taken to France, where he was imprisoned in Pau or Bayonne Castle and where he died. His widow survived him and died at an age over 90. On the question of family tradition (so dear to the disciples of 'The Mail and Express' school of genealogy), this case of Robert Wade is a fair sample from which one may judge all. 
Family tradition makes him a captain instead of a high private. Commission records in New Jersey archives show no such officer; family tradition also says he was with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, and was subsequently taken prisoner at Old Oswego in 1756, or as some variations read, at Fort William Henry, 1757. The compiler with access to, and a fair acquaintance with the content of one of the finest libraries of colonial Americana in the United States (the late James Lenox's munificent bequest now lamentably debased and distorted into a fifth wheel for the Conglomerate Carnegierium, and mostly used by influential females searching for ancestors who did possess manners), has been unable to find a shred of evidence that any colonial prisoners of war taken by the French were actually transferred to France. Reason and expedience, for exchange purposes would indicate Montreal as far more probable for their place of detention. 
 
(Records show) that no less than 1200 soldiers had died of disease at Oswego between August 1755 and August 1756. The surrender itself included 1,100 men of Shirley's and Pepperell's Regiments, 600 militia of Colonel Schuyler's New Jersey regiment, workmen and sailors, 83 women and girls, two lieutenants in the Navy and two captains of flyboats. While a decision was made to send the prisoners to France, there is no evidence of its being carried into execution. On the contrary, documentary evidence exists of many prisoners being held in Canada and thence exchanged. The fact remains that neither printed history nor probability supports the idea that anyone was sent to France. Peace to his ashes and a pest on all such old wives' tales! 
 
Would someone please pour poor Stuart a glass of sherry and tell him to chill?
 
885 & 886 - Jonah Hinman b.1700 Stratford CT; d.1758 Newark, and Elizabeth Ward b.1708; d.1772, both in Newark. 

887 & 888 - Ebenezer Lyon b.1696 Newark; d.1739 Elizabethtown and Abigail Kingsland b.1706 Elizabethtown; d.1737 New Jersey.

889 & 890 - James Clark, b.1708; d.1772, Elizabethtown NJ and Ann Wood, b.1713 Scotch Plains, NJ; d.1772 Elizabethtown, NJ

891 & 892 - Peter Willcocks b.1691 Queens, NY; d.1768 Union County, NJ and Phebe Badgley b.1698 Queens NJ; d.1776 Union County NJ

893 & 894 - Benjamin Ross b.1697 Elizabethtown NJ; d.1760 NJ and Abigail Alling, b.1701 Essex Co, NJ; d.1771 NJ 

 

Your 9G grandparents

 Born between 1580 and 1685

 

The Pilgrims, a 2015 PBS documentary, part of The American Experience series, is worth watching.

 

1535 & 1536 - Philip James b.1599 Hingham England; d.1638 Hingham, MA and Jane 

Davenport  b.1611 Hingham England; d.1688 Hingham, MA.

Philip and Jane immigrated in 1638 with four children and two servants, William Pitts and Edward Mitchell. Sadly, it looks as if Philip died in August 1638, shortly after arrival. Jane probably did okay; the servants were likely indentured (that is, they had to work for her until they repaid the cost of their passage); Philip's parents and at least one brother immigrated at the same time; and Jane remarried in February 1640.


1537 & 1538 - Thomas Hyland b.1604 England; d.1683 Scituate MA and Deborah Curtis b.1607 England; d.1707 Scituate, MA  (Arr. 1637)

A Hyland family history reports: "Thomas held a considerable estate in and about his native parish (Waldron, Sussex, England) and he was also a grazier and breeder of cattle on a large scale, as his ancestors were before him."
When Thomas left for America, he transferred his estate to his eldest son, who stayed in England. Thomas is listed on the Scituate, MA website as one of the first settlers of that town, as is #3215 Simon Hoyt, one of your 10G grandfathers.

 

1539 & 1540 - John Tower b.1609 Hingham, England; d.1701 Hingham MA and Margaret Ibrook b.1620 Hingham England; d.1700 Hingham MA (Arr. 1635)

In February 1639, John and Margaret were the second couple married by the Rev. Peter Hobart in the new settlement of Hingham, MA.

 

1541 & 1542 - John Harding b.1624 Plymouth; d.1682 Eastham, MA and Hannah Hurst b.1627 England; d.1650 Braintree, MA

 

1543 & 1544 - Joseph Bates b.1628 England; d.1706 Hingham, MA and Esther Hilliard b.1642 Boston, MA; d.1709 Hingham, MA

Joseph arrived with his parents in 1635, at the age of seven. My guess: seven-year-old boys enjoyed the passage more than anyone else.  He grew up to be a brick mason; constable of Hingham from 1675 to 1678; selectman in 1671, 1677, 1684, and 1692; and sexton of the parish in 1673.


1545 & 1546 - Samuel Lincoln b.1622 England; d.1690 Hingham, MA  and Martha Lyford b.1624; d.1693 Hingham, MA


Present for history
This couple is your link to Pres. Abraham Lincoln; they were his 4G grandparents. 
 
Although Samuel came to America with the Hingham pilgrims, he might not have been a member of that congregation, at least while in England. He was a young weaver apprenticed to Francis Lawes (who was a member), and Lincoln came to America with him in 1637. The Lincoln family in England seems to have been comfortable enough, but Samuel was the youngest of several sons. 

As far as I can see, Martha was the first among our ancestors to be born in America, on April 10, 1624. When she met and married Samuel, she was living as Edmund Hobart's stepdaughter because of her father's scandal.

 

1547 & 1548 - Thomas Clapp b.1608 England; d.1684 Scituate, MA and Jane Martin b.1618 England; d.1656 Scituate, MA  Arrived 1633

Regular-people color

One of the older published family histories, from the 1870s, has this story, which shows how picky the Puritans were about their religious practices--although anyone who has been involved in church organization can probably empathize with poor Grandpa Thomas. (Notice the controversy lasted 34 years!!!) The book itself is too old and faded, so I'll transcribe:

Thomas was Deacon of the Church in Scituate and was warmly engaged in a theological controversy respecting the form of baptism, which commenced about 1641, with the Rev. Charles Chauncey, who came to New England in 1638. 

The Reverend Chauncey preached in Plymouth for about three years and would have remained there but for his holding some peculiar views, to which the church in Plymouth could not subscribe. He believed that the Lord's Supper ought to be administered in the evening and every Lord's day; and that baptism ought to be only by plunging the whole body under water, whether in case of children or adults. He then came to Scituate and remained about thirteen years, his ministry during the whole time being a scene of constant agitation. 

About five years after its commencement, as no terms of agreement could be decided upon, nearly half the church and society withdrew and formed another church. In 1654 Chauncey contemplated returning to England, when he received an invitation to the office of President of Harvard College, with the stipend of 100 pounds per annum, and with the understanding that he forebear to disseminate or publish any tenets concerning immersion in baptism, and celebration of the Lord's Supper at evening. He agreed to this and was inducted to that office in November 1654. 

The religious controversy in Scituate, begun under his ministry that resulted in the dismemberment of the church, was resolved by a letter signed by Thomas Clapp and two others in 1675, on behalf of the First Church, which signified an acceptance from the other church of a kindly offer of reconciliation.  

 

1549 & 1550 - Thomas Gill b.1616 England; d.1706 Hingham, MA and Hannah Otis b.1618 England; d.1676 Hingham, MA

These two immigrated separately and married in 1642 in Hingham. Thomas and Hannah's father are two of the founders of Hingham, MA.

 

1551 & 1552 - Jeremiah Beal (elder) b.1631 England; d.1716 Hingham and Sarah Ripley b.1627 England; d.1715 Hingham, MA

Modern day ghost!
A family history written in 1980 reports:
Jeremiah Beal was known as 'Lieutenant' having been commissioned to that rank in the Hingham Train Band May 20, 1683. He was constable in 1672, a Selectman in 1671, and a Representative to the General Court in 1691, 1692, and 1701. He was a blacksmith and a cabinet maker and had a cabinet shop in the nearby town of Cohasset. In 1690 he built a house for his son John on East Street near Hull Street and in later years lived there with his son and family. The house still exists although it has undergone many alterations and additions. And Jeremiah still lives there as a ghost. The present owners of the house have from time to time felt his presence as have the owners of the house that is now on the land where his cabinet shop once stood. 
 
That ghost detail is unique to Jeremiah among our ancestors, but that amount of participation in civic responsibilities is not. When I first started looking at our individual Puritan forebears, I would make a note of public offices held every time I saw it, but gave up after three or four. Today we tell ourselves that democracy is not a spectator sport, but these people really lived it. Even troublemakers (see #1587, Robert Bartlett) could not avoid  holding at least one local or church office.


1553 & 1554 - Andrew Lane b.1610 England; d.1675 Hingham, MA and Tryphena Eames b.1612 England; d.1707 Hingham, MA    Arrived in 1635


1567 & 1568 - Richard Lyman b.1580, Canterbury, England; d.1640 Hartford, CT and Sarah Osborne  b.1584, England; d.1642, Hartford, CT

 New England: The Great Migration is a three-volume set of detailed profiles of immigrant individuals and families of that 1620-1635. It was published in 1995, and it's not clear where the author got all his information; in the following excerpt, he's clearly quoting from some period source: 

Richard Lyman was admitted to the Roxbury church as member #11. He came to New England in the 9th month 1631, on the ship Bristol. He brought children: Phillis, Richard, Sarah, John, and another. He settled first in Charleston, where he first became a freeman. He was an ancient Christian, but weak, yet after some time of trial and quickening he joined the church. When the great removal was made to Connecticut in 1635 he also went and underwent much affliction, for going toward winter, his cattle were lost in the driving, and some never found again, and the winter being cold and ill provided, he was sick and melancholy, yet after he had some revivings through God's mercy, and died in the year 1640.

 

Richard is one of Rev. Hookers's Company--story at this link. His will is the first filed in Hartford's records.


1569 & 1570 John Plumb b.1594 in England; d.1648 in New Haven and Dorothy Chaplin, b.1596 in England; d.1660 in New Haven

Present for history (military action)

 

 

The story of the Pequot War is tragic and troubling. My own sense is that it was inevitable (given homo sapiens' flaws and limitations), but that doesn't make it any less appalling. 

 

Here's a short version, but I encourage you to read more in other sources. The war marked a turning point in European/Native relations. 

 


By the mid 1630s, both Dutch and English were expanding in to the Connecticut River Valley, both as traders and as settlers. Both 
Natives and Europeans engaged in much mutual accommodation, with mutual benefits.  However, both Natives and Europeans had among them hotheads and men who preferred force over any other way of resolving conflict. And conflicts did arise, both as a result of genuine competing interests, and as a result of mistakes and misunderstandings that 'honor' escalated into retribution. 

 

By the spring of 1637, the leaders of the Connecticut Colony had had it with sporadic destruction of homes and crops, broken agreements, and occasional killings. The leaders of the Pequot tribe felt exactly the same, for the same reasons. Both knew serious conflict was soon inevitable, and both started to prepare for war. Both sought allies among the other Native tribes in the area--the Mohegan, Narragansett, and Niantic. Because the Pequot Tribe had a long history of conflict with the other tribes, they found no allies. In fact, the other tribes threw their support to the English. 

 

During the first two weeks in May 1637, in preparation for battle, Captains John Mason and John Underhill gathered more than 100 men from Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor, while Mohegan leaders Uncas and Wequash gathered 70, and Narraganset and Niantic leaders assembled around 200.  

 

Mason hired your 9G grandfather John Plumb and his boat, along with probably 3-4 other boats, to transport the combined forces.

 

Late on May 25, 1637, the boats sailed from Fort Saybrook toward Narragansett Bay with the assembled militia. The troops disembarked out of sight of the village and moved inland to reach the Pequot village just before dawn on May 26. When their surprise assault met fierce resistance, Mason ordered the fort set ablaze. As the fire raged, men, women, and children were trapped in the fire or killed while attempting to flee through the only two doors in the palisade.  


I transcribed the following from the Plumb Family Album, printed in 1893--probably the height of historical whitewashing (no serious history says that the Pequot warriors were drunk; if they had been, Mason would have had no reason to order the village burned): 

 

 John Plum was among the first settlers and proprietors of Wethersfield, CT in 1635. He sold his little property in Ridgewell, England in early 1635 and bought, if he had not previously owned, a ship and immigrated to Wethersfield in his own vessel, as he was from the moment of his arrival a ship owner there and traded up and down the river with the Indians.

 

It is also probable that it was his ship that was used in 1637 to carry the 77 men down the river and around to Narragansett Bay from which the march was made to Pequot Hill --now in Groton-- to surprise the Indians. The ship returned after landing the men at Narragansett to the mouth of the Connecticut river in full view of the Pequots. The Pequots supposed the men had given up the war and gone home, so they themselves had a drunken spree that night and were taken by surprise by the English attack in the morning just at daybreak. The Pequots were totally defeated and the remnant driven west and either killed or captured in the Fairfield Swamp.
 

In the following weeks, the few remaining Pequots were killed or captured and sent into slavery in the Caribbean or with other tribes. The tribe ceased to exist; it was obliterated. The ferocity of the attack on the Pequot non-combatants surely startled the Native tribes, although many of their men participated in the heat of the moment. The fact that the English felt the need to lie about it shows that they, too, felt a line had been crossed. Nevertheless, the Mystic Massacre did not become the only time superior European military tools and techniques were turned on non-combatants--just the first. 

 

1571 & 1572 Rudophus Sheldon b.1605 in England; d.1651 at sea and Barbara Stone b.1606 in England; d.1651 at sea.

These are two of three ancestors I saw who died at sea without even making it to America. They are our ancestors because their son, #785 Isaac Sheldon, survived the passage. I see no explanation in the record; I assume it was illness of some sort.  The third death at sea was #13355, John Larkin, in 1629.
 
I'll give them credit for being immigrants; they tried. 

 

   

1573 & 1574 - Thomas Woodford b.1607 in England; d.1667 in Northampton, MA and Mary Blott b.1609 in England; d.1660 Boston. 

Arrival records indicate that Thomas arrived as a servant in 1630, but his experience seems typical: Within six months, he had joined the Puritans' church; and within a year he was married and  a voting 'freeman' in the community. By 1639, he was a landowner. Thomas is one of Rev. Hookers's Company--story at this link
 
Thomas' will written in the early 1660s leaves substantial property and land--and books--to their three daughters. (I love how these colonial wills show that personal libraries were cherished.)


1575 & 1576 - Samuel Allen b.1597 in Somerset, England; d.1669 in Braintree, MA and Anne Whitmore b.1612 Northampton England d.1641 Braintree    

You have four Allen/Allyn ancestors, at least, and the same problem prevents me saying much with confidence about any of them:

This little clip is from a town history of Windsor, CT, which got all its Allens from around Boston or Charleston, where the problem is even worse.
 

1579 & 1580 - Henry Rust, b.1613 Hingham England, d.1684 Boston, MA, and Hannah Appleton, b.1615 Hingham England, d.1674, Boston, MA

 

Henry arrived 1633; I cannot find anything about when Hannah and her parents arrived. 

Henry was among the eight men who first settled Hingham, but the family relocated to Boston around 1645. 
 

In 1645, Boston was still limited to it colonial core--the Shawmut Peninsula, or what is now downtown, the north end and Beacon Hill.  The Rust family probably rented from 1645 to 1652, but then purchased land at the northwest corner of Sumner & Hawley Streets, just east of Boston Common. After Henry's death, the land was purchased by the Trinity Church, and they built their first church there. Aftet it was destroyed in the Boston fire of 1872, they built a new church in Copley Square, which still stands. 

1581 & 1582 - William Clark b.1609 England, d.1696, Northampton, MA and Sarah Strong b. unk in England; d.1675 in Northampton

 

Community leader

William was a busy guy:

... and ...

William is one of Rev. Hookers's Company--story at this link.

 

 

1583 & 1584 - Roger Clapp b.1609 England, d.1691 Boston and Joanna Ford b.1617 England; d.1695 in Boston

 

Community leader

 Now, LISTEN UP: Grandpa Roger has a message for you personally, directly from him and in his own words. He wrote you a long letter in the form of his memoirs. You can probably still buy a copy (google Memoirs of Roger Clapp), or read the Library of Congress copy online. Grandpa Roger took pen in hand because:

I thought it good, my dear children, to leave you with some account of God’s remarkable providences to me, in bringing me to this land and placing me here among his dear servants, and in his house, who am most unworthy of the least of his mercies. The Scripture requires us to tell God’s wondrous works to our children, that they may tell them to their children, that God may have the glory through out all ages.

Roger wrote in a letter to his descendants (including you):

“I had never heard of New England until I heard of many good people who were going there, and that Mr. Warham was planning to go also. I made my request to my father and God so inclined he heart that he did not tell me no. For now God sent the Rev. Maverick, who lived 40 miles away, a man I never saw before. But he had heard of me, came to my father’s house, and my father agreed that I should go with him and come under his care. So God brought me out of Plymouth (England) the 20th of March in the year 1630, and landed me in health at Nantasket on the 30th of May, 1930, I then being 21 years old.”

Roger settled in Dorchester, where he married Joanna Ford in 1633. She was a daughter of Thomas Ford (#3109). He built a house there, where one of his descendants built a larger home in 1767, at 199 Boston Street. Both houses are now owned by the Dorchester Historical Society and open for tours two afternoons per month.

Like many of the earliest arrivals, Clapp held various local offices and served in the colonial legislature, the General Court. Also like many early settlers, he became reasonably well-to-do during his life and left large tracts of land in his will to his many children.

His military career was more notable than most other early settlers. To be fair, it was not particularly action-filled, because King Phillips War did not break out until 1675. Nevertheless, Dorchester formed a militia in which Clapp served many years as lieutenant and then as captain. During this time, the Dorchester militia was based at the Castle Island fort, which your ancestor Newberry had helped to build. In 1650, Clapp was appointed as the “Captain of the Castle,” the commanding officer of the fort. As such, he was responsible for garrisoning the fort; maintaining defenses; overseeing supplies and armaments; and coordinating response to threats by sea.

In 1646, Clapp had been appointed to the Artillery Company of Massachusetts, the volunteer militia company that was in charge of training the officers of all the local militia companies across Massachusetts. That organization still exists as the "Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts", though it no longer trains militia. It is the oldest chartered military organization in North America and the third oldest chartered military organization in the world. It now works to preserve Massachusetts' historic and patriotic traditions; serves as honor guard to the governor of Massachusetts; and has its headquarters in Faneuil Hall in Boston.

Clapp retired in 1686 and died in 1690. He is buried in King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston; records indicate the gravesite is still marked.

Faneuil Hall wasn't built until 51 years after Roger died, so his Boston didn't look
like this. This building is where the HQ of his artillery company is now located.


1585 & 1586 - Major Benjamin Newberry b.1627 England; d.1689 Hartford CT and Mary Allyn, b. in England; d.1689 Windsor, CT
 Military action
Benjamin's mother had died in England, and his father brought him and his siblings to Massachusetts from England in 1634. However, his father (#3171, Thomas Newberry) died shortly after, leaving Benjamin an orphan at age 9. His stepmother remarried to a leading pastor in Windsor, CT, who raised him and ensured that Benjamin and his siblings were able to take possession of their father's substantial estate. 
 
With this bad/good start to life, Benjamin lived well, becoming a large landowner and farmer, and continuously holding public offices from the age of 32 until his death at 62. 
 
For more detail about his military experience, including the full text of a report he filed from the field as he commanded 80 men in defense of Northampton, MA, during King Phillip's War in 1676, see page 50 in the Newberry Genealogy: Ancestors and Descendants of Thomas Newberry.  

1587 & 1588 -   Robert Bartlett b.1612 in England; d.1767 in Northampton, Plymouth  and Anne Warringer, b.1616 England; d.1676 Northampton.

 Pioneer conflict
They arrived in 1632 on the Lyon, and Robert's name is carved onto the Founders Monument in Hartford, CT.  However, Robert seems to have chafed a bit at the community's expected standards of conduct. In 1638, “for cursing and swearing, he was censured to have his tongue put in a cleft stick."  
 
The following year, “for his gross misdemeanor in slandering Mrs. Mary Fenwicke, is to stand on the pillory during the lecture, then to be whipped and fined five pounds and half year’s imprisonment. Then in 1646, he must have been imprisoned again, because “for giving ill counsel to the prisoners, is to be whipped.”  
 
In 1676, at the age of 74, he was killed by Indians in King Phillip's War, along with Thomas Holton, brother of your 8G grandmother, Rachel Holton Strong (your 8G granduncle).
Note to anyone doing further research into our family tree: There was another Robert Bartlett who arrived a bit earlier to America than our guy. The earlier Robert married Mary Warren, daughter of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren. Most of the family trees on Ancestry.com identify our Robert as the Robert who married the Mayflower daughter (which would make the creators of those trees Mayflower descendants, which is why they did not double-check their work). Don't get distracted. If you look at the primary sources, our guy is NOT the one who married into a Mayflower family.


1589 & 1590 - Joseph Baldwin b.1609 in England, d.1684 Northampton and Hannah Whitlock b.1616 in England, d.1661 in New Haven, CT.  Arr. 1639

 

1593 & 1594 - William Henry Holton b.1611 England; d.1691 Northampton and Mary Agnes Winche b.1612 England; d.1691 Northampton

 

Community leader

 The "General Court" was the colony's legislature.  

 
Mary Agnes arrived in America in 1634, at age 15. She was not traveling with her parents, but was with a family group of her mother's maiden name. My guess: it was her uncle's family (mother's brother).
 

1599 & 1600 - Hugh Wells b.1590 England, d.1643 Hadley, MA and Frances Belcher b.1598 England; d.1678 Hadley, MA  They arrived in 1635.

 

Present for history

Robert Harris' Act of Oblivion (2022) is a richly evocative historical novel that will bring our ancestors' world alive for you. It focuses on the late aftermath of the English civil war as it played out in America. The novel recounts the experiences of William Goffe and Edward Whalley, fugitives from the restored King's justice, who were sheltered by the people of Hadley, Massachusetts. 

 

In particular, it spins a detailed account of an attack on Hadley when the legendary Angel of Hadley saved the town.  (If that link is dead; google "Angel of Hadley" or read the book). Modern historians disagree over whether this attack actually happened, but Increase Mather, a chronicler of the time, reported it. 

 

If it did happen, you had ancestors there. In addition to the Widow Wells, your ancestors #799, 800; #815, 816; #1600; #1631, #1632, #1633, and #1634 were living in Hadley at the time. 

 

1601 & 1602 - William Beardsley b. 1601 England; d. 1661 Stratford, CT and Mary Ann Harvey b. 1605 England, d. 1661 Stratford, CT  Both arrived in 1635.

 

Community leader 

 

1605 & 1606 - Thomas Walton Ford b.1590 England; d.1676 Northampton MA and Elizabeth Charde b.1586 England, d.1643 Windsor, CT
Thomas and Elizabeth arrived in 1630. They are three times your ancestors. They occupy spaces #1605 & 1606, #3169 & 3170; and #3185 & 3186 on your family tree. (Descendants of their various children found and married each other.)

By 1623, Thomas was a member of Holy Trinity Church in Dorchester, England, the epicenter of planning for the Massachusetts Bay Colony under Rev. John White, a leading Puritan minister. Thomas was recorded as present at a key Puritan organizing meeting on October 15 1629, which made the departure plans for New England.

They arrived in early 1630 on the Mary and John, and were among the founders of Dorchester, Massachusetts, now a neighborhood in Boston. Thomas was admitted as a freeman in Dorchester on May 18, 1631, making him eligible to vote and hold town office. He went on to hold many of the civic offices typical of Puritan settlers including selectman, fence-viewer, rate collector, and fort-builder.

In 1637, they relocated with many fellow Dorchester residents to establish Windsor, Connecticut; Thomas was one of four purchasers of tribal land to create the town. He represented Windsor in the Connecticut General Court from 1637 to 1641 and again in 1654; served on livestock and grand jury committees. After Elizabeth died in 1643, he remarried.

Around 1644/45, Thomas opened an "ordinary" (tavern/inn) in the nearby town of Hartford, in the former house of his third wife’s deceased first husband, Thomas Scott, one of the founders of Hartford. The tavern was noted in John Winthrop Jr.’s diary: “reached the Inn of Thomas Ford at Hartford” on 17 November 1645.

He sold that business in 1652; acquired land in Northampton (as early as 1660); and relocated there around 1670 to join his adult children already living nearby.

He lived died in November 1676 and is buried in Bridge Street Cemetery.

1607 & 1608 - Nicholas Hoyt b.1620 England; d.1655 Windsor CT and Susanna b.1626 probably England; d.1655 Windsor CT 

As young as she was, Nicholas was Susannah's second husband. In an record associated with Nicholas, she appears as Susanna Joyce, but that was her married name. We don't know her maiden name and so cannot identify her parents or her date of arrival. 

 Nicholas and Susanna died within days of each other in July 1655, along with a four-month-old son. Nicholas was 35 and Susanna 29. Their three other sons, including our ancestor David, who was then four, appear to have been taken in by neighbors or the family of Susanna's first husband.

In mid-17th century New England, disease outbreaks were common in summer, and 1655 is noted in some New England town records as a “great sickness” year in Connecticut River Valley settlements. The Hoyts' cause of death was not recorded, but others in Windsor were noted to be suffering from the ‘bloody flux,’ as dysentery was known then. 
 
1611 & 1612 - Alexander Edwards b.1621 in Wales; d.1690 Northampton, MA and Sarah Baldwin b.1621 England; d.1690 Northampton
If anyone wants to research our ancestors in Great Britain, Alexander's write-up in "Colonial Families of the United States of America, Volume III" indicates that someone in the Edwards family has already traced the family back 1,110 years:
 
1613 & 1614 - Luke Atkinson b.1626 England; d.1667 Middlesex CT and Mary Platt b.1629 England; d.1669 Middlesex CT
Luke arrived in 1638 and settled in New Haven. Mary immigrated the same year with her first husband, who died shortly after arrival.

1615 & 1616 - Thomas Graves b.1585 England; d.1651 Hatfield and Sarah Whiting b.1595 England, d.1666 Hatfield. 
Thomas  is the patriarch whose story begins on page 1 of this entertaining family history. The history recounts the family's move from Hartford CT to Hatfield MA as part of a dispute within a congregation over baptism rituals, which according to another book was a leading cause of the creation of new settlements in colonial New England.

1617 & 1618 - Richard Church b.1610 England; d.1667 Hadley and Anna Marsh b.1610 England; d.1674 Hatfield MA

The Church family has a history dating back to the 1300s in England as men who held professional jobs that required education--merchant, lawyer, Burgess in Parliament; mayor, etc. But Richard shows up as a carpenter when he received his first land grant in Plymouth Colony in 1632.

Okay, well, carpenter was probably as valuable a profession as there was in early Massachusetts. He was taking part in governance affairs by 1634.  His skills made him valuable in new settlements like Hingham (1640s) and Hadley (1659), where he later moved and was recorded receiving payment for both civic structures and residences. One historian noted that his career reflects the movement of skilled tradesmen critical to building the expanding English settlements in New England.

Unfortunately, none of his handiwork survives today, that we know of. Pioneer buildings of the early 1600s were not built to last centuries; the colonists needed fast and functional. In Plymouth Colony, nothing built before the late 1600s remains.

Anna was Richard’s second wife; his first might have been Mayflower passenger Elizabeth Warren, but we’re descended from Anna. 

This 19th century family history guessed wrong about his arrival date; he'd been granted land in Plymouth in 1632.


1623 & 1624 - Nathaniel Dickinson b.1605 England; d.1676 Hadley, MA and Anna Gull
 Nathaniel's and Anna's descendants have an association that apparently has an annual reunion somewhere in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts.
 
Community leader
Nat and Anna arrived in America in 1636 or 1637, and settled in Wethersfield, Connecticut. He became one of the leaders in the colony. He was town clerk in 1645 and representative to the General Court in 1646 and 1647.  They moved to Hadley, Massachusetts in 1659, as part of a schism in the church in Wethersfield. In Hadley, he was made deacon of the church and the town's first recorder. Later, he was selectman; assessor; and town magistrate. He was also a member of the Hampshire Troop (I'm not sure what that was; probably some town militia or guard) and was on the first board of trustees of Hopkins Academy (now a public school). 

Military action
They lost several sons, including your 8G grandfather #811 Joseph Dickinson to the French and Indian Wars. I've highlighted our direct ancestors in orange:
 
1625 & 1626 - Thomas Bressey  (or Bracy and other spellings) b.1601 England; d.1646 Hartford and Phebe Bisbey d. Hartford
Thomas had been a "linen draper" (I have no idea), according to records of the London Fishmonger's Guild. He and Phebe were in New Haven by 1638, when he first appears on a land deed there. His occupation in Connecticut was fishmonger. 
 
1627 & 1628 - John White b.1606 in England; d.1683 Hartford and Mary Anne Levett b.1601 England; d.1666 Hartford
Community leader
John White and Mary Anne arrived on the Lyon in 1632 and settled in Newtowne (now Cambridge) where he was admitted a freeman in March 1633.
John White was a leader among a group known in colonial times as "Reverend Hooker's company." Their story is important enough to merit its own blog post, rather than being confined to this little paragraph about John and Mary Ann. Here's a brief bio for John:
As one of the first settlers of Newtowne, John is notable. The original settlers designated an area of land for homesteads and a college. John was granted and held multiple parcels—including a dwelling in Cow Yard Row, roughly 30 acres of land. The college founded there in 1638 was Harvard; Cow Yard Row is now called Harvard Yard; and Widener Library is reported to sit on the homestead cleard by John White. 
 
In 1670, White appears to have been called back to Hartford to help settle another dispute within the church there, where he eventually died.
 
 
1629 & 1630 - John James Crow b.1606 England; d.1685 Hartford and Elizabeth Susannah Goodwin b.1617 England; d.1717 Hartford
 
1631 & 1632 - John Warner b.1615 England; d.1692 Hadley and Priscilla Symonds b.1620 England; d.1688 Hadley
 
Community leader, pioneer conflict
John is one of Rev. Hookers's Company--story at this link.  I've edited a lot out of this entry from a late 19th-century regional history book. Only the words within quotation marks are verbatim as in the original:  
 
In 1659, John Warner joined with other inhabitants of Ipswich in petitioning the General Court for a grant of land at Quabaug, which is now Brookfield, MA. In May 1660, they were granted six square miles near Quaboag Ponds, provided they had twenty families and an able minister residing there within three years.

John Warner and three other men began that summer the work of marking off home lots and erecting houses. However, their work was “effectually frustrated by the tedious and unsatisfactory negotiations carried on by the English authorities with Uncas, which lasted through the year. The threatening state of Indian affairs discouraged the planters, who made no further attempt at settlement during the term of the initial grant." They petitioned for, and were granted, an extension to fulfill the terms of their land grant.

(Note: I think I understand the account to say that the Indians then granted a deed to Ensign Thomas Cooper in 1665, who in turn assigned it to Warner and two other men.) 

In the spring of 1665, Warner and his son Samuel, John Ayres, Thomas Parsons, and Thomas Wilson put up at least two frame houses and planted some corn. John is said to have built the first house and is therefore recognized as the “father of Brookfield.” 

In October 1673, the General Court agreed to incorporate the settlement as a township, and John and two other men were named as the town trustees. (I understand the account to indicate that this is when Quaboag became Brookfield.)

Although “the numerous tribes of Indians inhabiting the lands adjacent to the new settlements in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had in the main been or pretended to be on friendly terms with the settlers, it became apparent in 1674, that they were getting uneasy over the expansion of the whites. This fact had led Phillip, son and successor of Massasoit, to incite the various tribes to revenge against the encroachment of the settlers, an in the summer of 1675, open warfare broke out and started King Phillip’s War"

On July 28, 1675, Captains Thomas Wheeler and Edward Hutchinson marched with 20 men from Cambridge into Nipmuck country, arriving on Sunday, August 1 in Brookfield, intending to protect that settlement. They sent four men to request a conference with the Indians. The Indians agreed to meet them the next morning on a plain about three miles from Brookfield. The next morning, Wheeler went with his men and three Brookfield men out to meet the Indians, but they were ambushed and eight men, including all three of the local men, were killed.

Wheeler, who was wounded, and his men then quickly retreated back into Brookfield and “betook themselves in the largest and strongest house there, that of John Ayres, where they fortified themselves as best they could. Eighty-two people were crowded in the house: Wheeler, Hutchinson, 13 able soldiers, 6 wounded soldiers, 13 able male citizens, and 50 women and children. They were besieged for three days and nights by about 300 Indians, who kept up a continuous firing at the house and made several attempts to set it afire.

On the afternoon of August 4, the Indians learned that reinforcements were nearing and lifted the siege. Later that afternoon, 46 militia men arrived and rescued the soldiers and townspeople. The soldiers and inhabitants stayed in the area until August 14, when they began to disperse, accompanied by bands of soldiers for protection. Brookfield was left deserted for the next 10 years. 
 
1633 & 1634 - Richard Montague b.1614 in England; d.1681 Hadley and Abigail Downing b.1617 England; d.1694 Hadley
 
Richard is a puzzle; his family biographers thinks he might have arrived in America very early and wandered around, including to Virginia and Maine. He brother is known to have been in Virginia by 1621. Whatever; he settled in Massachusetts sometime in the early 1630s and, in 1635 or 1636, had Abigail imported, accompanied by her uncle, to marry him. Apparently, the families were close in England. 

Abigail could be a gold mine of royal, noble, and significant connections, if anyone wants to trace her line back into European history. Other family trees saved to Ancestry.com claim that her ancestors trace back to William the Conqueror and run through several English kings. Many of her male relatives appear to have been Cambridge graduates, and Downing Street in London is named for a member of the family.
 
But it's messy: I could not even positively identify Abigail's father. He's one of two possible people, so it doesn't really break any solid link to her ancestors--it's a question of who is her father or uncle or cousin. In some records, her father is identified only as Rev. Dr. Joseph Downing, someone you would think would have left some other trace of himself in the records, but no. Some records identify Rev. Emmanuel Downing, who was quite prominent, as Abigail's father, but I don't see it. In his letters, he refers several times to his 'cousin Abigail', and I can't see that he has any record of a daughter named Abigail. 
 
Rev. Emmanuel was not a good guy; I'd just as soon not claim him as a direct forebear. In his letters back to England, he explicitly promoted the idea of what we would now call genocide. On the other hand, Rev. Emmanuel's father or grandfather (or uncle?), Calybute, was a prominent and scholarly academic theologian and is reported to have been involved with the committee that translated the King James Bible. This family was for real scholarly and significant, and I'd love it if someone can sort it out.
 
1635 & 1636 - Nathaniel Phelps b.1624 England; d.1702 Northampton and Elizabeth Copley b.1629 England, d.1712 Northampton
 
1639 & 1640 - Samuel Wright b.1606 in  England, d.1664 Northampton and Margaret Stratton b.1611 England; d.1681 Northampton
In addition to Abigail Downing (#1634, above), Samuel looks as if he would be a great starting point for anyone wanting to look back into 16th- and 17th Century England for noteworthy ancestors. 
 
 Ancestry.com is suggesting to me that his parents were Sir Nathaniel Wright and Lady Lydia James, of London, and a very detailed family history book (readable through Ancestry.com, but not free otherwise) indicates that the Wright family was a peerage; that Nathaniel was a member and officer of the House of Lords; and that the family was deeply involved as Parliamentarians in the conflict between Parliament and King Charles. Problem is, the book seems to be an English one, with a system of numbering ancestors that is unlike those used in the American family histories. 
 
Finally, I can see that Cambridge University has a record of Samuel Wright (probably graduation) but I cannot see it because I let my international Ancestry.com access expire.
 
Samuel and Margaret immigrated separately (they married in Massachusetts in 1627), but Samuel may have been a very early immigrant: his business partner was a William Wright who arrived in 1621.  (For reference, the Mayflower landed in November 1620.)

1641 & 1642 William Jess b.1615 England; d.1646 Hartford, CT and Susanna Bates b.1622 England; d.1655 Hartford, CT

1645 & 1646 - William Janes b.1610 England; d.1690 Northampton, MA and Hannah Bascom b.1630; d.1681 Northampton, MA
Hannah arrived in 1634 as a child with her parents; William arrived in 1627, apparently with his first wife. 

1651 & 1652 John Hunt b. 1604 England; d. 1661 Northampton, MA and Mary Webster b. 1623 England; d. 1687 Northampton
These two married in England in 1635, and their first child was born there in 1637. However,  their arrival date in America is unclear; Mary's father arrived in 1634 and was governor of Connecticut by 1656.

1653 & 1654 - Thomas Hosmer b.1604 England; d.1687 Northampton, MA and Frances Bushnell b.1602 England; c.1675 Hartford, CT
Thomas served on the board of selectmen, but did not show up when called for jury duty in 1641, so he was fined ₤1. To his credit, his will left his kids not just five parcels of land, buildings, and money, but also many books, and he also left money for a "free school in Hartford."  
 
1663 & 1664 - Nathaniel Bellows b.1676 Concord, MA; d. after 1759 and Dorcas Rose b.1683 Stonington CT; d. after 1736
Personal conduct
Nathaniel's younger sister Mary has an interesting story, in which he plays a small role. Some records show their parents (#3327 and 3328) with 10 children, the youngest named Benjamin. However, a deeper examination of the records indicates that Benjamin was Mary's illegitimate son, claimed by her parents as their own. However, five years after the child's birth, Mary was summoned to court for fornication, along with a man named Isaac Woods. She didn't show up in court, and when the constable went to the Bellows home to retrieve her, her mother said she hadn't been there in a week and didn't know where she was. The constable told the court that she'd likely been 'spirited away' by her brothers, and they were then called to court. That's where the legal records end; we don't know what happened. 

1667 & 1668 Richard Williams b.1658 Wales; d.1733 Groton, CT and Sarah Wheeler b.1666 Lancaster, MA; d.1729 Concord, MA
Richard arrived with his parents in 1662, one of the later arrivals among your ancestors on the Puritan branch of your tree. I really don't know why anyone immigrated after 1640; they were not part of the Great Migration.
 
1669 & 1670 - John Bailey b.1661 New London CT; d.1727 Haddon CT & Elizabeth Smith b.1664; d.1722 both in New London, CT

1679 & 1680 - John Youngs b.1654; d. 1685 and Mary Wells b.1661; d.1729 Both John and Mary were born and died in Southold, NY (Long Island)
John appears in all the records with the title 'Captain', but I cannot see any military records for him. A ship's captain, maybe? He died fairly young--31 years old, but I cannot see how. 

1681 & 1682 - John Robert Frink b.1639 England; d.1718 Stonington, CT and Grace Stephens b.1634 England; d.1717 Stonington, CT
Not much is more frustrating in Ancestry.com than when someone saves a record to your ancestor to tell you he is listed in the book of "Early Connecticut Artists and Craftsmen", but does not tell you what sort of artist or craftsman he was. 
 
1683 & 1684 - Moses Cleveland b.1651 Woburn, MA; d.1717 Southold, Long Island  and Ruth Norton, b.1654 Weymouth, MA; d.1717 Southold, Long Island
Military action
Moses and his brother Samuel served in King Phillips War (1675-76); Moses was wounded and sent home. In August 1676, he wrote to the secretary of the Commonwealth:

Samuel was sent home.
 
1685 & 1686 - Benjamin Moore b.1676; d.1728 and Abigail Horton b.1746; d.1746.
Both Benjamin and Abigail were born and died in Southold, Long Island. Benjamin was a tailor.
 
1687 & 1688 - Walter Brown b.1661 Southold, Long Island; d.1711 Oyster Pond, Long Island and Jane Conklin b.1671 Easthampton, MA; d.1725 Oyster Pond, Long Island  

1689 & 1690 John Tuthill b. Feb. 14, 1658; d. Nov. 21 1754, both in Oyster Ponds, LI, and Mehitable Wells b. Aug. 26, 1666; d. Aug 26, 1742, both in Suffolk Co, LI
Regular-people color
John was familiarly known as "Chalker John," because he always carried chalk in his pocket and "figured on boards or shingles." 
 
1743 & 1744 - Jacob Vreeland b. 1678; d.  .... and Annetje Toers b. 1683; d. ...
See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990. 
 
1745 & 1746 - Jan Coerten van Rypen b. 1675; d. ... and unknown wife
See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990. 
 
1747 & 1748 - John Kidney b. 1673 Barbados d. 1722 Albany, NY and unknown wife
 See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990. 
 
1769 & 1770 - John Hamilton b.1675; d.1709 and Elizabeth Harrison b.1685; d.1718. Both John and Elizabeth were born and died in Maryland. 
These two are unique among this group, in that they lived in Maryland. Among the things I don't yet know about colonial American history: Why any English Protestants emigrated to Maryland (it was the Catholic colony); and how travel within the colonies created a situation in which their daughter met and married a New Jersey Protestant. I saw no one else from Maryland in this whole project.
 
 Your 10G grandparents
 Born between 1566 and 1628
 
3071 & 3072 - Francis Vrini James b.1570 England; d.1647 Hingham MA and Elizabeth Penelope Hyland b.1566 England; d.1660 Hingham, MA Both arrived 1638
Francis has an odd notation in Rev. Hobart's journal of births, baptisms and deaths, for May 1647 (He died that December, seven months later.) This is the only entry on the page that is not a birth, baptism, or death.

3077 & 3078 - Richard Curtis  b.1580 England; d.1639 Wethersfield, MA (Arr. 1638) and unknwn wife.
 
3079 & 3080 - Robert Tower and his wife Dorothy Damon remained in England, but I'll mention him here because I notice he was another Cambridge graduate. I read that university was a hotbed of Puritanism, which may be why it shows up with such frequency in our family tree.

3081 & 3082 - Richard Ibrook  b.1583 England; d.1651 Hingham MA and Margaret Clark b.1589 England; d.1664 Hingham MA
Community leader; pioneer conflict
These two immigrated in 1635 with three daughters. The house they built was strong enough to serve as a refuge for their own family and several others during King Phillip's War in 1675. In 1647, an island in the harbor was granted to Richard. 
At age 58, Richard was, "for tempting two maids to uncleanness, fined 5 pounds to the country and 20 schillings apiece to the two maids, Rebecca Phippen and Mary Marsh."
 
3083 & 3084 - Joseph Harding b.1599 England; d.1630 Plymouth MA and Martha Doane b.1600 England; d.1633 Plymouth
This is a very poorly documented couple whose identity is pretty much just guessed by genealogists. Someone existed, because John Harding's birth (#1539) in 1624 in Plymouth was documented. Whoever his parents were, they were very early arrivals because the entire population of Plymouth Colony in 1624 was less than 200 people; the Mayflower had arrived only four years earlier. 

3085 & 3086 - James Jacobus Hurst b.1582 England; d.1657 Plymouth and Gartend Bennister  b.1585 Amsterdam, Netherlands; d.1670 Plymouth.
Present for history

Before coming to America, William Brewster's band of Puritans tried living in the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam in 1608-1609, and then in Leiden.  Gartend was born in Amsterdam in 1585--before the English Puritans arrived, so she was Dutch. She and James were married during the short time the Puritans were in Amsterdam. I'm guessing James fell for a local girl--which is one of the reasons the Puritans decided to give up on the Netherlands and head to America. 

The Hursts were not the last of the Leiden group to arrive in the Plymouth Colony. They arrived in 1629 or 1630, while the last stragglers came in the mid-1630s. But he did well for himself, building and operating the first tannery in New England. He had been a weaver in Europe, but that occupation was not feasible in early colonial America, due to both shortage of fiber and machinery, so his change of occupation was common for former weavers.

 Gartend may have gone by Catherine.

 
3087 & 3088 - Clement Bates b.1595 England; d.1671 Hingham, MA and Anna Dalyrmpole b.1595 England; d.1669 Hingham, MA
 
Clement was a tailor.  A Bates family history reports:
 In April of 1635, Clement, Anna, and their five children sailed from London on the Elizabeth, bound for the Massachusetts Bay Colony with 70 other individuals -- chiefly from London and Kent, and in family groups. The Elizabeth’s manifest lists these Bateses as: Clement Bates, age 40, tailor; Ann, also age 40, his wife; and James, age 14; Clement, age 12; Rachel, age 8; Joseph, age 5; and Benjamin, age 2; plus two servants, John Wynchester and Jarvis Gould.  Also traveling on the Elizabeth were Clement’s brother James, age 53, a farmer; his wife Alice, age 52; and four children ages 20 to nine.
 The families seem to have followed the Rev. Peter Hobart, from Hingham, England to Hingham, MA. 
 
3089 & 3090 - William Hilliard ab.1612 in England; d.1655 Hingham, MA and Esther Bates b.1620, England; d.1655 Hingham, MA
William and Esther immigrated separately. William was a carpenter; he arrived in 1635 at age 23 on the Elizabeth and Ann. By 1640, he owned and operated a mill that ground corn for both Pilgrims and Indians. Esther arrived, probably with her parents, in 1635.
   
3093 & 3094 - Rev. John Lyford  b.1575 in England; d.1634 in Virginia and Sarah Oakley b.1586 in England; d.1649 in Hingham, MA. Arr. 1624
 
Personal conduct; present for history 
 
John and Sarah's story has so much conflict, intrigue, and misconduct that it requires its own full post.  The severity of the scandal is evident in records that show Sarah reverting to the use of her maiden name after John left Plymouth Colony. 

Sadly, these two may be the first of your ancestors to arrive in America, though it's equally likely that Joseph Harding and Martha Doane (#3083 & 3084) were the first. 
 
3097 & 3098 Robert Martin b. 1591 England; d. date unk., Rehoboth, MA  and Joane Upham, b. 1591 England; d. 1668, Reheboth MA
 
3101 & 3102 - John Stephen Otis  b.1581 England; d.1657 Hingham & Margaret Stream b.1598 England, d. 1653 Hingham
These two arrived in 1635 and did not, fortunately, live long enough to know the fate of their son Richard and his family, who lived in Cocheco, New Hampshire at the time of that massacre.
 
3103 & 3104 - John Beal  b. 1588 England; d.1688 Boston, MA and Nazareth Hobart b. 1601 England; d. 1658 Hingham MA.
John was a shoemaker who arrived in 1638; Nazareth had arrived with her first husband in 1635. Both were each other's second spouse. Nazareth was the daughter of #6209 Edmund Hobart, one of the primary founders of Hingham, and brother of Peter Hobart, the community's minister for many years.
Shoemaking must have been a lucrative profession in England at that time, because John arrived with a wife, five sons, three daughters, and two servants--the bill for that passage would have been substantial. He was a leader in the Hingham community and was elected to represent them in the colonial legislature. He was found dead in his yard at the age of 100, as reported by his son Blake, the coroner of Boston.
I see a lot of these shared gravemarkers--they were obviously added by later generations to mark shared gravesites. This one marks two of your Beal ancestors, John and Jeremiah, and one of your Lincoln ancestors, Samuel (the elder one). 


3105 & 3106 - William Ripley b.1592 Harrogate, England; d.1656 Hingham and Unknown name, born in England and died in Hingham. 
 
3107 & 3108 - William Hensley Lane b.1580 in England; d.1654 in Hingham and Agnes Farnsworth b.1584 in England; d.1671 in Hingham, MA  Arrived 1635
 
3111 & 3112 - (see entry for 3087 and 3088)
 
3149 & 3150 - Thomas Robert Blott b.1582 England; d.1665 Boston and Susannah Selbee b.1586 England and d.1659 Boston  Arrived 1634
Mr. Blott was comfortably well-off at death. His estate was worth more than ₤100, which I believe was pretty good. But the offices to which his fellow Boston residents elected him made me smile:

Like many other immigrants of this period, the Blotts left older children in England to manage and then inherit property. A Blott family history lists Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, among the Blott's descendants there. 
 
3151 & 3152 - George Allen b.1568 England; d.1648 Boston and Katherine Watts, whose dates are unknown and who died in England.

Notice George's age: he was 62 in 1630, when Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded. At that time, he was the father of 10 adult children in England. 
In 1632, at least three of his sons--Samuel, Matthew, and Thomas--emigrated, and George followed in 1635. (You're descended from both Samuel #1575 and Matthew #3173.) Additional Allen children might also have come from England. They tended to name their sons Samuel, Matthew, Thomas, John, and George. As a result, colonial documents are filled with records of John Allen doing this; Samuel Allen doing that; and Thomas Allen doing this other thing. It's very very hard--if not impossible--to know which was your direct ancestor or some uncle or cousin. My apologies: was such a swamp, and the Allens did so much, I did not try. 
So let's just say: There is no question that the Allen/Allyn family played a central role in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (that is, the founding of Boston) and its early years. 
Other than that, I saw no indication that any of our Allen ancestors were anything but respectable people of respectable accomplishment.   
 
3161 & 3162 - Samuel Appleton b.1586 England; d.1670 Rowley, MA and Mary Everard (dates unknown)    

A family history saved to Ancestory says that Samuel wab born at Holbrook Hall, Little Waldingfield, England in 1586 and emigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1635. In 1636, he was living in Ipswich and received a grant of 460 acres between the Ipswich River and the Miles River, land which was still in the possession of his descendancts when that history was written in the late 1890s. He served as deputy to the general court. 

460 acres is a huge grant, in comparison to the typical allotment--certainly more than a single family could work. I don't know why his fellow settlers determined that he deserved so big a share.
 
3171 & 3172  - Thomas Newberry b.1594 in Devon, England; d.1636 Windsor, CT and Joane Dabinott, b.1600, d.1627, both in England.   
 
Community leader; Present for history
Kind of a sad story. The following is information I 'translated' from a family history written in the late 1800s using documents written in the early 1600s, which was pretty thick with archaic spelling and grammar.

Records from the London Court of Chancery indicate that Thomas Newberry was well-educated; he had been engaged in legal studies in London during several terms of the Court. Around 1620, he married Joane Dabinot. They had five children before Joane died in 1629. Newberry then married Joane’s cousin, Jane Dabinot.   

Caught up in the Puritan reform movement, in April 1634, Newberry sailed for New England with his family, where he seems to have quickly enjoyed great respect from his fellow colonists. He first settled at Dorchester, where received substantial grants of land and bought a house.  He joined the church; was admitted freeman; and was made selectman the following year. Newberry also served as deputy from Dorchester to the General Court. By 1635, he had rights to more than 400 acres of land.

 On May 6, 1635, he was chosen to be overseer of the works at Castle Island and “it is ordered that he shall have power to press men for the works and to press carts for such allowance as he thinks meet.” This is the island in Boston harbor which has a fort on it from about that time to the present and Newberry was engaged to complete the military works. (The 19th-centure family history may have exaggerated Newberry's role in the building of the fort. It's unlikely he was overseer, though he certainly served on some planning and oversight committees and was in charge of Dorchester's contribution of funds, resources, and labor. Your 9G grandfather Roger Clapp, #1583) had a longer stint when he was, undoubtedly, in charge of the Castle Island fort for many years.)

Newberry was active in plans for the settlement of Windsor, Connecticut, but died suddenly before he completed his plans for moving. The inventory of his estate amounted to ₤1520, a very large estate for that time. This indicates he probably brought a large stock of goods from England with the intention of engaging in trade as an importing merchant.

After his death, his widow and children moved to Windsor, where his children were granted lands for their father’s right in the plantation. Jane, Thomas’ widow, married Rev. John Warham (whom you can also read about in your 9G grandfather Roger Clap’s memoirs).

Castle Island, Boston Harbor, during the colonial period

3173 & 3174 Matthew Allyn, b.1605 England; d.1670, CT and Margaret Wyatt b.1605 England; d.1671 CT
There are lots of Massachusetts and Connecticut colonial records about Matthews Allen/Allyn; it's difficult if not impossible to tell which might be our Matthew.
 
In 1662, one of the Matthews--who could well be our ancestor--with one other man, Samuel Willis, traded 30 coats for title to a tract of land on the Connecticut River south of Hartford. 
 
To us that sounds like an incredibly unfair price but it's difficult now to apprehend the value of either the coats or the land to either the Natives or the settlers. The English settlers did not yet have industrial capacity to do things like weave large amounts of fabric, so things like coats were imported and quite precious, even to the settlers. I cannot imagine how they seemed to the Natives. In practice, however it was metal objects--pots, knives, and particularly muskets-- that were most sought after by the Natives. I haven't yet found a book that explains the whole process of land transfer--how they had managed transfers of control of land before the Europeans arrived, what the Natives thought they were selling--but I did find one article that seems to cover the basics.

After Matt and Sam got title to the land, they would have filed it with the General Court of the colony. Shortly after that they split the land into lots and distributed it among 28 families and founded the town of Haddam, Connecticut.

The Matthew that I'm pretty sure is our ancestor was a merchant, who owned property in several towns; whose will disposed of (among land and other property) a small library of books and "one suit of clothes to John, Indian." So yeah, our guy might be the one who traded coats for land.


3175 & 3176 - Robert Bartlett b.1579 England; d. 1655 Plymouth and Alice Barker (died in England) 
Robert arrived in 1632 and is one of Rev. Hooker's Company--story at this link.
 
3181 & #182 - John Whitlock b.1589 England; d.1658 Fairfield, CT and Sarah Vail or Vile b.1587 England; d.1661 Fairfield, CT.  It's unclear when these two arrived. 

3189 & 3190 - Thomas Winch b.1594 England; d.1664 Roxbury, MA and Elizabeth Stebbins b. 1598; d.1638 Roxbury, MA
There are not many records of Thomas, and there seem to be several Elizabeth Stebbins whom I cannot sort out. I cannot find when these two arrived, but I can see that their daughter arrived in 1634 with other members of Elizabeth's family, possibly her brother's family. 

3215 & 3216 - Simon Hoyt b.1590 in England; d.1657 Stamford, CT; Deborah Stowers b.1593 England; d.1634 Dorchester, MA
Simon and Deborah arrived in Salem in 1628. The family moved often after that, so that by the time he died, Simon had a hand in settling/founding six New England towns: Charlestown in 1629; Dorchester in 1630; Scituate in 1635; Windsor, CT, in 1639; Fairfield CT in 1649, and Stamford CT in 1652.

Several members of the Stowers family also came to America at the same time; it was an extended-family migration.

3226 & 3227 - Edward Marsh, b.1580 England, d.1683 Hatfield, MA and unknown wife
 
3227 & 3228 - Luke Atkinson b.1599 Yorkshire, England, d.1657 Middletown, CT and Elizabeth Cote b.1610 Yorkshire; d.1639 New Haven  -- These two arrived in 1639.
 
3229 & 3230 - Richard Platt b.1603 England; d.1653 New Haven and Mary Wood b.1605 England; d.1675 New Haven  Arrived in 1638

Community leader
 
3259 & 3260 - John Crowe b.1574 England; d.1672 Yarmouth, MA and Elishua Yelverton b.1578 England; d.1688 Yarmouth, MA Arrived in 1633.

3261 & 3262 - William Goodwin b.1591 England; d.1673, Farmington MA and Elizabeth White b.1591 England; d.1676 Hartford, CT

 William played a key role in procuring land and settling the communities of Windsor, Hartford, and Farmington, as well as founding the Second Church in Hartford after 1659. 

While still in England, William held offices in his local church (sidesman and churchwarden) at Braintree, Essex in the early 1620s. In June 1632, that Puritan church was targeted by Anglican authorities, so William and several of his friends were called to appear before a court to answer to the charge of "not receiving the Holy Communion at Easter nor since in this parish church," by which they meant the Anglican Church. However, by the time the court date rolled around, he and his fellow defendants were already on board the Lyon, sailing to America. He became a freeman in Newtown on November 6, 1632. 

The stress must finally have gotten to him. He was elected as an elder of the church, but he was called into court in 1634 for ‘ungodly speech’ during an intemperate outburst. 

 

That same year, however, he was elected as Newtown’s representative to the colonial legislature. Later,  Gov. Winthrop recognized him as “a very reverend and godly man, being an elder in the congregation of Newtown.”

 He became a recognized Ruling Elder under Rev. Thomas Hooker, and then helped found Hartford in 1636. He among the “Adventurers” who negotiated with native leaders and acquired land for Hartford; his name is on the Founders Monument. He came to hold significant land in Hartford, including riverfront, ox pastures, and meadow.

 He continued with his strong ideas about forms of worship, and so in 1659, he led the group that, following a dispute over church sacraments, left Hartford to found Hadley, MA. More details are in this post.

He returned to Connecticut around 1670, when Elizabeth died and he remarried with the widow of Rev. Hooker. In Connecticut, he helped to found the community of Farmington, where he continued as a church elder and
community leader until his death in 1674. He is buried in Farmington.

3263 & 3264 - William Warner b.1594 England; d.1648 Ipswich, MA and Abigail Baker b.1590 England; d. before 1635 in England
It's clear that William arrived in 1635 with three of his children; there's no evidence that his wife, the children's mother, was with them so the assumption is that she died in England. It's a bit iffy, however; some people identify his wife's grave in New England, but there's no evidence they married here. 
If anyone looks into our ancestry back in England; William's mother is another Downing and might come from the same very well-connected family as Abigail Downing #1634. 
 
3265 & 3266 -  Mark Symonds b.1584 England; d.1659 Ipswich MA and Joanne Susan Engels b.1588 England; d.1666 Ipswich MA
These two arrived in 1635. Mark served in several town offices in Ipswich, including constable.
 
3271 & 3272 - William Phelps b.1599 England; d.1672 Windsor, and Mary (Unknown maiden name), died before 1626 in England. 

Not your 10G grandfather Phelps, but
close enough. I wanted an image here.
Community leader, big time
Your 10G grandfather William Phelps comes very close to being the popular caricature of the Puritan colonist, in both its good and bad features. A leading New England historian described him as “one of the most prominent and highly respected men in the colony.” He has a long Wikipedia page that contains more details than I will repeat here. For a charming and detailed history of the settlements he helped to found and govern, read The History of Ancient Windsor, written in 1859.
 
Phelps was well-connected, well-off, and well-educated, probably trained in law while in England. His first wife, our ancestor, died there in 1626. Both his religious beliefs and his money led him to become an investor and member of the Dorchester Company of Adventurers, the company that started the ball rolling to create the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

While the Plymouth Colony colonists and the Dorchester Company shared an interest in making money, their religious motives were a bit different. The Plymouth Pilgrims wanted to separate completely from the established Church of England (and to separate church from government), while the Puritans of the Dorchester Company, under the leadership of Rev. Thomas White, were much more comfortable intertwining religion and government and wanted to only to reform the church. But the church was not reforming, and the Puritans of Phelps’ group believed their chosen faith to be the only true religion and disrespected all other faiths, and they decided to leave.

Only around 300 colonists were in New England when the Mary and John arrived in America in 1630, carrying Phelps, his second wife Anne (not our ancestor), four children, two brothers, 133 other people, and some farm animals.  Although it arrived in late May 1630, the Mary and John was not technically part of the famous Winthrop Fleet, the first ship of which (the Arbella) arrived in early April, carrying Governor Winthrop.

The Mary and John passengers called their new settlement Dorchester (now a part of Boston), and Phelps served in many capacities in both the colony’s and the town’s governments. He was a member of the first General Court (colonial legislature) held in the colony in 1636 and served 12 sessions there, where he served on the committee that drafted the first laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and was involved in negotiating the first treaties and licenses. He also served as a member of the Court of Magistrates from 1637 to 1643; and was foreman of the first Grand Jury in 1643. At various times he also served as Dorchester constable; leader of the town’s General Meeting; and on committees given authority to settle land and boundary disputes.

Being the first New England settlement outside Plymouth, Dorchester earned a lot of ‘firsts’ including:

  • The first democratically elected governing body in the American colonies, and William Phelps was one of eight elected to lead it.
  • The first church in the new Massachusetts Bay Colony and now the oldest religious organization in present-day Boston, still called the First Parish Church of Dorchester. Its first building was a simple log cabin with a thatched roof at the corner of Pleasant Street and Pond Street in Boston, and its sixth building is now a mile away at 10 Parish St. Both are in the area of Boston known as “Meeting House Hill.”  Puritans used the meeting house as the center of both worship and government; Phelps would have spent a lot of time here, and with fewer than 30 families in the area at the time would not have lived far away.
  • A colonial elementary school. The Mather School
    in Dorchester is still operating. It was the first
    pubic elementary school in America.
    The first publicly funded elementary school in America, behind the meeting house. It is now called the Mather School and is the oldest elementary school in America.
  • The first grand jury (Phelps was foreman); and 
  • The first murder trial (Phelps was on the jury, which acquitted the defendant).

 However, the leaders of Dorchester eventually fell into conflict with Governor Winthrop. Phelps and his friends believed all men should have a voice in electing their leaders, while Winthrop and his friends wanted to keep the colony’s leadership roles among a select few. 

So, as Puritans tended to do, the disgruntled settlers decided to split off. They sought the Massachusetts General Court’s permission to create a new settlement in the Connecticut River Valley, which was reluctantly granted in the Spring of 1635 on the condition that they remain part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Foreshadowing: nope.) Phelps was one of eight commissioners appointed by the General Court to govern the new settlement.

It turned out to be a more challenging adventure than any of them anticipated. First, about half the residents of Dorchester decided to join the relocation, including both ministers.

Second, the main body of the migrants started toward their new home in October 1635, at the beginning of what turned out to be a tough winter.  About 60 individuals in 23 households set out on what they expected to be a two-week journey of about 100 miles to the east. They took a route known as the Old Connecticut Path, which took them through a region of swamps, rivers, and over small mountains. They sent most of their belongings and provisions via ship. But before they were established in their new homes, winter arrived. The river froze over, trapping the ship carrying their provisions. Their few supplies were soon exhausted, and they faced starvation.

A few struggled back to Dorchester and the rest survived the winter with help from a few Plymouth Colony settlers as a trading post they had recently established and from Native Americans. When spring 1636 arrived, the transplanted settlers moved to higher ground in the meadow north of the river and were finally able to receive their provisions.

The new settlement, Windsor, was the first English settlement in the area that is now Connecticut. The settlers expected resistance from the Dutch, but until that time, English settlers had lived reasonably peacefully with the Natives, trading and negotiating land purchases.

However by 1635, some natives were stretched to the breaking point. Trade with the French had not reduced the land available for the Natives’ use, but now selling land to the Dutch and English had more enduring consequences. For their part, the English settlers had now realized that the permanent sale of land often meant something different to Natives than it did to them. In addition, several Native tribes were in heated disagreement with each other over the best way to handle the Europeans, among other issues. To top all that off, food shortages following a massive hurricane in August 1635 continued to affect everyone, native and European alike.

A Pequot village of the Connecticut River valley

It was in these circumstances that the new English settlements of Windsor, Hartford, Wethersfield, and Springfield appeared in the river valley in a relatively short period. After a series of outrages raised tempers on all sides, hostilities burst into flame with the Pequot War (1636-37). No other native tribes would ally with the Pequot in this, the first serious armed conflict in New England between the natives and the settlers. Some even allied with the English against the Pequot, and they were eradicated.

When the river valley towns united for defense during the Pequot War, they jointly appointed magistrates jointly and held the first form of a local General Court to coordinate military and legal matters. One source I encountered identified Phelps as the presiding officer at this court when it ordered an offensive war against the Pequots. On a brighter note, he would also have particpated in the drafting and adoption of the first written constitution in Western Civilization, Connecticut's "Fundamental Orders", adopted in January 1639.

It didn’t take long for the frontier towns of the Connecticut River Valley to break from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In January 1639, delegates from Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield officially formed a self-governing General Court and earned a place in American history when they adopted a written framework for self-rule —the first written constitution in Western history, something that Connecticut is very proud of to this day.

Phelps served as a member of the Connecticut General Court until 1662. During that time, he and later Governor Thomas Welles, of Hartford, drafted a law prohibiting lying, and he participated in enacting laws which with others were later called the "Blue Laws of Connecticut." In 1641, he served as Governor of Windsor. In 1662, the colony’s Royal Charter was granted by King Charles II, uniting it with the New Haven colony and officially recognizing its status.

Phelps died in 1672 in Windsor and is buried in Palísado Cemetery there.  His original marker may no longer survive, but a memorial stone honors him and other founders.

3273 & 3274 - Thomas Robert Copley b.1597 England; d.1634 England and Elizabeth Griswold (birth and death dates unclear)

It would be interesting to learn why a widow with kids came to America, but she did. My records on Ancestry.com are still tangled; I fear some family trees might have gotten her and her daughter confused ... 
 
3281 & 3282 - Samuel Stratton b.1592, England; d.1672 Watertown, MA and Alice Beebe, b.1594 England; d.1656 Watertown MA
  
Witchcraft; community leaders. I could not be more proud to call these two my ancestors. 

On June 15, 1648, Margaret Jones became the first person executed for witchcraft in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her case set a grim precedent for later witchcraft trials, including those in Salem decades later. How nice if history could also say that your 10G grandparents, Samuel and Alice, set a precedent for the colonists’ response to witch trials. 

After Margaret was executed, the Strattons made their disgust and disrespect for the judges at the trial well-known. They were then called to court themselves. The record of the Strattons’ trial says that “Samuel said that Jones’ wife died wrongfully and that she was no witch and that the magistrates who condemned her would do anything for bribes, and the members also.” Further, “Alice said that the Goodwife Jones died wrongfully and was no more a witch than she was.” 

Can you wrap your head around how much courage it would have taken to say  “She was no more a witch than I am” directly to a court, about a woman they had convicted of being a witch?  How easy would it have been for one of the judges to point a finger and shout “We have a confession!”

The court found the Strattons guilty and ordered them to “appear before the public assembly the next lecture day to pay a fine of 5 and acknowledge their offense and acknowledge the justice and leniency of the court in dealing so mercifully with them. Later, the record notes that “The parties did appear and acknowledge the mercy of the magistrates’ sentence on them, but of the charges laid upon them they are of the same mind.”

They were then fined another 5 for their refusal to recant.

But they apparently refused to pay. The following April, court records indicate that “Goodman Stratton, refusing to make full acknowledgement enjoined by the court, is granted liberty for payment of the fine until the next 8th month.” He seems eventually to have paid, but neither he nor Alice ever recanted.   

3293 & 3294 Thomas Bascom b.1602 England; d.1682 Northampton and Avis Tanner b.1616 England; d.1676 Northampton   Arrived 1634
 
3305 & 3306 John Webster b.1590 England; d.1661 Hadley, MA and Agnes Smith, b.1585 England; d.1667 Hadley, MA.
John and Agnes arrived in 1634.  They were among the group of our ancestors who founded Cambridge, Hartford, and Hadley, which I wrote about in this entry 
 
Community leader
John served as Deputy Governor of Connecticut in 1655 and Governor in 1656. John has a Wikipedia entry, in which his biographer shows energetic genealogical interest. According to this writer, John and Agnes's descendants include the following:
  • Noah Webster, of dictionary fame;
    Your distant cousin Janis Joplin
  • President Rutherford B. Hayes;
  • Emily Dickinson, the poet;
  • William Faulkner, the novelist;
  • Katherine Hepburn, the actress;
  • Johnny Carson, late-night talk show host;
  • William Barnes, co-founder of Barnes & Noble; 
  • the Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bush Junior; and
  • Janis Joplin, rock and blues singer.
 
3309 & 3310 - Francis Bushnell b.1580 England; d.1646 Guilford, CT and Ferris Quenell, who died in England.
Francis was a widower by 1631 and by 1635, all five of his sons and one daughter were in America. His remaining daughter was married to Rev. John Hoadley, Court Chaplain to Oliver Cromwell in Edinburgh.  In 1639, Francis signed a covenant with 24 other men, who called themselves the 'Guilford Covenant' and they sailed on the St. John to America, where they founded the town of Guilford, CT.
 
3327 & 3328 - John Bellows b.1623 or 1624, probably London; d.1683 Marlborough MA and Mary Wood b.1633 Concord MA; d.1707 Marlborough MA
 
If I had to pick a favorite immigration story from among the many I discovered in our family's history, it would be John's.

Documented facts about John Bellows are:
1) He came to America on the first 1635 voyage of the Hopewell. At that time, he was 12 years old and unaccompanied by any family member.
2) He was living in Concord, MA in 1645;
3) He married Mary Wood in 1655;
4) He was
 one of the original proprietors of Marlborough and as such was granted land in the original Marlborough plan there in 1656 as part of the effort to populate and defend the area. He would have participated in the early civic and defensive organization of the town, which was on the frontier at that time.
5) He was a party to several land sales/purchases over the following years;
6) When he died, his will left land, buildings, and many carpentry tools to his wife and seven living children.
7)
His descendants grew wealthy and rose high in 19th-century New England society.
 
Everything else is speculation--and so very revealing about human nature, if not about John. 
 
One of his descendants was caught up in the late-19th century fashion for writing flattering family histories. According to John Bellows: The Boy Emigrant of 1635 and his Descendants, written in 1898 by Thomas Bellows Peck: 
Our family's history in America may be said to have begun when John Bellows sailed from London in April 1635, seeking Lavinian shores. ... One would gladly know who were his parents and where his home in England, and what induced him at that early age to emigrate to the New World. But on those points nothing is known and thus far all attempts to answer those questions have failed. The identity of his name with that of John Bellows, the Quaker printer, publisher, and philanthropist of Gloucester, England points to common ancestry.
 
 Ah, yes! A religious man of letters and philanthropy!  One who sends his 12-year-old namesake ...  alone, across the ocean to a wilderness?!?!?

I checked the passenger list for that voyage of the Hopewell and noted six unaccompanied minors, three boys and three girls, assigned to the custody of the ship's captain. John was the youngest at 12; the others were 14, 15, or 16. I seriously doubt that each of those kids had made an informed choice to 'seek Lavinian shores' and then convinced their loving philanthropist guardians to allow them to follow their dreams to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
 
Historians have made some progress since 1898, when Mr. Peck wrote that rosy backstory for John. I doubt Mr. Peck would be happy with what those historians found, as reported by a Puritan-history blogger:
 
"The voyage of the Hopewell in April 1635 was under Captain William Bundocke. Several voyages around this time produced passenger lists of particular interest, as many of the passengers were unaccompanied minors. 
 
"The upper class in London was frustrated with street children running wild. Elizabethan poor laws allowed officials to arrest them for offenses such as begging, picking pockets, and stealing food. Some were jailed, whipped, or had their ear bored with a branding iron. A few incorrigibles were executed. 
 
But in line with a growing sense of moral obligation to distinguish between 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor, other children were chosen to be shipped off to America to be adopted by colonists who had lost their own children to the hardships of the frontier or who had use for these involuntarily indentured children."
 
 For what it's worth, I find the impartial historian's information more inspiring than the adoring Mr. Peck's. It doesn't look as if John was adopted (as was your 8G grandmother #818 Grace Martin/Marsh, who also left London for less-than-exalted reasons), because the John Bellows who got off the boat from London was still named John Bellows when he married 20 years later in Concord and was given land in the first division of lots in Marlborough, MA.
 
But look at this: In America, your 10G grandfather, a wild child of the streets at age 12, was educated and taught to practice carpentry well enough to die with enough land and property to merit writing a will to divide his estate among his children. His descendants would include clergymen, a notable lawyer and federal official, and a famous painter, which says something important about the Pilgrim community. That's a darn sight better than Grandpa John would have done had he not been shoved onto that aptly named boat out of London.
 
Signature from a land title transfer document
 
3329 & 3330 - Thomas Rose b.1653; d.1744 New London, CT and Hannah Allyn b.1650 New London CT; d.1745 Stonington, CT
 
3335 & 3336 William Williams b. abt 1640 in Wales; d.1704 Groton, CT and Arabella Thompson b.1635 location unclear; d.1708 in New London, CT

Military action

William served in King Phillips War.

Arabella's parents arrived in 1635, the year she was born. I marked her here as an immigrant, but I cannot see any record that says where she was born. Perhaps on board, during the voyage? I don't know.  


3337 & 3338 - John Wheeler b.1643 Concord MA; d.1713 Concord MA and Sarah Larkin b.1647 Charlestown MA; d.1725 Concord MA


3339 & 3340 - Thomas Bailey b.1636 New London, CT; d.1675, South Deerfield, MA and Lydia Redfield b 1636 Boston; d.1676 Connecticut

 Pioneer conflict
Thomas was among the 60 or so militia men killed in the pivotal Battle of Bloody Brook on Sept. 18, 1675, often known as the Bloody Brook Massacre.
 
In the late 1660s, conflict between the Mohawk and the Pocumtuck tribes left prime farmland in the fertile Connecticut River Valley unoccupied. John Pynchon, the settlers' land negotiator, convinced a few Pocumtucks who were taking refuge from the Mohawks within established English settlements to sell much of their homeland, though it's unlikely they had authority to do that. Nevertheless, new settlements were created, including one at Deerfield. 
 
At the same time, Metacomet, leader of the farther-east Pokanoket and Wampanoag tribes, was facing a crisis of his own. Those coastal tribes had been the first to sell land--legitimately--to the Pilgrims. But after 50 years of trading their land for the desirable goods the settlers were selling, the Pokanokets had their backs to the wall. If they did not take or purchase at least some of their land back, they could not survive. Tensions rose, and the first large-scale war erupted between the English settlers and the natives, known as King Phillip's War. The Pokanokets readily joined the tribes that were opposing the settlers. 

In September 1675, the settlers of the Connecticut River Valley had evacuated their new villages in anticipation of the war's arrival in the valley.  But no one wanted to abandon Deerfield's excellent harvest. Colonial officials sent a group of militia men to accompany a wagon train of ox carts to carry the grain out to feed the displaced settlers during the upcoming winter. The slow convoy began the trek from Deerfield to Hadley on September 18, 1675. After they'd passed what they thought was the most dangerous part of the journey, the captain stopped the group in front of the convoy near a small stream known as Muddy Brook to allow the cumbersome ox carts in the rear to catch up. Some of the soldiers began to relax. Some put their guns aside and were picking bunches of wild grapes growing next to the narrow road. At that moment, when the convoy was least prepared to defend itself, a force of several hundred Indians launched an ambush. In minutes, the attackers virtually wiped out the convoy and its escort. Only a handful of men escaped.

Later, grief-stricken colonists buried over sixty bodies in a mass grave; Grandpa Bailey is probably among them. The muddy brook at the site of the ambush was renamed Bloody Brook and a white marble monument was erected to mark the spot.


3341 & 3342 - Edward Smith b.1637 England; d.1689 New London, CT and Elizabeth Bliss, b.1645 Saybrook, MA; d.1689 New London, CT

 
3359 & 3360 - Captain John Youngs b.1623 England; d.1698 Southold, Long Island and Mary Gardiner b.1628 England; d.1689 Southold, Long Island
Community leader
 These two arrived separately with their respective parents in 1637. John was the son of the founder and pastor of Southold, where the family moved in 1640. Mary's family was not among the settlement party; her father had died earlier and she and her mother came to the island later.

Particularly in communities heavily involved in whaling and the sea-faring trade, it's not always clear to me what the 'Captain' refers to--a military company or a ocean-going ship?--but in John's case, I think it's military. At the eastern end of Long Island, the settlers had little to worry about from any native tribes, but nevertheless wanted to be ready in case any hostile parties crossed the Long Island Sound. 
 
In later records, John gets the title 'colonel,' but in the published history of Southold, he shows up mostly as 'captain.' Among other responsibilities, he was selected with his friend William Wells (a lawyer and another of your 10G grandfathers) to go to an assembly called by the Duke of York in 1665 to plead the community's case to be allowed to remain a part of Connecticut rather than be redistricted into the new English colony of New York and subject to stricter royal control. 
 
3361 & 3362 - William Wells b.1608 England; d.1671 Southold, Long Island and Mary Youngs b.1619 England; d.1709 Southold
Community leader
In the published history of Southold, William gets "Esq" after his name, which means he was a lawyer, but I cannot see any record of his education, which he probably received in England. He immigrated in 1635, at age 27, either alone or with his first wife (not Mary). His father, a prominent minister, and his mother stayed in England. He lived first in Lynn, Massachusetts, then New Haven, and then joined the party of settlers who founded Southold, Long Island, in 1640.  His second wife was your 10G grandmother; Mary was Rev. Young's daughter and the sister of Captain John Youngs #3359. In addition to the diplomatic mission he served with his brother-in-law John Youngs #3359, William served as Justice of the Peace and first sheriff of the county of New Yorkshire on Long Island.

3362 & 3364 - John Frink b.1602 England; d.1675 Ipswich, MA and Mary Wood b.1612 England; d.1675 Ipswich, MA. 

3367 & 3368 - Moses Cleveland (elder) b.1624 England; d. unk;  Ann Winn b.1626 England; d.1682 Woburn, MA
Moses and Ann were not yet married when they arrived in America in 1635 with Ann's parents. Moses was an indentured apprentice to Ann's father, a master carpenter and housewright from Ipswich, England. The family stayed in Boston for a few years and then joined a group of settlers with whom they founded the town of Woburn in 1640. In 1648 Moses received the rights of a freeman and an apportionment of forty acres of land that had been reserved for him, and he and Ann married.
 
Moses's name can be found on the Woburn Militia Muster Roll, and his signature on a certificate from the town of Woburn, submitted to King Charles II, attesting to the fact that the town was refusing service of a circular letter from the king. In the letter, the king was seeking to get the Massachusetts towns to renounce their allegiance to the colonial charter and accept direct government from the Crown. 

3369 & 3370 - Nicholas Norton b.1610 England; d.1690 Edgartown, MA and Elizabeth Isaac b.1612 England; d.1690 Edgartown, MA. 

Personal color. Specifically, trying to start the American Revolution 100 years too soon

Nicholas Norton came to America in 1635 with the party of colonists led by Rev. John Hull. Elizabeth arrived separately the same year. The two married in 1637 in Weymouth, Massachusetts and lived there for about 20 years before moving to Martha’s Vineyard, where they were among the original settlers of Edgartown.

Grandpa Norton is profiled in a history of Martha’s Vineyard that tells about each original settler: “That he was of a social station somewhat above the average appears from the fact that he kept a servant whose ‘miscarriages’ brought legal problems in 1658 with the magistrates of Massachusetts.”

If  I understand the story correctly, Grandpa Norton’s servant was summoned to court for some crime, and Grandpa bailed him out. Due to a misunderstanding about when the court date was scheduled,  Grandpa failed to bring his servant to court on the day of the trial. As a result, he forfeited the bail and got his servant into even worse trouble than he’d already been in. Grandpa Norton wrote to the court explaining, apologizing, and asking that his bail be refunded. The court agreed, provided he bring the servant back to court for a new trial date. The history doesn’t say what happened to the servant.

But that was only the start of Grandpa Norton’s frequent involvement with the courts of Martha’s Vineyard. He served as constable for a while, but appears more often in civil cases as both plaintiff and defendant.

Grandpa Norton's tannery was near the Great Pond.
Some of the lawsuits had to do with his tannery business, but one has to do with an injured child (our grandpa was forced to pay for the “cure of the child”); a few others had to do with boundary fences (he won those lawsuits); and he lost a case having to do with taking fish from a creek reserved for the Natives.

His last and apparently only criminal offense is fascinating: He joined in the “Dutch Rebellion,” an ill-fated move among a group of Martha’s Vineyard residents to reject English government (which declared them to be part of the New York colony) and instead establish governmental ties with Massachusetts (a more self-governing colony with greater political and religious freedoms.) 

It’s one of the weirder little chapters in American history; google Dutch Rebellion, 1673, and Martha’s Vineyard to learn more. Our ancestor was not one of the leaders, so he got off with a fine of 51 pounds and was made to publicly apologize for trying to overthrow the government of His Majesty the King. It would be another century before they were out from under royal rule. 

3371 & 3372 - Benjamin Moore b.1640, Salem, MA; d.1690 Southold, Long Island and Anne Hampton b.1650, Orient, MA; d.1726 Southold

3373 & 3374 - Caleb Horton b.1642 Southold; d.1702 Cutchogue Long Island and Abigail Hallock b.1642 Southold; d.1679 Cutchogue Long Island.

Both Caleb and Abigail were born into leading settler families of Southold, Long Island. See their parents' stories (#6747-6750) for details. 

3375 & 3376 - Richard Brown b.1627 England; d.1685 Southold, Long Island and Hannah King b.1629 England; d.1698 Southold, Long Island

Community leader

Richard was among the original, and eventually wealthiest, founders of Southold, Long Island, a group that included the Youngs, Kinge, and Tuthill families (additional ancestors).  He had served in various capacities--lieutenant, sergeant, and ensign in the Suffolk County militia.

3377 & 3378 - Benjamin Conkling b.1638 Salem, MA; d.1709 East Hampton, LI and Hannah Mulford b.1645 and d.1712 East Hampton, LI

Another one of those names...

 
3379 & 3380 - John Tuthill b. 1635 England, d. 1717 Southold; Deliverance King b.1641 Salem, d.1688 Southold
John arrived with his parents on the Mary Anne, from Yarmouth,  in 1637. 
Deliverance's grave might still be seen in the Presbyterian churchyard in Southold. 
 
3381 & 3382 - same as 3361 & 3362 (Wells & Youngs) 
 
3491 & 3492 - Jurriaen van Rypen b. ... and Prytje Courten b....
See the story of our Dutch and Barbados ancestors at #6990.  
 
3495 & 3496 - Alexander Kidney b. 1641 Barbados; d. 1681 Barbados, and Mary van der Werke b.1645 in a Dutch trading post on the west coast of Africa (now Liberia); d. in Barbados

About Mary's birthplace: The same trade-and-settlement energy that brought Europeans to America starting in the 1500s took them also to Africa, where a lucrative gold and ivory trade developed from the west coast of Africa, which grew in the early 1600s to include slaves.

At first, Spain and Portugal controlled African trade. But in the 1590s the Dutch began raiding and trading along the West African coast. In the early 1600s, the Dutch West Indies Company built alliances with local African rulers who opposed Portuguese influence. By 1621, they built a permanent fort in what is now Ghana with the permission of the local chief of Efutu, and traded in gold, ivory, and spices. (That's not where Mary was born; her parents were at a trading post that was farther west and focused on pepper and grain.)

The Dutch West Indies Company became heavily engaged in the slave trade after 1637, when they captured another fort in Ghana, Elmina, from the Portuguese. Mary's family moved to Barbados probably she was a child. For the larger story of our Dutch and English ancestors in Barbados, see #6990.  

 
3527 & 3528 - Benjamin Coe b.1628 in England; d.1689 in Jamaica, NY and Abigail Carman b.1635 Roxbury, MA; d.1704 New York

Community leader

Benjamin is one of those sad cases where you can see his birth date is the same as his mother's death date. His father brought him to America when he was just five.

Benjamin helped found the settlement of Jamaica, NY, with his dad, #7055, but unlike his dad, Benjamin stayed put. He apparently got the normal allotment of land when a new settlement was created, but he bargained with the community to get an extra allotment of land in exchange for building a dam and a mill. He eventually owned and operated both a corn mill and a fulling mill, in addition to his farm. Fulling is a step in manufacturing wool cloth that involves cleansing  the cloth to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and to make it shrink by friction and pressure. The work creates a smooth, water-repellent fabric.

 

3551 & 3552 - Henry Lyon b.1625, Glen Lyon Scotland; d.1703, Newark, NJ and Elizabeth Bateman b.1623, Glen Lyon Scotland; d.1703, Newark, NJ.

 

Present for history

The Lyon/Lyons/Lyne family was very well connected in 16th and 17th century Scotland; you can read more in this well-written (for its time) online family history. At this distance, I find the author's lack of any effort to withhold his opinions charming; I doubt I'd enjoy anyone that opinionated today.  

 

Henry became a local leader in Connecticut; you can read more about him individually on page 80 of that book. The long history of the family in Scotland starts on page 9; a chapter focusing on the events that shaped Henry's life starts on page 49, and a chapter starting on page 69 is devoted to the history of Lyons Farms, a significant Puritan settlement the family founded in New Jersey.


Long-told family lore says that Grandpa Henry was present at one of the key events in English history, the beheading of King Charles I, which is why he is an American ancestor and not an English one. Here's how an old family history tells it:


Henry, Thomas, and Richard Lyon, Lyons of Glen Lyon in Perthshire, were soldiers in Cromwell's army and on guard before the Banqueting House at Whitehall on January 30, 1648, where they witnessed the execution of Charles I. 
A tremendous reaction followed the regicide and many a Puritan and Covenanter patriot of the insurgent army disappeared from London in the confusion of the horror of the days when the headless corpse of the Monarch remained at St. James Palace until it was deposited in the vaults of the Chapel at Windsor. After an interregnum of a few tomorrows another Stuart would come to the throne and the years of his regent-ruled minority would be a sorry reckoning for those who bore arms against his discrowned and dishonored sire.    The three Lyon brothers had kin in Middlesex and Norfolk counties who kept them in concealment pending the departure of a ship for the colonies across the sea. Other Lyon emigrants had proceeded the three who stood beneath the scaffold at Whitehall when the second executioner lifted the bleeding head and announced, "This is the head of a traitor!"      
 It is a rational supposition that the brothers landed at New Haven.  There lived kinsman John Lyne, one of that opulent company of two hundred fifty persons who came from London on the ship "Hector" in 1638 with Puritan divine John Davenport as their spiritual guide, to plant an independent company on the Connecticut coast. When the Plantation Covenant was signed, on June 4, 1638, John Lyne had affixed his signature among the names that became historic when the story of New England was told.      
The Lyons and their colonial compatriots were an anti-monarchical people strongly in sympathy with the Parliamentarian party. To their hospitable protection came the Regicides Goffe and Whalley in later troublous times. Their news was waited for in every town and settlement. But it would be detailed in whispers behind barred doors. 
 
Unfortunately (but understandably) no one recorded attendance at the beheading. Contemporary documents can confirm only about 80 of the hundreds of people who were there. 
The Lyon brothers would have been pardoned under the 
Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, passed on August 29, 1660.
 
Since Henry was born in 1625, immigration likely occurred in the 1650s or 1660s, when many Scottish families settled in the American colonies. No specific passenger list survives for Henry Lyon and Elizabeth Bateman, which is common because many 17th-century Scottish immigrants traveled on merchant or less-documented ships, and records were often incomplete or lost. Many Scottish immigrants settled in areas of New Jersey and New York in the mid to late 1600s. 
 

 Your 11G grandparents

 Born between date and date

6179 & 6180 -  Anthony W. Hilliard b.1585 England; d.1657 Hingham, MA and Elizabeth Kempton b.1585 England;  d.1657 Hingham MA

Anthony and Elizabeth immigrated in 1638. Anthony is listed in some records as Sir Anthony Hilliard, and the parents he left behind in England had titles.

6181 & 6182 - Michael Bates b.1584 England; d. after 1632 in Boston, MA and Susannah Bentley b.1591 England; d.1635 in England

Michael arrived in 1631. 

6209 & 6210 - Edmund Hobart b.1573 England; d.1646 Hingham MA and Margaret Dewey b.1574 England; d.1633 Hingham, MA. Arrived 1633

Community leaders
In both England and America, the Hobart family was locally significant and well-known. 
 
In England, Hobart forebears include Sir James Hobart, the attorney general of Great Britain and members of King Henry VII's Privy Council. (Look up Henry VII; he was the first Tudor king and arguably, in my opinion, one of the better kings. His attention to setting up enduring institutions of governance is probably why he was the last English monarch who won the throne by force of arms.) To have been selected by Henry for a top role in national government was, I think, an indicator of significant skill and wisdom. His son John was a prominent lawyer who was made Knight of the Sword in 1504 by Henry VII; and Hobart is the family name of the Earls of Buckhinghamshire. 

A century later, within the smaller world of Hingham, England (a village in Norfolk), the Hobarts were leading lights. Son Peter (your 9G granduncle) attended Cambridge and became a minister. The Planters of the Commonwealth, a definitive history of Massachusetts's origins, covers the Hobart family's role in the exodus from England to Massachusetts like this:

The largest exodus from any single locality naturally belongs to London. Yet (second place belongs to) the small parish of Hingham in Norfolk, with a population of only a few hundred, from which 35 families emigrated to found the present town of Hingham in Massachusetts. The departures nearly depopulated this English town. It is difficult to account for this wholesale hegira from one little place unless the movement began under the leadership of Edmund Hobart in 1633, who preceded by two years his son, the Reverend Peter Hobart, who became the pastor of the first church in the new Massachusetts town. 


6657 & 6658 John Wood b.1610 England; d.1678 Marlborough MA and Mary Parmenter b.1610 England; d.1690 Marlborough, MA. 

Colonial courtship could get complicated, apparently, but John was there for his daughter:

6659 & 6660 -  Thomas Rose b.1626 England; d.1683 New London, CT and Joanna Charity Rainsford b.1634 New London, CT; d.1698 New London, CT 

6661 & 6662 - Robert Allyn b. ~1620 England; d.1683 New London, CT and Sarah Gager b.1628 England; d.1685 New London, CT. 

6673 & 6674 - John Thompson b.1606 England; d.1678 Stratford, CT and Mirabella Finch b.1614 England; d.1690 Stratford, CT

John and Mirabella arrived in 1635. John appears in some Ancestry trees as 'lieutenant' and has documents related to the Pequot War (1636) and King Phillips War (1675-1676) saved to his records, but I cannot see any contemporary records that mention his name in connection with military service. No one is claiming he's a war hero or anything, so it's probably true, but I just don't know the source. 

6675 & 6676 - George Wheeler b.1605 England; d.1687 Concord, MA and Katherine Pyn (or Penn) b.1610 England; d.1685 Concord, MA

Community leader

Charles Walcott, a 19th-century historian of Concord wrote that George "was foremost in the town's business, by virtue of his large estates as well as integrity and good judgment. He was a man of education, and the owner of a large amount of property, his house lot alone consisting of eleven acres, while he possessed lands in every part of the town, at Brook Meadows, Fairhaven Meadow, the Cranefield, by Walden Pond, Flint's Pond, on the White Pond Plain, on the Sudbury line, etc. He held as many positions of trust and was as active in the direction of the town's affairs as any individual in Concord, serving at various times on substantially every committee of consequence, and leading in all matters of moment, as is evidenced by the fact that nearly every town deed and petition of any importance from either the Church or the civic community of that time bears his signature.

A turner worked with
a lathe.
6677 & 6678 - Edward Larkin b.1615 England; d.1652 Charlestown and Joanna Hale b.1616 England; d.1686 Charlestown

Edward left England with his parents in 1629 at age 14, but arrived with only his mom. His dad died at sea. This arrival is notable for being very early in the Boston area--even before the Winthrop Fleet arrived. Joanna arrived with her parents, also at age 14, in 1630.

Edward and his mother settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where he joined the church in September 1639 and became a freeman in 1640.

Edward became a skilled turner and wheelwright, producing wheels and related wooden tools locally—notably valuable since such items could be made on location without relying on imports.

He joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1644 (before #1583 Roger Clapp did; see above), indicating he was regarded as an able-bodied and responsible citizen

In 1647, he sold some land and purchased a riverfront plot, likely to improve access for trade and transport. At the time of his death at age 32 in 1652, after an illness, his Charlestown holdings included a house and workshop on Crooked Road, a garden, one acre of meadow, five acres of woodland, ten acres of “water field” land—and books, plus £0.10 for baby Hannah to be spent on books at age 18—demonstrating the family’s value of education.


6679 & 6680 - William Bailey b.1605; d.1689; d. Mary Welch b.1616 England; d.1660 New London CT.  These two arrived in 1627. 
 
6681 & 6682 - James Redfield b.1610 England; d.1662 New London, CT and Rebecca (maiden name unknown) b.1614; d.1662 New London, CT. 
These two arrived in 1635; James was a tanner.

6685 & 6686 - Thomas Bliss b.1618 England; d.1688 New London, CT and Elizabeth (maiden name unknown); d. Norwich, CT (dates unknown) 

These two immigrated in 1636. Thomas Bliss and his father are both among the settlers of Hartford, CT. Full story at this link.

6719 & 6720 - Rev. John Youngs b.1602 England; d.1671 Southold, Long Island and Joan Herrington, b.1600 and d.1630 in England

Community leader

John was the son of a distinguished clergyman in England, Samuel Youngs, and a graduate of Cambridge University. He immigrated in 1637 to New Haven, CT, where he gathered a group of other recent immigrants. He then led the group, which included more of your ancestors, to Long Island to create the first English settlement on that island. 

In those days, a 'new settlement' and a 'new church' were synonymous--you couldn't have one without the other. So I can understand why, if he wanted his own church, Rev. Youngs had to create a whole new town. But I don't understand the organized-religion dynamics of the time, so I cannot say why he was an Anglican clergyman in England (albeit a reform-minded Puritan), and the church he founded in Southold was Presbyterian. 

Southold never had any trouble with Native Americans. The settlers purchased the land from the Montauks before they built their settlement in 1640, and then when they wanted to expand, made a larger purchase. Neither purchase was ever contested by the natives, either then or later. 

Southold did, however, have problems with both the Dutch and the government of England. The threats were not to their lives; they were to their right to self-government. 

As an outgrowth of the Puritan colonies in New England, Southold enjoyed wide latitude for self-government in its first few decades. And although the Dutch, who had controlled the eastern end of Long Island (New Amsterdam) since 1626,  competed with English colonists and traders over who would control which trading posts, that tension never threatened Southold directly.

This map shows the situation in 1645.
The colony of New Haven later merged with Connecticut, taking Southold with it.

The serious threat started in 1664, when the Duke of York took control of the Dutch settlement and renamed it 'New York.' With an eye to the valuable whaling industry, the Duke and his dad the King declared that all of Long Island was now part of the new royal colony of New York, under direct Crown control. Our Southold ancestors would now lose the political freedom of Connecticut, have to answer to a crown-appointed governor, and follow English laws regarding among other things, religion and taxation. 
 
The whole story of Southold's struggle to resist direct English control is told in this history, which is online from the US Library of Congress, starting on page 129. It reports that in February 1665, the town elected your 9G Grandfather John Youngs (#3359, the Reverend's son and namesake) and your 9G grandfather William Wells (#3361) to negotiate the terms under which Southold might submit to inclusion in the New York Colony. Southold also briefly negotiated with the Dutch--if they couldn't be part of Connecticut, they were willing to go with whichever European government would give them political freedom. As you can tell from the map today, Southold lost its fight to continue to be part of Connecticut. They did not regain their political independence from the crown until 1776. 

6721 & 6722 - Thomas Gardiner b.1590 England; d.1638 Roxbury, MA and Mary Warren b.1602 England; d.1678 Southold, Long Island

Thomas and Mary's daughter, Mary Gardiner, was born in England in 1630; the family arrived in America in 1637. They lived in Roxbury, MA in 1638, where Thomas died. The two Marys then appear to have found their way to Southhold on Long Island (settled in 1640), where daughter Mary married John Youngs (the son of the Reverend) in 1653, when she was 23 years old and he was 30.

That sequence of events is a bit suspicious. Both Thomas and Mary are rather old to be marrying for the first time, and I'm clueless about why the two Marys moved from Roxbury to Southold after Thomas died. A remarriage might explain it, but I cannot find a record of a remarriage for Mary in either Roxbury or Southold.

But it's the best I can do. I cannot find very much at all about Thomas (he did die fairly young, 48 years old), and Mary Warren unfortunately has the same name as a Mayflower passenger, so her records on Ancestry.com have been messed up by people eagerly linking her records to those of the Mayflower Mary, and untangling them will take more time than I have. 

For more about the settlement of Southold, see #6719, Rev. John Youngs, just above.

6737 & 6738 - Edward Winn b.1599 England; d.1682 Woburn, MA and Joanna Sargent b.1607 England; d.1649 Woburn  These two arrived 1635.

Community leader  From a family history written in the early 1900s:

In 1635, three thousand settlers came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and among these was Edward Winn with his wife Joanna, his daughters Ann and Elizabeth, and son Joseph. With them came his apprentice joiner, Moses Cleveland, a young lad of the Goode family. They had lived in Ipswich, England, where Edward was a master carpenter and housewright and they sailed from London.

Settlers arriving in Boston at that time had to create new towns if they wished to have title to their own land. The first mention of  Edward Winn in colonial records is when he appears at the home of Thomas Graves in Charlestown as on of the commissioners at their first meeting on December 18, 1640 held for consulting on the affairs of the contemplated town of Woburn. On February 8, 1641, the commissioners came from Charlestown to find a location. After two days' search, they pitched upon a spot on the Aberjona River over which they built a bridge. To this spot they came in May following and laid out house lots. Buildings were erected during the summer. 

Woburn was incorporated in 1642, becoming the twentieth community in the colony.

In 1648 Moses and Ann married, and Moses received the rights of a freeman and an apportionment of forty acres of land that had been reserved for him.

6741 & 6742 - Joseph Goodborne Isaac b.1588 England; d.1642 Cambridge and Elizabeth Jackson, d.1622 in England.  Joseph arrived in 1636.

6743 & 6744 - Captain Thomas Moore, b.1613 England; d.1691 Southold Long Island and Martha Youngs b.1613 England; d.1671 Southold, Long Island

These two arrived in 1635 with their respective families, who knew each other, and married in Massachusetts in 1636. 

I cannot tell whether Thomas was a sea captain or a militia captain. Either are possible in Southold on Long Island, which was heavily involved in sea trade with the other colonies, including Barbados. 

Martha Youngs is the sister of Rev. John Youngs (#6719; founder of Southold), Elizabeth Youngs (#13500)  and of Captain Joseph Youngs (who appears to have been a sea captain.) Father of all four was your 12G grandfather Rev. Christopher Youngs, Vicar of Reyden and Southwold, and 12G grandmother Lady Margaret Ellwyn, both of whom stayed in England.

6745 & 6746 - James Hampton b.1608 England; d.1675 Southampton and Mary Jane Qualls b.1610 England; d.1673 Southold, Long Island.

These two must have arrived in Massachusetts before 1633, because that is when James' widowed father died there. 

6747 & 6748 - Barnabas Horton b.1600 England; d.1680 Southold and Mary Langdon, b.1607 England; d.1698 Southold, Long Island

I could tell you the story or you could just read the book. I do recommend it; it's good.

I read it, so I'll summarize. The only thing that seems to set Barnabas apart from many of your other ancestors, about whom no modern books were written, is the amount of records we have about him, which made him a good subject for an author wanting to write about a normal but un-famous Pilgrim leader.  For example, I'm sure most Puritans brought their family bibles with them, but Barnabas's was preserved and is now available for viewing at the Long Island Historical Society in Brooklyn. He also had a huge blue-slate headstone carved for himself in England and brought that, too. In other words, the guy has records.

Barnabas was a baker in Leicestershire, England when he decided to leave for America with his second wife, your 11G grandmother Mary Langdon. In 1633 (probably; records differ), they boarded a ship, Swallow, whose owner was Jeremy Horton (I assume a relative; more than a few ship's owners immigrated by loading up a boat with friends and relatives when they decided to start a new life based in America.)  Sources differ on whether Barnabas' parents, Joseph Horton (1578-1640) and Lady Mary Elizabeth Schuyler (1578-1663) emigrated with them.
 
For a while, Barnabas and Mary lived in Hampton, Massachusetts (now in New Hampshire), but they then moved to New Haven, where Barnabas served in several civic-leadership positions, including magistrate and five annual terms in the General Court of Connecticut. 
In September 1640, the Hortons were among of a band of 13 families led by the Rev. John Youngs who relocated to Long Island to create the first English settlement there, which they named Southold. You have several ancestors in this group. Their passionate mutual commitment to community independence in both religion and government was their motive in relocating to such a then-isolated place.
The historic Horton Point Lighthouse
 
When the settlers allotted the land of the new settlement, Barnabas received or purchased several valuable properties. He received two prime house lots in the center of town, where he built what is remembered as the first frame house on Long Island. It was still standing in 1874 and was believed at that time to be the oldest standing private home in the United States. 
 
He also received land on a cliff overlooking Long Island Sound, known today as Horton Point, the site of a historic lighthouse. (The Horton family had sold the property for taxes before the lighthouse was built in 1857.)
 
He continued his civic service in Southold, serving on the board of selectmen, as constable and again as representative to the General Court.

6749 & 6750 - William Hallock b.1615 England; d. 1684 Mattituck and Margaret Howell b.1622 England; d.1707 Mattituck
An Ancestry.com member uploaded
this as a portrait of William Hallock,
but included no source or citation.
 
Community leader  There is no question that Peter and William Hallock were among the first settlers of Southold, Long Island, but their family's records are a bit tangled. Their descendants have offered several different un-tanglings. I picked the one that seemed to hang together better than others. 
 
In my amateur opinion: Abigail (#3374) was William's daughter and William was Peter's son. It's iffy, but I'm not too concerned about it--there's no question they each existed; were closely related; and were part of the Southold, Long Island community.

Peter and William probably arrived in America together around 1635, when William was 20 and unmarried. He and Margaret were married in 1640 in Massachusetts. William received a substantial land grant when a new town,   Mattituck, was split off from Southold. He purchased and worked more land, and left a large estate when he died in 1684.

6753 & 6754 - William King b.1595 England; d.1649 Salem and Dorothy Hayne b.1600 England; d.1684 Southold, Long Island 

Personal conduct  William and Dorothy arrived in America in 1635 with their five kids ages 12, 10, 8, 6, and a toddler.  (The six-year-old was our grandmother Hannah.) Their name was spelled Kinge in England, and King after they got here. 

They settled in Salem, where they were members of the church, but William got in trouble by siding with the Antinomians during a religious controversy. (Antinomians believed that direct personal revelation was more valuable than literal reading of the Bible; and that works, behavior, and personal growth are not valid demonstrations of a person's salvation.) A legal document from 1637 shows he was told to sever his connection with the Antinomians, under penalty of being disarmed. He refused and had to give up his gun. After he died in 1650, Dorothy moved to Southold, Long Island to live near her daughters, Hannah Brown and Deliverance Tuthill, her youngest daughter and another one of your 10G grandparents

6755 & 6756 - Ananias Conkling b.1600 England; d.1657 East Hampton, LI and Mary Launder b. 1612 England; d.1655 Salem, MA  

Ananias and Mary arrived in 1638, with Ananias's brother John and some other extended family members, to become some the first settlers of Salem, Massachusetts. Ananias and John were window-glass makers in England, and they continued the same profession here, starting the first window-glass factory in America shortly after they arrived. According to Ananias's entry on the Find-a-grave website, some of the historic buildings in Salem still have "Conklin glass" in their windows. (I find that hard to believe, unless the company stayed in business long after both Ananias and John died.)

6757 & 6758 - John Mulford b. 1606 England; d. 1686 East Hampton, LI and Friedeswiede Osborn b.1606 England; d.1683 East Hampton, LI

John and Friedeswiede (some records call her 'Hannah') were among the founding families of East Hampton. John was a judge. 

6759 & 6760 - Henry Tuthill b. 1612 England; d. 1650 Southold and Bridget Burton b. 1616 England; d. 1650 Southold.  

Henry was born in Tharston, England. He and Bridget arrived on the Mary Anne from Yarmouth and settled in Hingham in 1637. He was a freeman in 1638 and constable in 1640. They relocated to Southold in 1644.  

Their graves might still be seen at the Presbyterian churchyard in Southold.  

6761 & 6762 William Kinge, b.1595 England; d. 1649 Salem and Dorothy Haynes b.1598 England, d.1684 Salem

These two arrived on the Marygould in 1635. They traveled with a group led by Rev. Joseph Hull, most of whom settled in Weymouth, but William and Dorothy went to Salem, where William was listed as a freeman in 1637. One biography says:

William took an active part in the religious controversies of the time and in 1637 identified himself with the Antinomians, a step which placed him under the ban of the Salem authorities, he was admonished to sever his connection with the sect, under penalty of being disarmed and, refusing to do so, he was directed to leave his gun with Lieut. Danforth.

6990 & 6991 - Alexander Walrond Kidney b. 1615 England or Ireland; d. 1703 Barbados and Anne S.(last name unclear), dates and birthplace unknown.

Young British men came to Barbados in the 1600s for two reasons. English plantations were pulling in thousands as indentured servants (who at that time were cheaper than African slaves), and a relative handful came as the representatives of English owners/investors to manage those plantations. 

We don't know whether Alexander was an indentured laborer or a manager, although we know his son married the daughter of a Dutch merchant. 

But there's a larger story to tell about ALL your Dutch and Barbados ancestors. I have to write this combined entry because I don't have much information about each individual. (Not like the New England Puritans, for whom I can see births, marriages, deaths, wills, court records, memoirs, on and on.) For the Dutch and Barbados ancestors, I'm operating almost entirely from basic information I found on family trees saved to Ancestry.com, rather than primary sources, and then trying to fit that information into the broader history of when and where they lived.  Here's what I think happened...

Barbados in the 1600s 

Barbados is the easternmost island in the Caribbean. In the 1550s, Portuguese arrived, but never attempted settlement. Instead they depopulated the island by capturing all the natives and selling them for slaves; deforested the island; and abandoned it.

The English Colony: By the early 1600s, some London investors saw economic potential in the deserted island. Sir William Courten, a London merchant, acquired title to Barbados through a royal patent. He initiated the first English settlement in February 1627, which consisted of 80 settlers and 10 English indentured laborers. A few of your Barbados ancestors have the surname Coerten, but that may be a Dutch name that is only coincidentally similar. There's no reason to believe any of Sir William's family ever moved to the island. 

Other English colonies had been settled earlier (Jamestown, est. 1607; Bermuda, est. 1609; and Plymouth in 1620), but Barbados was the economic hot spot. Two-thirds of the English emigrants to the New World in the 1630s and 1640s went to Barbados, and by the 1650s it was the wealthiest English colony in the Caribbean. 

Most English arrivals were indentured workers, paying for their passage with a contract for five years of labor, after which they were given about £10, usually in goods. Those who arrived before the mid-1630s were also given 5–10 acres of land. Their first money crops were tobacco, cotton, and indigo, before sugar took over as the island's main product by the mid-1600s. 

For most English residents of Barbados, hopes for an idyllic island life were fading by the mid-1600s. There were two problems. First, Barbados' population had reached the island's capacity. By 1650, 44,000 settlers lived in the West Indies, as compared to 12,000 in Virginia and 23,000 in New England. With only 106,000 acres on the whole island, it was no longer possible to give each released indentured worker 10 acres of their own land. Food shortages, high living costs, and the island's limited natural resources (primarily timber and fresh water) made living in Barbados expensive for all, and untenable for non-elite settlers.

Second, by the mid-1600s, the small tobacco and cotton farms were failing and being taken over by large-scale, slave-dependent sugar plantations. Once landless, English settlers had no economic or social future in Barbados because by then the plantation owners preferred enslaved Africans over free white laborers for nearly all jobs. The vast majority left the island before 1660 for other English colonies in the Caribbean or the Carolinas.

But our ancestors can be found in Barbados into the early 1700s, and their kids and grandkids appear in New Jersey, not North or South Carolina. What's that about?

Dutch residents in the English colony: With the exception of Alexander Kidney and his wife, all your other Barbadian ancestors seem to be Dutch, not English.

In the first half of the 17th century, the Dutch West Indies Company was the key intermediary between the Barbados economy and European markets. The company supplied financing for  English operations in Barbados and transported its goods to market. The Brits relied on the Dutch for knowledge of sugarcane cultivation and refining techniques.  

In each port where it conducted business, the company staffed trading posts with its employees. One of your Barbadian 10G grandmothers was born at a pepper and grain trading post in Africa. (See #3496). This indicates that your Barbadian Dutch ancestors came to the island as employees of the Dutch West Indies Company. 

That brings us to the ugly question: Were they involved in the slave trade?

Before the 1630's, slavery was known in Barbados, but indentured workers produced most of its exports. During that time, the company's Barbados employees  -- whether they were keeping the books, loading and unloading, maintaining the ships, whatever -- probably didn't deal with much human cargo.

But what about after the slave trade exploded in the Caribbean? I found a list of the names of the leading slave merchants around that time, and it does not include any I recognize as your ancestor. In addition, Curacao, not Barbados, was the main port at which the company unloaded Africans. Nevertheless, by the mid 1600s, the slave trade comprised such a large part of the Dutch West Indies Company's Caribbean operations, and Barbados plantations were buying so many slaves, that no Barbadian could have been involved in merchant shipping after around 1630 and remained innocent. 

But why did the Dutch leave the island? In 1650, the English Parliament, seeking to strengthen British trade, forbade its Caribbean colonies, including Barbados, from doing any business at all with the Dutch shipping company. (The prohibition didn't entirely stick.) By 1652, war broke out between England and the Netherlands. These events must have upended the lives of the few Dutch living in Barbados. In 1674, the Dutch West Indies Company was dissolved. Still, some of your ancestors hung around after that. The last of them I can see died in Barbados in 1704. Who knows? Maybe they were shopkeepers and fishermen. 

We don't know exactly when your Dutch ancestors left Barbados, but we do know where they went... 

The Dutch settlements in New York and New Jersey in the 1600s 

In addition to their Caribbean interests, the Dutch West Indies Company took control of the fur trade by establishing a trading post in 1625 at the mouth of the Hudson River (New Amsterdam), and other settlements upriver--primarily Fort Orange, modern-day Albany. By 1655, Dutch settlers numbered more than 2,000. Just five years later, the Dutch population had grown to almost 9,000 people, including a settlement in New Jersey at Bergen (now Jersey City). You have ancestors born in all these areas.

Both England and the Netherlands wanted control of the Hudson River and its outlet. This conflict involved both your Dutch ancestors at the west end of Long Island and your English ancestors on the eastern end. (To learn about your English ancestors' involvement, check out #3359, #3361, #3367, and particularly #3369).  Long story short, despite your ancestors' efforts, the two empires negotiatated an end to their dispute in 1664. The Netherlands ceded its northern colony to England, which reorganized it into the New York and New Jersey colonies. In return, England handed over control of several of its South American and Caribbean holdings--not including Barbados.

The Barbados branch of your family tree joined the New Amsterdam branch with the marriage in the early 1660s of #435 and #436--James Vreeland (his parents were Dutch New Amsterdam colonists) and Marritje Kidney (her parents had come to New Amsterdam from Barbados). Their kids were born in New Jersey. 

Note: I got my Barbados history mostly from this book, which is free online.  

7055 & 7056 - Robert Coe b.1596 England; d.1689 Jamaica, NY and Mary Crabbe b.1600 and d.1628 in England

Community leader

Robert arrived in Boston in 1634 with his second wife and his three sons, and adopted a pattern followed by quite a few of our ancestors: he moved to a brand-new settlement every few years. 

The Coe family first resided in Watertown, MA. Land records show he then purchased land from the Indians in 1635 and founded Wethersfield, CT; then in 1640 purchased land from the settlement of New Haven and founded Stamford, CT; then in 1643 was one of the founders of Hempstead, Long Island; then in 1652, settled Newton, LI; and finally in 1656, he was among the group of colonists who bought land from the Indians to found Jamaica, NY.

7057 & 7058 John Carman b. 1606 England; d. 1654 Hempstead, NY and Florence Fordham  b.1614 England; d. 1670 Newtown, NY

Pioneer conflict

Thomas Carman, John's great grandfather (b.1514; your 14G grandfather), was burned at the stake for his religious beliefs in England in 1558. 

The Carman family also had it pretty rough in the New World. A letter from their settlement to John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts in the summer of 1644  includes:

“… desiring to acquaint your worship with our condition, which is the worse by reason we want sufficient strength to carry on our plantation for present. The Indians would have made peace, and some of them have, but we dare not trust to them but have labored to serve the providence of god in a watchful way and care fearing the worst for lack of which Mr. Fordham’s plantation hath too lately suffered having too much trusted those unfaithful heathen. Three men have been cut down at their work and one of goodman John Carman's children almost massacred and another carried away, and yet to him they pretended greatest friendship. Sir the short of it is that their plot is to cut of all the Christians (as we call them) in these parts of America both Dutch, English, and French…"

 
7105 & 7106 William Bateman III  b. 1590 England; d. 1658 Connecticut and Joan Wilkinson b. 1608 Glen Lyon Scotland; d. 1665 Concord  
Present for history
The Batemans were titled back in England ('sir') and arrived in 1630 on the Winthrop Fleet. They were, therefore, among the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
However, there were several William Batemans who immigrated in the early years; count this man and his father as two of the less-than-positive identifications as the ones who were your ancestors; they are a best guess.
William Bateman III
  
 

  Your 12G grandparents

 Born between year and year

13319 & 13320 - Robert Rose b.1594 England; d.1665 New Haven, CT and Margery Everard b.1594 England; d.1664 New Haven

Military action
Robert and Margery arrived in 1634. They settled first in Watertown, MA, but joined the group leaving there to found Wethersfield CT, where Robert became constable and then served in the colonial legislature from 1641-1643. Robert served as a soldier in the Pequot War.  

13321 & 13322 - Thomas David Rainsford b.1608 Yorkshire, England; d.1600 New London, CT and Mary Elizabeth York b.1612 England; d.1660 New London, CT

These two must have immigrated before 1634, because their daughter was born in 1634 in Connecticut.

13355 & 13356 - John Larkin b.1585 England; d.1629 at sea in transit to America; Elizabeth Baker, b.1591 England; d.1662 Charlestown, MA

Records for these two are skimpy. John's death at sea was recorded in 1629, so I'm assuming that's when Elizabeth and her son (#6677, Edward) arrived. I cannot find any record of Elizabeth's remarriage, almost certain for a 38-year old widow. There are some records of an Elizabeth Larkin in Virginia, but I have never seen any historian talk of travel between Massachusetts and Virginia, except in commercial trading. Her son clearly resided in Charlestown, Massachusetts. 

13363 & 13564 - William Redfield  b.1580 England; d.1662 Monhegan (Maine? Massachusetts?) and unknown wife.

William arrived in 1635. The family record that documents William's death gives the location only as "Monhegan" but nowadays, that's only a small island in Maine. Settlers were in Maine at that time, involved mainly in the fur trade. 

13371 & 13372 - Thomas Bliss b.1583 England; d.1650 Hartford, CT and unknown wife.
 Thomas Bliss and his son arrived in 1636 and are both among the settlers of Hartford, CT. Full story at this link.
 
13491 & 13492 - James Hampton b.1577 England; d.1633 in Massachusetts and unknown wife who died in England.
James appears to have arrived in 1633 with his son's family, at age 56.

13499 & 13500 Peter Hallock b.1585 England; d.1684 Southold, Long Island and Elizabeth Margaret Youngs b.1585 England; d.1639 Hartford, CT
Community leader
 I think that Elizabeth was the sister of Rev. John Youngs, the leader of the group that settled Southold, but she died before the group moved there. We're also descended from John (#6719) and another sibling, Martha (#6744).
 
When the thirteen founders of Southold--a group that included Peter--were approaching Long Island in 1640 and getting ready to disembark at their new home, they were quite aware that theirs would be the first English settlement on the island. They drew lots to decide who would first set foot on the beach: Peter won, and today you can still visit what used to be called Hallock's Beach, and is now Hallock State Park Preserve. 
 
As the town's founders settled in and started to expand, Peter purchased from the Indians a tract of land then called "Oyster Ponds," but is now Orient, at the eastern end of Long Island. Before building on it, he returned to England for his second wife (name unknown) and her son. He promised her that if she and her son would come to America with him, he would share ownership of the property with her son. But when they returned, the Natives had repossessed and resold the land, considering it deserted in Peter's long absence. He then purchased another tract of land on Long Island, between Long Island Sound and Peconic Bay, and called it Aquebogue. (You can still find it on a map.) 

13501 & 13502 - Edward Howell b.1584 England; d.1656 Southampton, Long Island and Elizabeth Francis Paxton b.1584 England; d.1656 Southampton, Long Island

Community leader
Edward Howell was leader of the group that settled Southampton, Long Island, and seems to have been an enormously respected man. The following excerpt is from a history of Southampton, written by a historian who is NOT a descendant:

The Father of Southampton was Edward Howell. A magistrate, early elected one of the Selectmen to manage the town’s affairs; its leading citizen in wealth and social position, whose name appears first in every list, his is the most attractive figure we meet at the beginning of Southampton’s story.  

The manor house of the Marsh Gibbon estate, which Edward
sold to finance his family's new life in America. It looks like
it's still on history tours of Buckinghamshire.

A gentleman by birth, in the then-strict meaning of the word, he owned the old manor house of Westbury at Marsh Gibbon in Buckinghamshire, England, which he sold in 1639. He also owned property at Wotten Underwood, from which he received an annuity of 31 pounds.

He was admitted a freeman of the Massachusetts Colony in March 1638 and received a land grant of 500 acres at Lynn from King Charles I. He owned a grist mill there and later became owner of the first mill in Southampton.  In 1640, Edward was one of three owners who obtained authorization to occupy an eight-mile-square on Long Island, which was then part of the Connecticut Colony. In June or July 1640, Edward and his family moved to Southampton.

He owned a sloop which from time to time carried “dissatisfied colonists” from Massachusetts to Long Island. Taking as indeed everyone did his share in the homely common tasks of the community (he and his son both appear, for example, in the whaling list of 1644) yet his name never figures in any of the innumerable petty law suits nor bickerings over small matters of business or scandal and one gathers the impression through the records of a man greatly respected, dignified, reserved and perhaps a bit aloof. In 1647, Edward was selected to serve as a member of the legislature at Hartford and held that position until his death.”

We're descended from Edward's daughter Margaret, but I read a bit more in that history of Southampton, and it sounds as if her brother Arthur was a delightful character. He got into a lot of relatively innocent trouble in the community as a boy, but learned the local Indians' language and as an adult became a valuable negotiator and interpreter. 

In contrast, one of the more disturbing things I've seen in this project is a book, saved on Ancestry.com, written by another of Edward's descendants, published in 1930 in America, titled "Aryan Blood in Modern Nations and the Howells." It is every bit as weird as you might imagine it to be, proudly tracing the Howell family back to "the Aryans in their ancient home in Central Asia." I skimmed the whole book; the author, Fleming Howell, MD, did do a LOT of world-history review (I'll give him that), but the whole thing is an exercise in stereotyping, using highly questionable 'racial' groupings. He's much harder on the Arabs ("...the Moors were the most inherently treacherous and cruel people of whom we have any account.") than the Jews, whom he hardly mentions. 

13517 & 13518 - Anthonie Osborn b.1575 England; d.1649 Salem, MA and Margaret Carrington b.1570 England; d.1645 Salem, MA.

14215 & 14216  William Bateman b.1564, Essex, England; d.1630 Charlestown, MA and unknown wife.

Present for history (just)
In 1630, poor William must have pretty much just stepped off the boat, at age 66, and died. His wife had died in England. 

The Batemans came with Governor Winthrop on the famous Winthrop Fleet, which created the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, there were several William Batemans who immigrated in the early years; count this man and his son among the less-than-positive identifications as your ancestors; they are a best guess.



 

 

 
 

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Introduction and Highlights: An exceptionally American family tree

This blog is written for the grandchildren of William and Phyllis James McKim, the children of Marilyn, Karen, Ellen, and Susan .   In 1992...