Essex County, Massachusetts
This is what Wikipedia has to say about Essex County:
“The county was created by the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony on May 10, 1643, when it was ordered "that the whole plantation within this jurisdiction be divided into four sheires". Named after the county in England, Essex then comprised the towns of Salem, Lynn, Wenham, Ipswich, Rowley, Newbury, Gloucester, and Andover. In 1680, Haverhill and Salisbury, both located north of the Merrimack River, were annexed to Essex County. These communities had been part of Massachusetts' colonial-era Norfolk County. The remaining four towns within colonial Norfolk County, which included Exeter and what is now Portsmouth, were transferred to what became Rockingham County in the Province of New Hampshire. The ten large founding Massachusetts-based settlements were then subdivided over the centuries to produce Essex County's modern composition of cities and towns.”
The Evolution of Essex County Boundaries
This is not as significant an issue for Essex County as it has been for other counties I’ve written about. As the following maps show, once the county was formed in 1643, the only real change came in 1679 when Norfolk County (to the north of Essex) was eliminated. Most of that county became part of the new Province of New Hampshire, while a few towns were annexed to Essex County. Since then, there have been only a few minor adjustments to the county’s borders. These maps are all taken from https://www.mapofus.org.
My Ancestors in Essex County
This essay was a tough one to get under control. I have more than 75 ancestors who lived in Essex County – in Andover, Gloucester, Haverhill, Ipswich, Lynn, Marblehead, Newbury, Rowley, Salem, and Salisbury. Some of my ancestors lived in more than one of these towns over the course of their lives. The earliest of my ancestors were in these towns before 1630; the latest didn’t leave until 1720 or so. This is a lot of territory and time to cover in any sort of organized essay. But I’ll give it a shot.
This map shows the towns in Essex County; the town named underlined in red are the towns where my ancestors lived. (This map is from the FamilySearch website)
Understanding the order in which these towns were formed helps to make some sense of all of this:
Gloucester – founded in 1623, abandoned 1626, re-incorporated 1642
Lynn – settled by people from Salem in 1629; incorporated as Saugus in 1630; renamed Lynn in 1637
Rowley – founded in 1630
Salem – settled as Naumkeag in 1626; chartered and renamed Salem in 1629
Ipswich – settled as Agawam in 1633; incorporated as Ipswich in 1634
Newbury – founded in 1635
Andover – founded in 1636 as Cochichewick; incorporated as Andover in 1646
Salisbury – founded in 1638
Haverhill – settled in 1640 by settlers from Newbury
Marblehead – taken from Salem and incorporated as Marblehead in 1649
To make sense of all of this, I have decided to focus on four towns in Essex County where my ancestors were most prevalent: Lynn, Rowley, Ipswich, and Andover. Hang on. This is going to be a wild ride.
The Town of Lynn
The first record of settlement in Lynn was in 1629 when a small group of residents from Salem relocated to Saugus – a settlement that would become Lynn. In the spring of 1630, the Winthrop Fleet arrived at Salem, and some of the passengers on these ships joined the settlement at Saugus. Among this group of settlers are two of my ancestors in Lynn – Thomas Newhall and Robert Potter. Settlement of the town of Saugus continued; it received a minister in 1632, and it was renamed Lynn in 1637. I connect to these ancestors through my Arnold family line.
My Ancestors in Lynn
My 11th great-grandfather Thomas Newhall Sr. (1594-1674) is my “anchor” ancestor in Lynn. As I mentioned above, he was one of the passengers from the Winthrop Fleet who came to Saugus (Lynn) in 1630. He had married Mary Woodland (1600-1655) in England, and they came to Massachusetts with their five young children (aged 1-10 at the time of their passage). Mary became pregnant again over their first winter in Salem; their sixth child, my 10th great-grandfather Thomas Newhall (1630-1687) was born in Saugus on September 29, 1630. His grave marker in the Old Burial Ground in Lynn identifies him as “the first white child born in Lynn.” Yay.
The Town of Rowley
Rowley was settled in the fall of 1638 by a group of families from Hull, in Yorkshire, England. The group, led by their minister, Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, came on the ship John from London. Among that first group were two of my ancestors – William Acy and John Spofford. The group wintered in Salem before making their way to their new town of Rowley, between Ipswich and Newbury. Other families had joined them, so they numbered almost 60 families at this time.
This map shows original land allocations in Rowley; the lots allocated to my Acy, Swann, Abbott, and Spofford ancestors are underlined in red.
My Ancestors in Rowley
I have several separate sets of ancestors in Rowley, as you can see on the pedigree charts I’ve provided here.
As you can see, I have a lot of ancestors in 17th-century Rowley, so I’ll talk about them alphabetically.
A Note: much of this information is taken from Early Settlers of Rowley, Massachusetts; a genealogical record of the families who settled in Rowley before 1700, with several generations of their descendants, compiled by George Brainard Blodgett, A. M.; revised, edited and published by Amos Everett Jewett. This book is generally unsourced and anecdotal, but still valuable for its descriptions of the lives of people in Rowley in the 17th century. It cannot, however, be used to substantiate membership in a lineage society. I accessed it on the HathiTrust website.
My 10th great-grandparents, George Abbott (1600-1647) and Mary Hill (1605-1647) were among this earliest group of settlers. After the death of both George and Mary in 1647, the courts authorized the town of Rowley to apprentice their 18-year-old son, Thomas, to John Boynton in Rowley. George left a nuncupative will (oral or non-written) in which he named Mark Simons of Ipswich to oversee the dispersal of funds to their minor children – including my 9th great-grandfather George Abbott II (1631-1689), and to supervise the naming of guardians for the children. George 1631 married Sarah Farnham (1638-1728) in 1658; she was from Andover, and that is where they raised their ten children. I’ll continue the Abbott story when I write about Andover.
Although they came from England on the John of London in 1638 with a group of religious dissidents led by Ezekiel Rogers, my 11th great-grandparents William Acy (1596-1690) and Margaret Haiton (1596-1674) are not listed among the first families to settle in Rowley. William is however identified as the owner of a two-acre plot of land there in the 1643 land survey, and he took an oath as a freeman there in 1644. William held many town offices before his death in 1690. He and Margaret had 11 children in England, including my 10th great-grandmother Elizabeth Acy (1632-1689). Elizabeth married Robert Swan (1627-1697) (not surprising – the map above shows that they were neighbors) in Haverhill, a neighboring town in Essex County in 1653, and they appear to have spent the rest of their lives in Haverhill. More about Robert later.
My 8th great-grandfather David Bennett (?-1718) was born either in England in 1615 or in Rowley in 1657; the records are inconclusive, and David either lived 103 years (as some records suggest) or had a son named David who was born in 1657 and lived a normal age span of 60 years (as other records suggest). Depending on which birth date I accept, David may have first married in the 1630s or the 1650s; but he did marry Mary Plummer (1634-1682) in 1672; Mary’s first husband, John Cheney, died in 1671 and left her with three young children. Mary’s father, my 9th great-grandfather Francis Plummer (1594-1673), was an original settler of the neighboring town of Newbury in Essex County. This map shows the early house lot allocations in Newbury; Francis owned the land marked by the red circle.
David and Mary had two more children, including my 7th great-grandmother Sarah Bennett (1682-1782). He married for a third time – to Rebeckah Spencer Buller – in 1782 – and he had at least two more children with her. David was a doctor (although the training that underpins that title in our era was not the norm in the 17th century), and was the only doctor in Rowley until his son William was old enough to assist him.
Sarah Bennett (David’s daughter) married John Decker (1682-1754) in Rowley in 1706. John’s parents, John Decker (1646-1694) and Mary Scott (1651-1700) were also born in Rowley. I can’t find anything about the parents of John 1646; however, Mary’s parents have a tragic story that I want to recount here.
Mary’s parents – her mother, Margaret Stephenson (1616-1692), and her father Benjamin Scott (1612-1671) – were both born in England. Benjamin came to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640; I don’t know when Margaret came, but she was in Massachusetts by 1642, when she and Benjamin married. (For those keeping score, Margaret and Benjamin were my 9th great-grandparents.)
Margaret and Benjamin had at least seven children, including my 8x great-grandmother Mary Scott (mentioned above). They had several children in Cambridge before they moved to Rowley, where they had more children. They lost four of their children in childhood – at least two in infancy and two more within just a few years. This already tragic set of circumstances turned against Margaret later in her life.
Margaret’s husband Benjamin died in 1671, and that’s when Margaret’s troubles began. Benjamin had owned property, but when he died he left her a fairly small estate – 67 pounds – on which she had to live for the rest of her life. By 1691, after 20 years of widowhood, Margaret was certainly poor and isolated. Only one of her children, her son Benjamin, still lived in Rowley, and he was married with six children, so he couldn’t contribute much to her well-being.
All of this resulted in a crisis in 1692. The Salem Witch hysteria was in full bloom at this time, and a woman like Margaret – old, widowed, poor, alone, and vulnerable – was a likely target for accusations of witchcraft. The deaths of so many of her children, along with her low social and economic standing in the community, made people suspicious of her. She was formally accused of witchcraft by members of two of the most distinguished families of Rowley.
Margaret was found guilty on September 22, 1692, and was hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem. She has the distinction of being the only person from Rowley hanged during this misadventure in Salem. By the time of her execution, the witchcraft hysteria was cooling down, and her execution (along with seven other unfortunate individuals executed that day) was the last conducted during the witchcraft trials. In the spring of 1693, the governor of Massachusetts pardoned the individuals who were still imprisoned, and within a few years the state government had repented of its wrongdoing and declared the 1692 trials and executions unlawful.
A bit late for Margaret.
Now back to my story.
My 11th great-grandfather Richard Swan (1607-1678) came to Rowley in 1639. He had married Anna Spofford (1604-1668) in England in 1621, and they brought their six children with them when they immigrated – including my 10th great-grandfather, Robert Swan (1627-1697), who was their second child and second son. They had one more child in 1640. Richard Swan appears first in America in Boston, where he joined the church on January 6, 1639, and had one child baptized the Sunday after his admission. Soon after, he removed his family to Rowley where he remained during his life. He represented the town in the Massachusetts General Court in 1666 and many years after. He served in King Philip's War and the expedition to Canada. He was admitted as a freeman in Rowley on May 13, 1640. He owned more than a dozen plots of land around the town. He served in many official positions in Rowley – juryman, “overseer of highways, gates, and fences,” selectman, constable, and deputy to the General Court. In his will, he left his house in Rowley and significant acreage to his son Robert.
The Town of Ipswich
Ipswich was founded by the son of John Winthrop (founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony). The son was also named John and was seemingly referred to generally as John the Younger, so that’s what I’ll call him. John the Younger and 12 other men sailed north from Salem around the outcropping of Cape Ann into Ipswich harbor and took up residence there.
My Ancestors in Ipswich
I’m going to frame my story about my ancestors in Ipswich around Hannah’s great-grandfather (my 9th great-grandfather) Robert Cross (1612-1693). Robert married Anna Jordan (1617-1677) in Ipswich in 1635. Anna had come to Ipswich that year with her parents Stephen Jordan (1589-1670) and Susannah Merril (1585-1673) on the ship Mary and John.
I don’t know when Robert came to Ipswich.
Robert and Anna had 11 children in Ipswich, including my 8th great-grandfather Robert Cross II (1642-1710), who was their third child. Robert 1642 married Martha Treadwell (1643-1738) in Ipswich in 1635, and they had eight children there, including my 7th great-grandmother Mary Ann Cross (1675-1710), who was their fourth child. Martha’s parents, Thomas Treadwell (1605-1671) and Mary Wilson (1605-1685), had married in England in 1633 and come to Massachusetts Bay in 1635 on the ship Hopewell.
Robert Cross (both 1613 and 1642) were – shall we say – colorful residents of Ipswich. Things started out reasonably well for Robert 1613. He owned six acres of land with a house on it before 1637. After the spring of 1637, when he and 16 other young men of Ipswich saw service in the local Pequot War, he received additional land. By 1649/50 he owned 40 acres of land in Ipswich. But he was a difficult man; according to one source, he had “developed an idea that the magistrates . . . were prejudiced against him.” He was in court several times for apparent altercations with his neighbors. He also apparently threw his daughter (also named Martha) out of the house for consorting with a man in the village. He continued to challenge the authority of the magistrates, comparing them at one point to the Spanish Inquisition (yeah, he really did).
Martha’s parents (who were apparently upstanding citizens of Ipswich) could not have been happy when Martha decided to marry Robert 1642, the son of the town reprobate. Things did not go much better for Robert 1642. After a day of military training in 1667, after he and some of his friends had too much to drink, they committed what the court described as a “barbarous and inhuman act” – they tore open the grave of Masconomet, who was the sagamore (chief) of local Agawan tribe. Masconomet is remembered as the Indian leader who boarded Winthrop’s ship Arbella after the fleet landed in 1630. He subsequently ceded much tribal land to the Puritans who settled under Winthrop and pursued a path of assimilation for his people. Masconomet himself took on the name “John the Sagamore,” lived on farmland adjacent to where the English settlers lived, and gave his children English names.
So this is the grave that Robert 1642 and his drunken buddies decided to desecrate. They scattered Masconomet’s bones and carried his head around on a pole. Robert 1642 was identified as the ringleader of this group, and for these actions he was jailed until the next “lecture day” (religious observance or a day of rest). On the appointed day he was sentenced to sit in the stocks for one hour and to remain in jail until he could pay a fine of six pounds. After he was released from jail, he was required to re-inter the bones of the Indian chief and erect a cover of stones two feet high over the grave. According to the same source, alcohol was Robert’s curse; court records reveal that he was “much in drink” on several occasions over the next several years. He continued the pattern set by his father, apparently feuding with (and sometimes assaulting) his neighbors.
My 7th great-grandmother Mary Ann Cross (1675-1710) married Benjamin Carryl (1670-1749) in Ipswich in 1701, and they had two children, including my 6th great-grandmother Hannah Carryl (1705-??) before Mary Ann’s death in 1710. Just as a side note: Benjamin’s mother was Mary Pease, the niece of my 9th great-grandfather John Pease of Martha’s Vineyard (Dukes County).
The Town of Andover
In 1634, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts reserved land in what is now Andover, North Andover, and South Lawrence. A group of Newbury and Ipswich residents, led by a man named John Woodbridge, established the first permanent settlement in the Andover and North Andover area in 1641. The list of the first landowners in Andover includes two of my ancestors, George Abbott and Nicholas Holt.
My Ancestors in Andover
I talked about my 10th great-grandfather George Abbott 1600-1647 when I told the story of my ancestors in the town of Rowley earlier in this essay. Now I’m going to tell you what else happened to that family after they left Rowley. George is listed as one of the original householders in Andover (along with Nicholas Holt, about whom I’ll talk in a minute)
As I described earlier, both George 1600 and his wife Mary Hill died in 1647, while most of their children were minors – my 9th great-grandfather George Abbott Jr (1631-1689) among them. The will of George 1600 named guardians for the children and directed these guardians to provide financially for their well-being. That must have worked out okay, because ten years later, George 1631 married Sarah Farnham (1638-1728) in the neighboring town of Ipswich. Sarah’s parents, Ralph Farnham (1601-1692) and Alice Harris (1606-1691) had married in England and come to Massachusetts Bay with their three children in 1635 on the ship James. They settled in Ipswich, but the entire family seems to have moved to Andover after 1658. George 1631 and Sarah would go on to have 13 children in Andover, including my 8th great-grandfather John Abbott (1662-1718), who was their fifth child.
John married Jemima Johnson (1678-1754) in Andover in 1697 and they had five children. Both sets of Jemima’s grandparents had come to Massachusetts Bay in 1635. Her paternal grandparents, John Johnson (1607-1683) and his wife (I don’t know her name), had come on the ship James with their two children – including Jemima’s father Thomas Johnson (1633-1719) – in 1635. John was a shoemaker. Thomas married Mary Holt (1638-1700) in 1657. Mary’s parents, Nicholas Holt (1602-1685) and Elizabeth Short (1605-1656), had also come on the James in 1635. Nicholas was an original settler in Newbury but had moved to Andover by 1644, and lived the rest of his life there. A “turner” (woodworker) by trade, he is listed among the six original householders in Andover and was one of a group of ten men who formed the first church in Andover.
Back to John and Jemima.
Their first two children were born in Andover. Their last three children – including my 7th great-grandmother, Mary Abbott (1704-1740) — were born in Sudbury in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. I’ll talk about Middlesex County later.
To wrap up
It’s been amazing to research and write this story. The fact that so many of my ancestors settled in this county – many of them after sailing across the ocean on the same ships in the same years – coupled with the fact that I have never heard of any of them or given one thought to Essex County before this week, is humbling. There is so much to learn!