Rev. John Smith
Rev. John1 Smith, born at Brinspittie, Dorsetshire, England, about 1614; minister at Barnstable, Mass., 1643; juryman; deputy. Appointed to attend meetings of the Quakers and hear their defense; reported in their favor, and so displeased his brother-in-law, Governor Thomas Hinckley. Withdrew from communion with the church for conscientious reasons. In September, 1661, he led in organizing a church which the council would not approve. (MS. in Mass. Hist. Coll. quoted by Felt.)
In 1673 he was called to Sandwich, and was the minister in this settlement until 1689. He d. in 17-, [last two figures not deciphered]; m., about 1643, Susanna, dau. of Samuel and Sarah Hinckley, who came in the Hercules, March, 1634.
Samuel Hinckley was in Barnstable in 1638; town officer; his son Thomas became governor of Plymouth Colony; will prob. March 4, 1663, names dau. Susanna Smith and son Thomas Hinckley.
Joseph Smith
Joseph2 Smith, b. Dec. 6, 1667, at Barnstable; m. April 29, 1689, Anne Fuller. “He was an important man in the county; selectman, town treasurer, and representative”; d. March 4, 1746.
Edward1 Fuller came with his wife in the Mayflower, and signed the compact. Res. Plymouth. Both he and the wife died in the winter of 1621, and their bodies were interred on Burial Hill.
Edward Fuller was of the Leyden Company who set sail on the Speedwell, and was afterward on the Mayflower, the Speedwell proving un-seaworthy.
Mathew2 Fuller, b. in England, place and date of birth unknown. “He did not come to New England until after his father’s death. Little is known of his early history, which is to be regretted, because we like to trace successive steps by which an orphan boy became eminent. Captain Mathew Fuller was one of the earliest physicians of Barnstable County.” . . . (Barnstable Families, p. 376.)
In 1642 he is in Plymouth, and has a grant of land. In 1653 he was deputy from Barnstable to the Colony Court. June 20, 1654, he was appointed lieutenant under Captain Miles Standish of a company of fifty men, the quota of Plymouth Colony in the proposed expedition against the Dutch Colony of Manhattoes, now New York. Oct. 2, 1658, he was elected one of the council of war, and in 1671 its chairman and one of the magistrates of the colony. Dec. 17, 1673, he was appointed surgeon-general of the colony troops, and also of Massachusetts, if the colony approved. (Plymouth Colony Records.)
“Capt. Mathew Fuller was appointed to be surgeon-general of all the forces of the Colony.” (Bodge’s King Philip’s War, p. 462.)
“In 1675 he was allowed 4 shillings a day for his services as Surgeon-General.” (Colony Records.) He was the physician who attended Miles Standish in his last sickness.
Mathew Fuller m. Frances -. The will of Dr. Fuller was probated Oct. 30, 1678; mentions second wife Frances and Anne, wid. of son Samuel.
Samuel3 Fuller, no record of birth; m. Mary . He was a member of the Colony Committee in 1670, appointed to view the injury done to the Indians by the attack of the English and assign damages. He was a town officer, also a lieutenant in the Plymouth Colony forces, in King Philip’s War, and was killed in the first battle of that dreadful war, at Rehoboth, March 25, 1675. His dau. Anne, b. 1669, m. April 29, 1689, Joseph2 Smith. (Barnstable Families, vol. i.)
Anne [Fuller] Smith d. July 2, 1722.
Rev. Thomas Smith
Rev. Thomas3 Smith, b. at Barnstable, Feb. 6, 1706; grad. Harv. Coll. 1725; ordained minister at Yarmouth, Mass., April 16, 1721; m. Aug. 29, 1734, Judith Miller.
“Rev. Thomas Smith was a man of note in his day, and sprang from an honored ancestry, while the family into which he married was of even more distinguished extraction.” (New Eng. His. and Gen. Reg., vol. 31, p. 68.)
“After preaching in Yarmouth for twenty-five years, Mr. Smith’s religious views had so advanced and liberalized as to be no longer in accord with the church. Consequently he asked for his dismission from the church, which was granted. The same year, 1754, he settled in Pembroke, Mass., where he remained until his death July 7, 1788.” He was spoken of as a fine scholar and “the most distinguished man who had ever been settled in the town.” (Rev. Morrill Allen, one of his late successors.)
Rev. John1 Miller came to New England, 1634, with wife Lydia and son John; grad. Gains Coll., Cambridge, A.B. 1627; included in Mather’s Magnalia in his “first classis”; was an elder in the Roxbury church, with Rev. John Eliot, who labored in converting the Indians and translated the Bible into the Indian language. Mr. Miller was an assistant from 1639 to 1641 to the Rev. Ezekiel Rogers at Rowley, Mass., and was also town clerk in this place. In 1641 he received and declined a call to become the minister at Woburn. In 1646 he was called to Yarmouth to succeed the “famous Marmaduke Mathews.” His wife Lydia d. in Boston, “at the home of Thomas Bumstead, Aug. 7, 1658.” (Boston Records.)
After the death of his wife he was settled in Groton, whither he seems to have gone with the first settlers. “A vote passed in Groton March 18, 1662-3, requested Rev. John Miller to continue with them, if he was moved to do so.” Land was granted to him in this same year. He d. in Groton, June 12, 1663, and was succeeded by Rev. Samuel Willard [son of Major Simon 1] who was ordained July 13, 1664. “Mr. Miller is said to have been a man of high literary attainments.”
John2 Miller, b. in England, 1631-2; m. Dec. 24, 1659, Margerett Winslow, b. 1640, dau. of Josiah and Margerett (Bourne] Winslow and niece of Gov. Edward Winslow. (Josiah Winslow was b. in England, bap. Feb. 16, 1605[6], son of Edward Winslow, Esq., and Magdalen, his wife, of Droitwich, Worcestershire, England. Josiah Winslow lived in Scituate, and afterwards in Marshfield, where he was town clerk in 1643 and many years after, also representative. “He was `Assistant’ to his brother, Gov. Edward Window.” He d. in Marshfield, Dec. 1, 1674; his wid. Margerett d. in Marshfield, Oct., 1683; of their children whose marriages are recorded, Martha m. John, son of Gov. William Bradford, and Margerett m. John Miller.)
John Miller settled in Yarmouth, where he filled various offices of trust, and was frequently its representative to the General Court; d. at Yarmouth, June 10, 1711.
Josiah3 Miller, b. at Yarmouth, Oct. 917, 1679; m. Aug. 13, 1708, Mary Barker, b. April 14, 1674, dau. of Isaac and Judith [Prince] Banker. Her grandfather was Gov. Thomas Prince, who came in the Fortune to Plymouth, Nov., 161. His first wife was Patience Brewster, dau. of Elder William Brewster, who d. 1634; m. second, April 1, 1635, Mary Collier, she was the grandmother of Mary [Barker] Miller. [Thomas Prince was chosen governor of Plymouth Colony 1633, and re-elected repeatedly.] Josiah Miller was a prominent man in the county. He d. in Yarmouth, April 15, 179; his wid. Mary [Barker] Miller died in the home of her son-in-law, Rev. Thomas Smith, in Pembroke, Feb. 15, 1772, nearly 94 years old.
William Collier of Duxbury, immigrant. A merchant of London, one of the “Merchant Adventurers,” came over before 1632, with four daughters.
In 1632 petitioned General Court for incorporation of Duxbury as a town. In Jan., 1633-4, on board of assessors for the colony. “He became a leading man in the Pilgrim government.” (The Mayflower and her Log, p. 372.) “In 1660 William Collier was the richest man in the Colony.” (The Pilgrim Republic, p. 436.) Not only was he a man of substance, but also of great influence and position. In 1634 he was made assistant, serving in that capacity for twenty-eight years, in the period from 1634 to 1665. In 1613 he was one of the two commissioners sent from Plymouth to the United Colonies. In 1657 he presided ever the General Court for two periods. “Collier was rigid, narrow and illiberal in his views; with three others he tried and convicted Howland for harboring a Quaker preacher and resisting an officer who tried to arrest the preacher; at another time he declared he would not remain in the General Court, if Cudworth, the Quaker’s friend, was admitted.” He d. in 1670. Children, all b. in England:
1. Sarah, m., 1634, Love Brewster.
2. Rebecca, m., 1634, Job Cole.
3. Mary, m. [second wife], 1635, THOMAS PRINCE.
4. Elizabeth, m. Nov. 2, 1637, Constance Southworth.
Joseph Smith
Joseph1 Smith, b. at Yarmouth, Nov. 22, 1740; m. first Lucia Wadsworth, date of marriage and death unknown to writer. He m. second, Jan. 91, 178, Bathsheba Torrey, dau. of William and Mary [Turner] Torrey.
Bathsheba Torrey was descended from Elder William Brewster and from Rev. Peter Hobart of Hingham, in New England.
Ancestry of William and Mary [Turner] Torrey: Parents: Haviland Torrey m. Elizabeth Croade; Ezekiel Turner m. Bathsheba Stockbridge. Grandparents: William Torrey m. Deborah Green; John Croade m. Deborah Thomas; Major Amos Turner m. Mary Highland; Joseph Stockbridge m. Margerett Turner. Great-grand: William Torrey m. Jane Haviland; John Green m. Ann Almy; John Croade m. Elizabeth Price; Nathaniel Thomas m. Deborah Jacobs; John Turner m. Mary Brewster, dau. of Jonathan Brewster by W. Lucretia Oldham; gr.-dau. of Elder William Brewster (see Elder William Brewster’s Descendants); Thomas Hiland m. Elizabeth –; Charles Stockbridge m. Abigail ; Joseph Turner m. Bathsheba Hobart, dau. of Rev. Peter Hobart of Hingham, Mass. Great-great-grand: Philip Torrey m. Alice Richards; John Green m. Joan Tattersall; William Almy m. Audrey ;Nicholas Jacobs m. Mary ; Humphrey Turner m. Lydia [Gainor or Gower]; Jonathan Brewster m. Lucretia Oldham; John Stockbridge m. Ann ; Humphrey Turner m. Lydia [Gainor or Gower].
Rev. Peter Hobart by 2d wife.
William Brewster was educated at Cambridge, in Latin and Greek; private secretary to Davison [Secretary of State]; appointed charge of the port at Scrooby, England. The Pilgrims met at his house. He was a leader in the removal to Holland. He was Ruling Elder of the church at Delfshaven, Holland. “Elder Brewster was the chief figure of the departing Pilgrims gathered on the Speedwell’s deck as she took her departure from Delfshaven.” (The Mayflower and her Log, Azel Ames.)
Elder Brewster was a printer and publisher. “Had the Pilgrims gone to London to embark for America, many, if not most of them, would have been put in prison, especially William Brewster.” (The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, p. 196.)
Brewster with his family was transferred to the Mayflower at Southampton. The ecclesiastical authority remained with him on the voyage to Plymouth. He signed the compact. He d. April 10, 1684; wife Mary d. 16917. Jonathan and Love Brewster were executors of their father’s will.
Elder Brewster left a library of four hundred volumes, including sixty-two in Latin. Public records and journals give a full account of his life at Plymouth. Among them, that of Governor Bradford’s is of the greatest interest.
Of the articles of furniture said to have been in the Mayflower, “it is altogether probable that what is known as Elder Brewster’s chair came with him on that ship. There is even greater probability as to one of his books having his autograph.” (The Mayflower and her Log, p. 214.)
There were four children born to Joseph Smith by his first marriage and nine children by the wife Bathsheba Torrey. Capt. Joseph Smith d. in Pembroke, Aug. 11, 1811; his wid. d. Jan. 25, 1844. She was much younger than her husband.
“Capt. Joseph Smith began in his youth to follow the sea, and steadily progressed until the troublesome times of the Revolution. There is a full account of his bravery on the sloop Republic, when on Oct. 24, 1776, as second officer, he was instrumental in capturing for Washington’s army the valuable cargo of the ship Julius Cæsar.” (See Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution, p. 4’78.)
At the close of the war he bought a farm in the west parish of Pembroke. This family has been prominent as sea captains, and several of them have lived to great age.
Catherine5 Smith, b. at Pembroke, May 24, 1787, dau. of Capt. Joseph Smith by wife Bathsheba Torrey; m. in Dedham, Mass., Nov. 80, 1811, Joel Everett.
“Mr. Joel Everett and Miss Catherine Smith.” (Town Records.)
At the time of her marriage Miss Smith was living in the family of her uncle, John Dean, in Dedham. The marriage service was in the Episcopal church in that town. She has been described as “the most beautiful bride who ever entered the church.” This is probably an overstatement.
Catherine [Smith] Everett was the mother of two daughters: (1) Elizabeth Everett; (2) Catherine Smith Everett, who married Rev. Nathan Rice; also four sons.
She was the grandmother of Mrs. William Sumner Crosby.
“O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life . . . [mortal life],
O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”
The reader is to make the distinction between the Pilgrims and the Puritans. They were a separate body of people with different purposes and aims in coming to New England. The Pilgrims, in their compact, gave us that form of government, the first in the world, which recognized a people with equal rights. Later its principles were adopted into the Constitution of the United States.
From the compact: “by these presents solemnly and mutually in ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of ye ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for ye general good of ye Colonic, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
“In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11, of November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James of England, France, & Ireland ye eighteenth, and of Scotland ye fiftie-fourth. AnDom. 1620.”
The following are the writer’s ancestors who signed the compact: William Brewster, John Alden, William Mullens, William White, Edward Fuller.