Muscongus Patent

I've been reviewing the facts in the process of rewriting Eighteenth Century Leveretts and preparing to possibly write John the Younger's biography. The question I'm stuck on really is what happened to Mary, John's full sister or possibly half sister, who disappeared around the time of the witch trials.

There are two primary theories, one of mine and one of Edwin Otis and others, regarding where William came from. William was a guy who appeared in the early 1700's, married Mary Whiteridge, had a child Phebee, and then possibly had two more, a Mary and a William, in Chelsea in the early 1700's. The William born in 1725 would be our direct ancestor so we're especially interested in his parentage. But this William, born around the witch trials (~1690), could have been born of Hudson, as Otis suspects, after he wrote his will but before he died in 1688(?). My theory is that William was born to Mary, who, by 1690, would be sixteen. Mary disappeared, but a Mary Leverett appeared in Ipswich in the early 1700's marrying a Johnathan Moulton (who had children), and died in Wenham which is up near there.

One of my assumptions is that very few Leveretts were coming from England or from the south in that era. There probably were Leveretts in both places but there didn't seem to be much migration at that time, and times were rough and cold in New England.

John divided the patent into ten shares according to how he perceived the inheritance from his grandfather John, who had divided his extensive estate into eight parts, six for his six daughters and two for Hudson, his only son and John's father. Hudson had two sons, John and Thomas the barber, but Thomas was already dead with a young child Knight still a minor at the time of this patent division. So he could have held onto one of those shares just for Thomas, or yet even for Mary and/or the child depending on whose theory you buy here. I am trying to work this out.

The last two shares went to Spencer Phips and a son of Governor Bradford, and it was always assumed that he gave a share to Bradford's son in order to make the transfer possible. He gave one to Phips because Phips owned land given to his father by Mackawondo, near the claim, and the combination of owning land and owning the rights to trade made living there much more doable.

Now my first impulse is to doubt both of those assertions above, which everyone more or less took for granted, and to assume that 1) he knew about Mary and the baby but didn't want anyone else to know; 2) he in some way accounted for that baby by granting land to one of the two above-named people. It seems to me that what I am looking for is connections to Ipswich and the possibility that she moved up there, protected or helped by someone, and it was still a private matter, very much out of sight of the watchful Boston Puritans. But under Otis' theory, John would probably have known about a third brother, born just before his father's death, and would possibly have made some distribution that accounted for him. That child, had he been born to Hudson, would have been just as well known as Thomas the barber, I figure. Thomas the barber was not well known in the Puritan community; neither was his son Knight; yet when they appeared and claimed their share of lands deeded to descendents of John the Governor, he would recognize that. Wouldn't he do the same for William, if he was a son of Hudson's?

He would have no obligation, under Puritan ethics of that time, to a William born of his sister. But I may be misunderstanding Puritan customs here. I am not even sure if my scenario is even possible. I am suggesting that 1) Mary had a child at around the time of the witch trials, out of wedlock, named William Leverett; 2) Mary moved to Ipswich, possibly because her sister or someone would shelter her there and keep her out of the sight of the Boston community; 3) John probably knew this but also did not want others to know it; 4) William came of age in Ipswich and married Mary Whiteridge, also of Ipswich, and then moved to Chelsea where Phebee, Mary and William were all born. John would probably know about them, too, yet you don't see him dining with them at Harvard or including them when Judge Sewall came to town.

Chelsea birth records are unclear and I need to do some more thorough searching to find even what I once found, which was an unclear record of some Leverett being born in Chelsea in the early 1700's sometime. I believe it would be Mary, who died in childbirth in Connecticut at the age of about eighteen and who is often attributed wrongly I think to Knight's family. I need to put the timeline together and ensure that I have everyone accounted for.

But back to the two high-profile people, William Bradford and William Phips/Spencer Phips, is there any chance that there is an Ipswich connection here? Or that, in granting a share of land to a prominent politician, he is doing something that will look normal in the times, but will also, in its own way, account for an inheritance he knows is out there and needs to be accounted for? Bradford and Phips were both very prominent people, but they also had Williams in the family, and also had Ipswich connections. I have my work cut out for me.