♂Begat Eggleston

Begat Eggleston (died 1 September 1674) was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut Colony, and the immigrant ancestor of the Eggleston family in New England, whose death the town recorded at “almost 100 years” old, although his own sworn testimony made him about eighty-four. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son James Eggleston (died 1679).

Early life

Begat Eggleston came, probably from Exeter, England, to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. He was made a freeman there in 1631. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony a freeman was not simply a man who was not a servant: he was an admitted member of the colony’s governing corporation, with the right to vote and to hold office, a status then open only to members of a Puritan church. He was an original member of the Reverend John Warham’s church, removing with it to Windsor, Connecticut, in 1635. Testifying at a court held in Hartford on 5 June 1645, he gave his age as fifty-five, which places his birth at about 1590. His given name appears in the records under a variety of spellings, among them Begat, Bagget, Bigat and Bygatt.

Marriage and family

Eggleston married twice. His first wife is not named in the records; a family compilation states that his second wife was Mary Talcott of Hartford, and suggests that a Mary Eggleston who died at Windsor on 8 December 1657 was probably his wife. Both claims rest on the compilation and have not been confirmed. No record indicates which wife was the mother of which child. Two sons, James and Samuel, were born in England before the family’s removal to Windsor. Seven more children were born at Windsor: Thomas (1638), Mary (1641), Sarah (1643), Rebecca (1644), Abigail (1648), Joseph (baptised 1651) and Benjamin (1653).

Death

Eggleston made his will at Windsor on 13 November 1673, describing himself as “aged and weake.” He left his house and land to his son Benjamin, “ye staff of my age,” on condition that Benjamin maintain his mother for the rest of her life. He directed that his son Joseph, “should he return” to claim a portion, be paid forty shillings, a phrase that suggests Joseph had gone away and not been heard from, and left three shillings each to his sons James, Samuel and Thomas and his daughters Mary, Sarah and Abigail. He died at Windsor on 1 September 1674; the town’s vital records give his age at death as “almost 100 years,” though his own 1645 testimony points instead to about eighty-four; the ages of the very old were often rounded up in the records of the time. His estate was inventoried on 24 October 1674 at £116. In 1676 his widow contributed to Connecticut’s fund for the relief of the poor in other colonies.

Notes

The identity and order of Eggleston’s two wives, and which of his children each bore, are not established by any record found so far.