♂John Clough

John Clough (about 1613 – 26 July 1691) was a house carpenter of Salisbury, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, and one of the men who received land in the first division of the new town, then called Colchester, on 7 November 1639. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Thomas Clough (born 1651).

Salisbury

John probably came to New England in 1635, in the ship Elizabeth. Four years later he was one of the first grantees at Salisbury, and he stayed: he had a further grant of land there in 1640, and in 1650 he was listed among the town’s commoners and taxpayers.

His wife was Jane, whose surname is not known. Seven children of John and Jane were recorded at Salisbury between December 1642 and February 1656/57, four daughters and three sons, among them Thomas, born on 29 May 1651.

Later life

In October 1673 a John Clough, most likely this one, appealed to the county court sitting at Hampton in a suit of replevin^W against Thomas Philbrick, over nine cows that had been impounded. The Hampton commissioners for ending small cases had found against him that May, and the jury confirmed their judgment.

Jane died at Salisbury on 16 January 1679/80. Seven years later, in January 1686/87, John married Martha Cilley, a widow of Amesbury. He made his will on 3 July 1691 and died at Salisbury three weeks later, on 26 July; the will was proved on 3 November.

Notes

Dates

Dates between January and March before 1752 are written with both years, as the records have them (Old Style and New Style dates^W).

Birth and arrival

David W. Hoyt’s The Old Families of Salisbury and Amesbury, Massachusetts gives John’s birth as about 1613 and suggests that he came in the Elizabeth in 1635; it names no English home for him. A family chart compiled in 1994 gives his birth as 1614, in England.

The first division

Two lists survive of the men who received land in the first division at “Colchester” on 7 November 1639: a longer one in the front of the town’s earliest book of land records, and a shorter, undated one in the Massachusetts Archives. John Clough is on the longer list, as printed in the Great Migration Newsletter; the shorter list does not include him. The grant of 1640, his trade, and his place among the commoners and taxpayers of 1650 are from Hoyt.

The children

Salisbury’s register of births enters all seven as children of John and “Jone” Clough. Hoyt makes Jane John’s first wife. The Thomas born in 1651 is taken to be the Thomas Clough of Salisbury, yeoman, through whom the line runs; no record yet joins the boy of 1651 to the man.

The lawsuit of 1673

The case is printed in the Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, under the court held at Hampton on 14 October 1673. A copy of the bond of “John Clough, sr., and John Severns” is filed with it, which points to the elder John rather than his son John, born in March 1648/49. A “Jno. Clough” also sat on the jury of trials at the same court, and the printed index does not separate the two men.

The second marriage

Hoyt gives the second marriage as 15 January 1686, to Martha Cilley (or Sibley), who was living in 1692. The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire of Noyes, Libby and Davis dates it 15 January 1686-7, at Hampton, and makes her Martha Blaisdell, the widow first of Richard Bowden and then of a man named Selly; as “Martha Selly of Amesbury” she made a gift of land to her daughter Elizabeth Davis on 1 November 1684. The same work has her living on 1 April 1707.

Death

Salisbury’s death records enter him as “John, sr., July 26, 1691”, and Jane’s death as that of “Jone, w. John, sr.”. The dates of the will and of its proving are from Hoyt.