♂John Deming

John Deming (about 1615 – 1705) was a landholder of Wethersfield, in the Connecticut Colony, who kept a shop and followed a trade, and a son-in-law of Richard Treat^W, whose will made him an overseer. A codicil to his own will took back five pounds he had left to a grandchild, Ann Beckley, “shee having miscarryed”. A history of the town and later genealogies name him among the grantees of Connecticut’s royal charter of 1662. He is given as the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through a daughter, Mercy Deming (1651–1714), whose place in the family rests on later genealogies and is not confirmed by a record.

Life in Wethersfield

His parents are not known. A compiled register of New England marriages places his birth about 1615. He married Honor Treat, a daughter of Richard Treat of Wethersfield; The Treat Family (1893) dates the marriage to about 1637, and another compiled source gives about 1632.

The same book describes him as one of the earliest settlers of Wethersfield in 1635, a freeman from 1645, and a deputy to the colony’s General Court^W nineteen times between 1646 and 1665. Savage’s dictionary of the first settlers of New England gives his terms as a deputy as running from 1649 to 1661. Henry Stiles’s history of the town prints Wethersfield’s patent of 17 February 1685/86, which grants the township to a group of named men, “Mr. John Deming, Sen.” among them, and to “the rest of the said present proprietors”; Stiles adds that he was also a grantee named in the charter of 1662.

Richard Treat’s will, dated 13 February 1668/69, left “Mr Perkins Booke” to “my sonn John Deming”, his great bible to his daughter Honour Deming, and money to “David Deming son of John Deming senior”. It calls John Deming his son-in-law and makes him an overseer.

Will

His will, dated 26 June 1690, is that of “John Deming, Senior”. “Having already done well by my son John”, he left that son his great Bible, “Geneva print”, his feather bed and bolster, and his great kettle. Jonathan received a fifty-acre lot at the west side of the town’s bounds. Samuel, the executor, received the house and the nine-acre home lot, the meadow adjoining it, twelve acres in the West Swamp, the sheep, cattle, horses and swine, the husbandry tools and the household goods, and was to pay the debts, the funeral charges and the legacies. David received “all my materials and tools in my shop” and the book debts, paying “those debts I owe about my trade”; the will does not name the trade. Ebenezer received his best coat and his best hat.

The daughters are named only by their married surnames. Morgan, Beckly, Hurlbut and Wright received five pounds each, and Moody ten shillings, “having already given her a good portion”. Two women he called cousins, Unis Standidge and Sarah Wyer, the wife of John Wyer, received twenty pounds each.

A codicil of 3 February 1692 took the bible, the bed and the kettle back from his son John and gave him instead the materials and tools of the shop and the book debts. It also withdrew the five pounds left to his grandchild Ann Beckley, because she had “miscarryed”, and gave that sum to David. In the language of the time the word could mean going wrong in conduct as well as losing a pregnancy, and the codicil does not say which was meant.

He was dead by 21 November 1705, when his son Samuel brought the will before a court of probate at Hartford. Zachariah Sandford, a witness to the codicil, swore that he had seen John Deming sign and seal it, and that John Deming had then been of sound and disposing mind. The day of his death is not recorded.

Notes

The link to Mercy Deming, who married Joseph Curtis of Wethersfield in 1673/74, rests on later genealogies. The Wethersfield town book never records her as a Deming. The Treat Family lists ten children of John and Honor Deming and does not include her, but that list is not reliable: the Elizabeth it says married Thomas Wright in 1657 was Elizabeth Chittenden of Guilford. The will’s “daughter Wright” fits a Mercy who was widowed in 1683 and married Joseph Wright in 1685, but no record names her as his daughter.

A grave memorial gives his death as 21 November 1705, the day the will was proved, and gives his wife the same day. The same memorial gives his birth as 18 October 1610 at Shalford, in Essex, England. No record confirms either date or the English birthplace.