♂John Gilman

John Gilman (about 1624 – 24 July 1708) was a mill owner and public man of Exeter, in the Province of New Hampshire^W, who served his town as a selectman and the province as a councillor, a judge and Speaker of its assembly. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Sarah Gilman (1667–1713).

Early life

A history of the Gilman family published in 1869 gives his birth as 10 January 1624 and his baptism as 23 May 1626, at Hingham, in Norfolk, England. Charles H. Bell’s History of Exeter (1888) calls him the second son of Edward Gilman. According to the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, Edward Gilman left England with a large party led by the Rev. Robert Peck, one of the companies of the Puritan migration to New England^W, and landed at Boston from the ship Diligent of Ipswich on 10 August 1638, going on to Hingham, Massachusetts, with his wife, three sons, two daughters and three servants. The 1869 history says that John moved with his father to Rehoboth a few years later and then to Ipswich, and that he came to Exeter about 1648.

Exeter

At Exeter he worked at first with his brother Edward in the lumber and milling business. Edward sailed for England in 1653 to buy gear for the mills and was lost at sea, and John took over the management of the business. He was first chosen a selectman in 1652, and Bell’s history counts him in that office in more than half the years between 1650 and 1680, besides repeated terms as a commissioner to end small causes. The General Court appointed him lieutenant of the Exeter military company in 1669. In 1674 the town granted him 600 acres for a farm, which, according to the 1869 history, was laid out on the “Great Red Oak Hill”. Bell records that he also held a special right to a grist-mill, and credits him with building the “log house” opposite the Great Bridge, which was still standing in 1888.

Provincial office

Bell and the Genealogical Dictionary both place him as an associate judge of the old Norfolk County court in the last years before New Hampshire was separated from Massachusetts. When the royal province was set up in 1680 he was made one of its councillors, and in 1682 a judge of the Court of Common Pleas; in 1683 Governor Edward Cranfield^W removed him from both offices. Exeter sent him to the assembly in 1693, when he was chosen Speaker, and again in 1697. The Genealogical Dictionary also lists victualler’s and tavern licences in his name through the 1690s.

Family

John Gilman and Elizabeth Treworgye were married on 30 June 1657; the Gilman family history of 1869 gives 20 June, while Bell’s History of Exeter and the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire agree with 30 June. The 1869 history names her parents as James and Catherine (Shapleigh) Treworgye. Bell counts six sons and ten daughters. Two printed family histories list sixteen children of the marriage, born between 1658 and 1684. Their daughter Sarah, born on 25 February 1666/7, married Stephen Dudley at Exeter on 24 December 1684. According to the Genealogical Dictionary, his will, dated 16 July 1700, named his wife Elizabeth and nine living children.

He died at Exeter on 24 July 1708, at the age of 84 by the reckoning of the 1869 history. The same book says that the town of Gilmanton was granted in 1727 chiefly to his descendants, most of whom went on living at Exeter.

Notes

Marriage date, 1657

The marriage is dated 30 June 1657 in the records cited for it, the Probate Records of the Province of New Hampshire, vol. 1, and New Hampshire Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659–1947. The Gilman family history of 1869 gives 20 June; Bell’s History of Exeter and the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire give 30 June.