♂John Morton

John Morton (died 4 February 1738/9) was a man of Plymouth, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, who married Reliance Phinney at Barnstable in 1705. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son James Morton (1714–1745).

Parentage

No record names the father of the John Morton who married at Barnstable in 1705. He was most likely the John born at Plymouth, then in Plymouth Colony^W, on 20 July 1680, whom the town book lists third among “The Children of Ephraim Morton and Hannah his wife”; a compiled genealogy published in 1978 makes the same identification and gives his age at death as in his fifty-ninth year, which fits that birth. Ephraim Morton’s will, dated 3 August 1730, named “my Son John Morton” as its first legatee and left him “all my wearing apparel & the Chest wherein they are commonly put”; the remainder of the estate, after other legacies, went to another son, Joseph, whom Ephraim made sole executor.

Marriage and family

John Morton and Reliance Phinney were married at Barnstable on 27 December 1705 by the minister Jonathan Russell, whom the town clerk called “Mr Russel”.

The Plymouth town book lists six children under the heading “The children of John Morton & Reliance Morton his wife”, as the printed Vital Records of Plymouth gives them. A first son, John, was born on 15 November 1706, and a second, Jonathan, on 10 February 1707/8. Jonathan died on 29 December 1708, before he was a year old. Josiah was born on 28 February 1709/10. On 11 December 1711 a daughter was born and died the same day; the book gives her no name. James followed on 13 May 1714 and David on 19 March 1716, the date as the book has it, with no second year. Two of the six children were thus lost in infancy.

Death

Reliance died at Plymouth on 4 December 1735 and John on 4 February 1738/9; the town clerk entered their deaths together, hers written beneath his as that of “Reliance Morton wife to sd John”. Their gravestones stand on Burial Hill, and Benjamin Drew’s 1894 transcription of them gives John’s as “Feby ye 4th 1738-9 in ye 59th year of his age”, which fits a birth in July 1680, and Reliance’s as “wife to Mr John Morton … Decbr ye 4th 1735 in ye 55th year of her age”. The compiled genealogy abstracts the will of “John Morton of Plymouth yeoman”, made on 10 November 1738, when he was very sick, and proved on 14 March 1738/9: it left half his real and personal estate to his eldest son John and divided the rest among Josiah, James and David. In September 1739, it adds, the four brothers, John, Josiah and David Morton of Plymouth and James Morton of Plympton, divided the land that had been their father’s.

Notes

The days in the printed list are those used here. A separate reading of the original town-book page gave John’s birth less clearly, as the tenth of November, and Jonathan’s death as 28 December 1708; the printed 15 November and 29 December stand until the page is read again.