♂John Palmer

John Palmer (about 1623 – 17 June 1695) was a farmer and militia sergeant of Rowley, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. In 1675 he and his wife Margaret testified in court for the uncle who had broken off their daughter Hannah’s engagement. He was most likely the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Francis Palmer (1657–1733).

Two marriages

John Palmer was probably born in England about 1623. He is said to have married Ruth Acy, a daughter of William Acy, at Rowley on 17 September 1645. A daughter, Hannah, was born there in 1647 and a son, John, on 7 October 1649. Six days after the boy’s birth Ruth was buried, and the baby did not survive infancy.

His second wife, Margaret Northend, was probably born at Hunsley, in Yorkshire, and her brother Ezekiel Northend also lived at Rowley. John Palmer and Margaret Northend are said to have married at Rowley on 14 July 1650. John and Margaret had four children at Rowley: Elizabeth in 1652, John in 1656, who died at the age of two, Francis in 1657 and Sarah in 1661.

Rowley

In 1661 John was made a freeman^W of the colony at the Ipswich court. He sat on trial juries there, in September 1662 beside his brother-in-law Ezekiel Northend, and he is said to have served Rowley as deputy constable in 1663 and as constable in 1666. In March 1673/4 the town chose him, with Ezekiel Northend, John Acy and two others, to divide the fence of the east-end ox pasture among its twenty-nine proprietors. His own stretch, 18 rods and 6 feet, was the longest on the list. In 1677 he won a suit against Moses Gillman, who had withheld payment for two cows bought from him eight or nine years before, and the court ordered the debt paid in pine boards.

The Acy case of 1675

At a Rowley town meeting in the winter of 1674/5, John Pickard said that John Acy had “ruined” four people, Hannah Palmer among them. Acy sued him for defamation at the Ipswich court in March 1675, and the depositions tell Hannah’s story. John Hopkinson had courted her, and a witness was at John Palmer’s house when breaking off the match was discussed. Her uncle, John Acy, pressed her to hand over the love tokens Hopkinson had given her, which she called the only comforts she had in his absence, and promised to return them in a week; instead he sent them back to Hopkinson. He promised her ten pounds at her marriage if she would give the match up, and gave her a coat. Both she and Hopkinson, the witness said, were much dejected.

John and Margaret took the uncle’s side. They swore that they had never heard their daughter say anything against him, and that “any good that he could doe her by night or by day he would redily and willingly haue done it”. The jury, sent out a second time, found for Acy.

Will and death

When Francis married Elizabeth Hunt in 1682, “Goodman John Palmer, Sergt. at Rowley” promised him a third of his lands at Rowley, to become half at his and his wife’s death, and a farm of a hundred acres at Merrimack. On 23 August 1693, “being weak in body”, John made his will. Margaret was to have his household goods for life and the east end of the house, provided she took no one to live with her “Except my sone francis”.

His daughter Elizabeth Bennet was to have a house and land, his best bed and most of his pewter and brass once both parents were dead. His son-in-law Jonathan Harriman received £40, the rest of the £100 John had promised on Harriman’s marriage to Sarah, and his grandson Nicholas Wallingford was to have his best chest and a young horse at twenty-one. Everything else went to Francis, the sole executor, on condition that he “maintain my beloved wife comfortably and honourably during her natural Life”; if he failed, she could sell land for her keep. One of the overseers was “my brother Ezekiel Northend”.

John Palmer died at Rowley on 17 June 1695, and the will was proved on 1 July. His estate came to £396 11s, three-quarters of it in land and buildings. Margaret outlived him by more than ten years.

Notes

Sources

The dates of John Palmer’s birth, marriages and death, the births of his children and the text of his will come from Mary Lovering Holman’s Ancestry of Charles Stinson Pillsbury and John Sargent Pillsbury (1938), vol. 2, pp. 913–915, a compiled genealogy. Holman bases the birth year on a deposition of 1693 in which he gave his age as seventy, gives his death “aged” from the Rowley records, quotes the will (dated 23 August 1693, proved 1 July 1695) from the Essex County probate files and the 1682 marriage agreement from the printed Essex County probate records, and calls him a farmer and the sergeant of the town’s military company. She also gives his oath of fidelity in September 1653, his terms as deputy constable and constable, and his service on the trial jury in 1653, 1655, 1658, 1668, 1669 and 1673.

His admission as a freeman in 1661, the jury of September 1662, the birth of his son John in 1656, entered as “son of John and Margaret”, the suit against Moses Gillman and the Acy case are in George Francis Dow’s printed Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, vols. 2 and 6; the division of the ox-pasture fence is in vol. 7. The jury of 1662 lists “Jo. Palmer” between Ezekiel Northend and Samuel Platts, both of Rowley; Platts was later one of the overseers of John’s will.

Hannah

The court record calls Hannah “their daughter”. By Holman’s account she was John’s daughter by his first wife, Ruth Acy, born on 1 September 1647, and she was buried at Rowley on 25 October 1670, some years before the case was heard. John Acy, her uncle, was most likely Ruth’s brother.

The line of descent

The line runs through his son Francis Palmer. The next step, from Francis to the John Palmer who married Mary Stickney at Rowley in 1709, rests on an online genealogy and is not proved, so the relationship above is given as most likely.