♂John Perkins

John Perkins (died 1654), called in his own will “John Perkins the elder of Ipswich”, was an early settler of Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, whose will of 1654 shared out his cattle among his children and left his house and lands to his son Jacob. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Thomas Perkins (died 1686).

Early life

He was probably baptized at Hillmorton, Warwickshire, on 23 December 1583, the son of Henry Perkins and Elizabeth Sawbridge. On 8 October 1608 he married Judith Gater at Hillmorton.

Coming to New England

George A. Perkins’s The Family of John Perkins of Ipswich (1889) has him sail from Bristol on 1 December 1630 in the ship Lyon, William Pierce master, with his wife and five children, among about twenty passengers who included Roger Williams^W, and reach Nantasket on 5 February 1631. It records that he took the oath of a freeman^W on 18 May 1631 and that the family lived about two years in Boston, where the youngest child, Lydia, was baptized at the First Church on 3 June 1632.

In those Boston years the colony’s General Court^W, in an order of 3 April 1632 that the 1889 genealogy prints from its records, forbade anyone to shoot fowl on Pullen Point or Noddle’s Island^W and reserved both places for John Perkins to take fowl with nets. The order gave a single settler the sole use of two stretches of the harbor shore. In November 1632 the same court named him with Captain Traske, William Cheeseborough and Mr. Conant to set the bounds between Roxbury and Dorchester.

Ipswich

By the 1889 genealogy he moved in 1633 to the new settlement at Ipswich. The town’s book of land grants, as that genealogy prints it, shows grants to him from 1634 onward: forty acres bounded by Robert Coles’s land, a house lot at the east end of the town, upland and meadow toward the head of Chebacco creek, and a little island called More’s Point on the south side of the town river. The genealogy names him a deputy to the General Court in May 1636, a grand juror in 1648 and 1652, and an appraiser of the estate of Sarah Dillingham in 1645. In March 1650 the court freed “John Perkins, sen., of Ipswich, being above 60 years of age” from ordinary training.

Will and death

His will of 1654 names six children: the eldest son John, the sons Thomas and Jacob, and the daughters Elizabeth, Mary and Lydia, written in the will as Elizabeth Sarieant, Mary Bradbery and Lidia Bennitt.

Being “sick and weake in body”, John Perkins made his will on 28 March 1654, dated in the record the 28th of the first month, called March. He left his eldest son John a foal of his young mare, a cow and a heifer each to his son Thomas and to his daughters, and small gifts of heifers and ewes to several grandchildren. His son Jacob was to have the dwelling house and all the lands, but only “after the decease of my wife and nott before”. The rest of the estate went to “my deare wife Judith Perkins”, whom he named sole executrix. He died at Ipswich before 26 September 1654, when the will was proved in the Ipswich court. The inventory of his estate came to £250 5s, among it the dwelling house and barn at £40, about sixty acres of land and marsh, six milch cows and £10 left in money.

The 1889 genealogy gives his age at death as 64 and names Judith as the mother of all six children; the will itself does not say whether she was the mother of the older ones.

Notes

Hillmorton baptism and marriage

Both dates come from printed compilations, not from the parish register itself. Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins (vol. III, pp. 1431–1433) gives the baptism at Hillmorton, Warwickshire, on 23 December 1583, as son of Henry and Elizabeth (Sawbridge) Perkins, and the marriage at Hillmorton on 8 October 1608 to Judith Gater. Walter Goodwin Davis’s The Ancestry of Dudley Wildes, 1759–1820 prints the baptism as “John, bapt. Dec. 23, 1583” and gives the marriage as “October 9, 1608”, one day later than Anderson.

The Newent tradition

George A. Perkins’s The Family of John Perkins of Ipswich (1889) reports a family tradition that he came from the town of Newent in Gloucestershire and gives his birth there about 1590. The author found many Perkins families in and around Newent but could not connect John to any of them. The Hillmorton baptism of 1583 gives a different parish and birth year, so this page follows the Hillmorton record and sets the Newent tradition aside.

Hillmorton as the English home

Notes on the Perkins Families in England (1894) prints a Hillmorton Perkins line under the heading “Probable ancestors of the Ipswich, Mass., family”, so the link to Hillmorton is given there only as probable.