♂John Wadleigh

John Wadleigh (died 1671) was a planter on the coast of Maine, at Saco in the 1630s and at Wells from the 1640s, where he served as a selectman and where he made his will in 1671. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Mary Wadleigh.

Saco and Wells

Where he came from is not known, but his daughter Mary was born at Bristol, in England. He was probably at Saco by 1636, when he was taxed there, and in 1639 Richard Vines^W granted him a lot on the Yeapskesset River. He acted as an arbitrator between John Richards and Francis Knight in 1640 and sat on juries in 1640 and 1645.

By November 1645 he had moved down the coast to Wells, where Vines granted 200 acres on the southwest side of the Obumkegg River to him and Edmund Littlefield. He was a selectman of Wells in 1647 and 1648. He is said to have taken a deed for land from the Native people in 1649, and the next year he took possession of it and made delivery to his son Robert, who had joined him in the purchase.

He was reportedly no stranger to the courts. In 1654 Thomas Wheelwright and Ezekiel Knight testified against him for swearing, and the next year he was fined for defaming a grand juryman, a sequel to that case. By 1659 he was a commissioner for Wells.

Family and will

He married Mary, whose maiden name is not known. She is said to have been absent from meeting in 1654, and she was still living on 18 April 1664. Three children are known: Robert, Mary, who married Thomas Mills, and Joanna, who married Jonathan Thing. On 18 July 1664 he gave his daughter Mary Mills land and marsh at Wells by a deed of gift.

Mary had died by 1671. When John Wadleigh made his will on 7 July 1671, “weak in body yett perfectt mind and memory”, he asked for “the place of my burial to bee by my wife her grave who is now deseced”. He made his son Robert his sole heir to all his houses, lands and meadows in New England, and his executor. To his daughter Mary Mills he left a pair of oxen called Sparke and Berey, the use of his household goods, and two thirds of his cattle; his daughter Joan Thing and his son Robert each had a sixth. The will was written for him by Samuel Wheelwright of Wells, and he signed it with his mark.

He died at Wells later that year. His estate was inventoried on 20 September 1671 and is said to have been valued at £458. The will was proved in the county court on 3 July 1672.

Notes

Sources for his life

His years at Saco and Wells come from the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire (Noyes, Libby and Davis), entry Wadleigh 2, John, p. 707, which abstracts the early court and town records: the Saco tax of 1636, the lot from Vines in 1639, the arbitration of 1640, the juries, the Wells grant of 20 November 1645, the selectman’s years, the deed of 1649, the court cases of 1654 and 1655 and the commission of 1659. The same entry gives his wife Mary’s absence from meeting in 1654, her being alive on 18 April 1664, and the inventory taken by James Gooch and James Smyth at £458. It calls his origin unknown.

The will

The will is printed in Province and Court Records of Maine, vol. 2 (ed. Libby, 1931), pp. 244–245. The leaf of the county court book that held it was already missing in 1845; the editor printed it from the original, which had turned up in the court files, where a grandson had put it in evidence in the case of Wadleigh v. Edwards at the October term of 1719. Samuel Wheelwright and Samuel Austin swore to it in court on 3 July 1672, and it was entered in the new county book on 18 July 1672. Edward Rishworth of York and Samuel Wheelwright were named as its overseers.

His daughter’s birthplace

Mary’s birth at Bristol comes from the Catholic baptism of her daughter Martha Mills at Notre-Dame in Montreal on 29 June 1693, which, in Emma Lewis Coleman’s translation in New England Captives Carried to Canada (1925), names Martha’s mother as “Marie Wadele native of Brestol near London”. The deed of gift of 18 July 1664 is known from a York County deed of 1722 (Book XI, folio 5), by which Mary’s daughter Susanna sold a quarter of the land and marsh “that John Wadleigh of Wells aforesaid gave unto his Daughter Mary Mills”.