♂John Washburn

John Washburn (died about 1671) was a colonist of Plymouth Colony^W who settled at Duxbury, where the colony’s records list him from 1643 as “John Washburne, Senior”, beside a younger John who was most likely his son. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Washburn (died 1686).

Origin and crossing

Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins (1995) identifies him as the John Washburn baptized at Bengeworth, Worcestershire, on 2 July 1597, a son of John and Martha (Timbrell) (Stephens) Washburn, and gives his marriage there, probably in November 1618, to Margery Moore. The same work gives the baptism of their son John at Bengeworth on 26 November 1620, a son Philip baptized there in June 1622 who was buried within the week, and a second Philip born about 1624.

Anderson dates his arrival at Plymouth to 1632 and gives his trade as tailor. He was assessed 9 shillings in the colony’s tax list of 25 March 1633 but was not taxed in 1634, and Anderson suggests that he went back to England to arrange his family’s passage. In 1635 “Margerie Washborn”, aged forty-nine, sailed for New England on the Elizabeth & Ann with “Jo[hn] Washborne”, aged fourteen, and “Phillipp Washborne”, aged eleven; Anderson takes them to be his wife and their two sons.

Plymouth and Duxbury

According to Anderson, on 5 January 1635/6 he bought a house and palisado from Edward Bompass, and the court confirmed the purchase. On 14 March 1635/6 he was given rights for one cow on the hay ground of Captain Myles Standish^W, the colony’s military leader, and the two men had the same arrangement again in March 1636/7. On 4 June 1638 he acknowledged that he owed the King £40; the records do not explain the debt.

He moved to Duxbury, where he took the oath of fidelity by 1639, served as surveyor of highways in 1638/9 and 1649, and was fined in March 1650/1 for failing to mend the highways. He was granted forty acres at Duxbury in 1641 “if it be there to be had”, bought twenty acres of planting land and two parcels of meadow from Morris Truant in March 1647/8, and was admitted a freeman^W of the colony on 2 June 1646. He sat on the grand jury in 1645 and on several trial juries between 1642 and 1668, and signed his name to a coroner’s inquest on the body of John Paybody. In 1662 the court granted land to “John W[ashburn] Senior as an ancient freeman”.

On 26 May 1666, as “John Washburne Senior of Duxburrow,” planter, he deeded his dwelling house and its land to “Phillip Washborne his true and natural son”. He was still named among the Duxbury freemen in the list of 29 May 1670.

Death

Anderson places his death at Duxbury early in 1671: a land record called his son “Jr.” on 17 March 1670/1 and 22 May 1671, and the document was afterwards altered to call the son “Sr.”. Nahum Mitchell’s History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater (1840) says instead that “he d. here before 1670”, names him and his son John among the original proprietors of Bridgewater, and knows of no children but John and Philip.