♂John Washburn

John Washburn (died 12 November 1686) was an English-born colonist of Plymouth Colony who came to Boston as a boy of fourteen in 1635, served as constable of Duxbury, and ended his life as a planter at Bridgewater, the father of eleven children by his wife Elizabeth Mitchell. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Mary Washburn (1662–1740).

Early life

A Mayflower genealogy of the Cooke family identifies him as probably the John Washburn baptized at Bengeworth, beside Evesham in Worcestershire, on 28 November 1621, a son of John Washburn and Margery Moore; the identification is not proved, and a descendant’s chart gives the baptism as 26 November 1620. He was fourteen when he landed at Boston in the summer of 1635 from the ship Elizabeth and Anne, traveling with his brother Philip, aged eleven, and a Mrs. Marjorie Washburn of Evesham, aged forty-nine. The passenger entry for the crossing is dated 13 April 1635.

Duxbury

By August 1643 two men named John Washburn, styled senior and junior, were on the Duxbury list of men able to bear arms, and both were named again among the town’s inhabitants in 1645. On 6 December 1645, at Plymouth, the younger John married Elizabeth Mitchell (1629–1684), the eldest daughter of Experience Mitchell (1602–1689); her descent from the Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke^W, through her mother Jane Cooke (1604–1640), rests on circumstantial evidence. He was chosen constable for Duxbury on 7 June 1659. In November 1664 he acknowledged the sale of land given him by “his father Experience Mitchell”; in the usage of the time “father” also meant father-in-law, so the land had been a gift from his wife’s father.

Bridgewater

The family moved on to Bridgewater, where the younger children were born. The couple had eleven children, seven sons and four daughters, born between about 1646 and about 1675; only the birth of James, in 1672, was entered in a town record, and the order of the rest is uncertain. Elizabeth died between 1681 and December 1684, and he married secondly Elizabeth, the widow of Samuel Packard.

He made his will as “John Washbourne senr” of Bridgewater on 30 October 1686, naming his wife Elizabeth, his sons John, Thomas, Joseph, Samuel, Jonathan and Benjamin, a “younger son” James, and his daughters Mary, Elizabeth, Jane and Sarah, and calling James and Sarah “my two yonger children”. He died at Bridgewater on 12 November 1686, the date given in his inventory, and the will was exhibited on 8 June 1687. The will did not dispose of everything: in September 1694 his sons, with the husbands of his daughters, among them Samuel Kingsley, sold to their brother Samuel land that had been left unwilled “by our Father & ffather in law John Washburne Deceased”.

Notes

The baptism at Bengeworth is attached to him only as probable, and the two dates for it, 28 November 1621 in the Mayflower genealogy and 26 November 1620 in a compiled chart, rest on compiled accounts alone. The genealogy names his mother as Margaret (Moore); the 1635 passenger list enters him, aged fourteen, among the “sons” of Margerie Washborn of Evesham, aged forty-nine, with whom he crossed. No record of his burial has been found.