♂Joseph Towne

Joseph Towne was a landholder of Topsfield, Massachusetts, a son of William Towne (died 1673) and Johanna Blessing (died by January 1683), and a brother of Rebecca Nurse, Mary Esty and Sarah Cloyce, three of the women accused in the Salem witch trials^W of 1692. He was the eighth great-grand-uncle of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the brother of Jacob Towne (died 1704), Nancy Jane’s eighth great-grandfather.

Marriage and family

A 1927 compiled genealogy of the Towne family gives his christening at Salem, Essex, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on 3 September 1648, the same day as his sister Sarah. The Perkins family history calls him instead the youngest son, born about 1639, and has him die in 1713 at the age of 74; the two accounts cannot both be right (see Notes).

In 1663 his parents conveyed to him two-thirds of their house, barn and grounds at Topsfield, in view of his “contemplated marriage” to Phebe Perkins (born about 1644), daughter of Deacon Thomas Perkins. The couple married in 1665. Phebe’s father made his will in December 1685, leaving “my son, Joseph Towne” sixteen acres at the northwest end of the Long Hill and £16. The Perkins family history lists eight children for Joseph and Phebe, born between 1666 and 1680; Dow’s history of Topsfield names a son John and a son-in-law, Thomas Nichols.

Topsfield

Joseph shared in the town’s division of the common land, where Dow lists a twenty-acre lot for “Joseph Towne (Wm.)”. The town records mention “Joseph Towns his house” near the bridge over the river in March 1668/9, probably this man’s house, and in November that year a Joseph Towne, probably this man, was chosen with his brother Jacob to lay out a way from the bridge, near their father’s house, to the Nichols farm.

When the children of William Towne asked the court at Ipswich in January 1682/3 to divide their father’s small estate, Joseph was named with Edmund and Jacob to share the land equally, and he signed the petition with a mark. The court allowed the division on 10 April 1683. The Perkins family history says he was made a freeman on 22 March 1690 and was a member of the Topsfield church.

On 15 April 1703 he and Phebe gave their son John one-third of all their property, with the rest to follow at their deaths. After Joseph’s death his widow Phebe sold the sixteen acres from her father’s will to Thomas Nichols, explaining in the deed that she did so “for support and to relieve me in my necessity in my old age”.

Notes

Birth and death dates

The christening of 3 September 1648 comes from Davis’s compiled genealogy, and the tree keeps it. The Perkins family history, which gives about 1639 and a death in 1713 at 74, states neither with a source. A deed of 1663 providing for Joseph’s marriage is hard to square with a christening in 1648, and no primary record here gives his death year; the Perkins history gives 1713.

Phebe

The Perkins family history says Phebe died after 1680 and infers from her father’s will that she was already dead in 1685. Dow’s account has a widow Phebe selling land from that will after Joseph died, so the two cannot both stand; the records do not say when she died.