♂Samuel Filley

Samuel Filley (24 September 1643 – 4 January 1711/12) was a landholder of Windsor, Connecticut, one of the first generation of the family born in the colony. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Josiah Filley (1675–1750).

Early life and marriage

Samuel was born at Windsor on 24 September 1643, a son of William Filley and his wife Margaret. On 29 October 1663 he married Anna Gillet at Windsor. A history of Windsor published in 1891–92 calls her a daughter of Jonathan Gillett, and two records bear that out: the printed Windsor vital records enter her birth on 29 December 1639 as “Anna, d. Jonathan, Sr.”, and her father’s will of 8 August 1677 names her, “my daughter, Samuel ffyllyes wife”, as a legatee. The couple moved to Massaco, later the town of Simsbury, in 1669, and on 7 October that year Windsor’s return of freemen named him there as an inhabitant. They afterwards returned to Windsor, where in 1680 he is said to have signed the inhabitants’ petition for a separate township on the east side of the Great River. In 1686 the Windsor ratable list entered him as one ratable person, with two acres of house land, a horse, two oxen and three cows. They lived there for the rest of their lives.

Family

Samuel and Anna had eleven children, born between 1664 and 1683. Several died young. The name Samuel was given three times: the first son of that name did not survive childhood, and the second was “killed with a cart” in October 1679, aged five or six. Of the daughters, Abigail married Job Loomis in 1710, and Mary married Nathaniel Barber in July 1711, five months before her father made his will. The Windsor marriage record shows an Anna Filley marrying a Samuel Grant in December 1683. A Sarah Grant, born in September 1684, married Thomas Skinner in 1705, and she is probably the granddaughter of the will, though the records name her father only as “Samuell, Jr.” and two men of that name lived in Windsor.

Death and will

Anna died on 18 November 1711. Samuel made his will on 12 December 1711 and died on 4 January 1711/12. The will divided his meadow lots, his swamp land and his woodland among his sons Jonathan, Josiah and John. Some of the land was described as having been “brother William Filley’s“, and some had been bought “of brother Josiah Gillett”, his wife’s brother. His daughters Abigail Loomis and Mary Barber each received land and half of his personal estate. He left five pounds to his granddaughter Sarah Skinner, and land at Nowell Swamp to his grandson Samuel, Josiah’s son. A cow went to Deborah Sackett, “that now liveth with me”, when she came of age. The will does not say how she was related to him. A Windsor record shows his sister Deborah Filley marrying John Sackett of Westfield in December 1686, so the girl may have been a Sackett niece. His inventory was valued at £327. The will was proved on 7 January 1711/12. In the following months the court had to settle two acres the will had left out, which it gave to the eldest son, Jonathan, over the objection of his brother John.

Notes

Residences, 1669 to 1686

The 1669 entry comes from Windsor’s return of freemen, which states him as an inhabitant of Massaco (Some Early Records and Documents of and Relating to the Town of Windsor, p.117). The 1686 entry is the Windsor ratable list in the same volume (p.158): one ratable person, house land of two acres, upland of six and nine acres, five acres at Greenfield, meadow of five acres, and a horse, two oxen, three cows and young cattle. Both are records of the town.

The 1680 petition is known from a later history, Stiles’s History of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut (1859), pp.868-869, which records that he signed it. That history is not the petition itself, so the body says only that he is said to have signed.