♂Thomas Clough

Thomas Clough (living 1715) was a yeoman of Salisbury, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, who in September 1715 gave his son Zacheus a piece of land by a deed of gift, made for “my love & natural affection”. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Zacheus Clough (died by 1757).

Marriages and family

Thomas was probably the son of John and Jane Clough born at Salisbury on 29 May 1651. He had most likely been married once before, to Hannah Gile, who died in the winter of 1683–84.

Thomas Clough and Ruth Conner were married at Salisbury in 1688 or 1689. Eleven children of Thomas and Ruth were recorded at Salisbury between June 1688 and September 1711, among them Zacheus, born on 17 February 1691/92.

The petition for Mary Bradbury

In July 1692, at the height of the Salem witch trials, Thomas and Ruth were most likely the “Tho: Clough & his wyfe” who put their names to a petition in support of their Salisbury neighbour Mary Bradbury^W, then accused of witchcraft. Dated 22 July, it declared that her life had been “such as became ye gospel”, and that none of her neighbors, some of whom had lived in the town with her for more than fifty years, had ever known her to fall out with anyone. “Sarah Connor widow”, probably Ruth’s own mother, signed it too. The petition did not save Mary Bradbury from being condemned that September, though she escaped.

The deed of 1715

On 28 September 1715 Thomas, “of Salisbury in the County of Essex … Yeoman”, made over land to his son Zacheus, “unto my son Zacheus Clough of Salisbury aforesaid”, and acknowledged the deed before a justice of the peace the same day. Zacheus was then twenty-three and had been married since January 1713/14. The gift was probably some twelve or thirteen acres on the back side of Batts Hill, north of the highway to Hampton, which Zacheus was already working; in return he was to pay what was still owed on its purchase.

Ruth died at Salisbury on 5 August 1727, entered in the town’s records as the wife of Thomas Clough senior. When Thomas himself died is not known.

Notes

Dates

Dates between January and March before 1752 are written with both years, as the records have them (Old Style and New Style dates^W); Zacheus’s birth on 17 February 1691/92 fell in 1692 by the modern reckoning.

Birth and parents

Salisbury’s records of births include a Thomas, son of John and Jone Clough, born on 29 May 1651. A 2009 edition of the records of the Salem witch-hunt, in its notes on the people named, makes the Thomas Clough who married Ruth Connor that son of John and Jane, and a family chart compiled in 1994 gives him the same birth day. No record yet joins the boy of 1651 to the yeoman of 1715, so the parentage is probable rather than proven.

The first marriage

The Salisbury records hold the marriage of a Thomas Clough and Hanna Gile on 10 March 1680/81, with a second copy dating it 1679/80; the county court’s records also give 10 March 1679/80, both partners “of Salisbury”. Hannah, wife of Thomas, died on 22 January 1683, with a duplicate entry giving 22 December 1683, and a son Thomas was born to Thomas and Hannah on 9 December 1681. Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England says that Ruth Conner married Thomas Clough “of S. as his sec. w.”, and an abstract of the Salisbury records printed in 1854 sets out the two marriages the same way. Nothing in the records themselves says that the two husbands were one man.

The marriage date

The Salisbury entry for the marriage of Thomas and Ruth Conner has no day, and the printed records date it to 1688 or 1689. Savage, the 1854 abstract and the 2009 edition all give 1687, and the first child of Thomas and Ruth, Jeremiah, was born on 21 June 1688, which fits the earlier year better.

The petition

The petition of 22 July 1692 is printed among the records of the Salem witch-hunt. The editors identify its “Tho: Clough & his wyfe” as Thomas Clough of Salisbury, born 1651, who married Ruth Connor, and “Sarah Connor widow” as the widow of Cornelius Conner and mother of Ruth Clough. The only other Thomas Clough of Salisbury at the time, the son born in 1681, was ten years old.

The deed

The deed of 1715 was not entered in the Essex County registry until May 1776, sixty years after it was made. Its opening, with the words of the gift, and its closing, with the date and the acknowledgment, are quoted above from the deed book. The description of the land and the terms of the gift come from a transcription of the recorded copy: part of a lot laid out to Samuel Getchell’s right and half of the 29th lot in the Brook Division laid out to Joseph French’s right, already in Zacheus’s possession, with Zacheus to take up Thomas’s bonds to Madam Elizabeth Wainwright, alias Addington, and Thomas keeping the right to firewood and fencing stuff.

The deed is the record that makes Zacheus Thomas’s son. In September 1715 the only Zacheus Clough of age at Salisbury was the son born to Thomas and Ruth in 1692; the next was his own son, born in 1737.

Death

The 1994 family chart says that Thomas died at Salisbury before 1749, and the 2009 edition gives him as living in 1738 or later, with a query. Neither cites a record of his death.