♂Thomas Howlett

Thomas Howlett (died before 10 September 1678) was one of the first settlers of Ipswich, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, who later farmed at Topsfield and was known as Ensign and, by the end of his life, Deacon Thomas Howlett. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Samuel Howlett (died 1720).

Ipswich

Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Newsletter prints an order of the Massachusetts General Court^W of 1 April 1633 that no one was to settle at Agawam without the court’s leave, “except those that are already gone”, and Thomas Howlett is named among them, alongside John Winthrop the Younger^W. By Anderson’s count he was one of the eleven men allowed to make the first settlement of the place that became Ipswich, and in early 1642 he and John Gage were the only two of the eleven still living there. George Francis Dow’s History of Topsfield records that he was granted a house lot at Ipswich in 1636 “where his house now stands” and that he held town offices and served on town committees there for many years. Dow and Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins both record that he married Alice French; Dow places the marriage at Ipswich about 1644.

Topsfield

He moved to a farm in Topsfield, near the Ipswich line, that had been granted to Nathaniel Rogers. An Ipswich town meeting of 9 February 1651 granted “Ensigne Thomas Howlett” six acres of upland “to be joined to the farme which he bought of Mr. Roggers wheare the said Ensigne have built his house”, although Dow found no deed for the purchase. He was listed as a commoner of Topsfield in 1661. On 2 March 1668 the town recorded an agreement with him about a bridge over the brook by his house, on the road to Ipswich. The General Court once appointed him and Lieutenant William Hewlett, both of Topsfield, to lay out a land grant on the Ipswich River; they did not do it, and on 15 May 1657 the court named two other men in their place.

Death and will

His will, dated 4 November 1677, named his wife Rebeka and six children, though it leaves property directly to only four of them: Samuel, his daughters Sarah Comings and Mary Perly, and William, who was made sole executor. Of the other two, his son John had died, and the will provides for John’s wife and his daughter Mary; the will makes no gift to his son Thomas, but provides for Thomas’s wife and his two daughters, which most likely means Thomas too had died before it was made.

The inventory of “Deckon Thomas Howlett” was taken on 10 September 1678, and the will was proved at the Ipswich court on 24 September 1678. Dow gives his death as 2 December 1677, at the age of seventy-nine, and records that William received the house and the rest of the farm and Samuel fifty acres of land. The will names only Rebeka as his wife. A compiled genealogy, Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins, lists Samuel among the children of his first wife, Alice French, which makes her his mother.