♂Thomas Mayhew

Thomas Mayhew (about 1621 – 1657) is known through printed histories and the colonial records of early New England, which place him among the first English settlers of Martha’s Vineyard. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Jedidah Mayhew (1656–1736).

Life

Charles Banks’s history of Martha’s Vineyard, published in 1925, makes him the son of Thomas Mayhew^W by a first wife, born in England in 1620 or 1621. Two deeds of October 1641 name father and son together. James Forrett granted Nantucket on 13 October, and Martha’s Vineyard and the Elizabeth Isles on 23 October, to “Thomas Mayhew at Watertowne, Merchant, and to Thomas Mayhew his Sonne”. By Banks’s account he came to New England in 1631, lived at Medford and Watertown, and moved to the Vineyard in 1642. James Savage’s dictionary of New England’s first settlers and a 1909 history of Maine families both describe him as the first minister on Martha’s Vineyard, and the Maine history calls him “a preacher to the Indians”.

In Banks’s words Jane Paine was Thomas Mayhew’s “step-mother’s daughter”: by his account her mother had married his father, so that the couple were stepbrother and stepsister before they were husband and wife. A guardianship of 1639, which names only one Paine child, a son, leaves that account in doubt. Banks gives no date for the marriage; a 1909 history of Maine families puts it about 1645. Banks gives the couple six children: Matthew, Thomas and John, born between 1648 and 1652, then Jerusha, Jedidah, and a sixth child who died young. Banks also calls John the minister of Tisbury and Chilmark.

Land on the Vineyard

Father and son held land on the island together. On 1 December 1642 the two of them, with John Smith, are said to have granted John Daggett of Watertown twenty acres on the point, twenty acres of meadow and a 500-acre farm on the Vineyard. On 4 December 1646 they probably made the first township grant of Edgartown, to the men then on the island.

In April 1654 he most likely bought Cataymuck (Naushon, the largest of the Elizabeth Islands) from Seayick, sachem of Monument. In September 1656 he reported to the Commissioners at Plymouth a farm and tenements about Greens Norton in Northamptonshire, worth about £140 a year, in which he and his brother-in-law, Thomas Paine, had an interest. When he asked leave to go to England himself, he was advised to send some other man.

Mission to the Indians

From 1650 to 1657 the Commissioners of the United Colonies^W paid him as a missionary to the Indians of Martha’s Vineyard. In 1650 he was named beside John Eliot^W, with the words “Mr Mahew hath made a good entrance”. For 1654 the Commissioners allowed £40, with £10 each for a schoolmaster and helpers.

He probably dated his letters of 1647 to 1652 from Great Harbour (Edgartown), the English settlement on the island, and the letters were printed in the Eliot tracts. In January 1651/2 he is said to have set up a school to teach Indian children reading, and about thirty came.

Lost at sea

The histories agree that Thomas Mayhew was lost at sea in 1657, and two of them place the loss in November, on a voyage from Boston to London. Savage adds that the ship’s master was named Garrett, that three young scholars sailed with him, “the hope of the country”, and that the ship was never heard of again. Banks prints the account of Daniel Gookin^W, which has him sailing from Boston for London in November 1657 in Mr Garrett’s ship, which never arrived. On 30 April 1658 the Corporation in London wrote that “wee feare that the shipp wherin hee was is miscarryed”. The Maine history records that his father preached to the Indians from his son’s death until his own in 1682. Banks records that Jane later married Richard Sarson.

Notes

Banks gives his birth as 1620 or 1621, in England; the Maine history gives about 1620, at Southampton.

The Maine history writes the name of Jane’s second husband as Richard Sansom; Banks and Savage write Sarson.

His father

The deeds of 13 and 23 October 1641, granting Nantucket and then Martha’s Vineyard and the Elizabeth Isles, are printed in Hough’s 1856 Papers Relating to the Island of Nantucket (its first three, unnumbered pages) and in the Albany Deeds, volume I, pages 71 and 72. The deeds name the grantees as “Thomas Mayhew at Watertowne, Merchant, and to Thomas Mayhew his Sonne”, the father and his son as joint grantees.

His mother

Banks gives the family tradition that she was Abigail Parkus (volume 1, page 115). Savage gives Martha Parkhurst. Neither cites a record for the name.

Land and the Vineyard grants

The grant of 1 December 1642 to John Daggett is in Banks’s second volume (Dukes Deeds II:253). The township grant of 4 December 1646 is in N.Y. Col. Deeds I:72, where the father signs it “the free Grant of myselfe and my Sonn”. Both are known through Banks’s history, so the hedges in the text follow it. Banks also gives the 1654 sale of Cataymuck from Seayick, sachem of Monument, and says its original deed, witnessed by young Thomas Paine, is at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth and was never recorded in Dukes County. The father’s will of 1681 leaves his daughter Hannah half of his three-quarters of Cataymuck (see his bio). How that share fits with this 1654 sale is not settled by the sources cited here.

The Greens Norton farm of September 1656 is in volume 10 of the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, page 165, where the brother-in-law is written “his brother in law Tho: Paine”. This entry is on record, so the text states it flatly.

Mission pay

The Commissioners’ payments are entered in their acts, printed in volumes 9 and 10 of the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth. The 1650 naming beside Eliot and the 1654 sum are on record and stated flatly. The 1654 sum is £40, with £10 each for a schoolmaster and helpers.

Great Harbour and the school

The four letters dated at Great Harbour are of 18 November 1647, 7 September 1650, 16 October 1651 and 22 October 1652. They were printed in the Eliot tracts (London, 1649 to 1653) and are known through Banks’s transcriptions. The letters name the place Great Harbour; the tree places the settlement at Edgartown. The school of 11 January 1651/2 rests on Thomas Prince’s 1727 account, which says that about thirty Indian children came.

The loss at sea

Gookin’s account, printed by Banks (volume 1, pages 228 to 229), has the sailing from Boston for London in November 1657 in Mr Garrett’s ship, which never arrived. Savage names the master as Garrett. The Corporation’s letter of 30 April 1658 is in volume 10 of the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, page 202. The sailing date comes from Gookin’s account; the letter’s own words are that the Corporation feared the ship had miscarried.