♂Walter Deane

Walter Deane (baptised 13 May 1612 – died after 20 August 1693) was an English-born settler of Taunton, in Plymouth Colony^W, and one of the men who ran the town in its first half-century. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Benjamin Dean (died between 1723 and 1725). In April 1637 he sailed from Weymouth for New England with six servants, in the same ship as Elizabeth Poole^W, the founder of Taunton.

Early life

He was baptized at Chard, in Somerset, on 13 May 1612, a son of William Deane of South Chard. His father made his will on 22 July 1634 and was dead by 11 October, when it was proved. The will named five sons, William the eldest and executor, then Thomas, John, Walter and Isaac, and four daughters. One of its witnesses signed as William Cogam, most likely William Cogan, a tanner of South Chard whose daughter Eleanor became Walter’s wife.

Taunton

After the crossing in John Driver’s ship, he is said to have landed at Boston and spent most of a year at Dorchester before going on with others to Taunton. On 4 December 1638 he and John Deane, most likely his brother, were admitted freemen^W of the colony at Plymouth with other men of Cohannet, as Taunton was then called. The two Deanes are said to have taken up farms on the west bank of the river, about a mile from the center of the village, and the road past their houses came to be called Dean Street. He is said to have been a tanner by trade, like his father-in-law.

He is said to have been Taunton’s deputy to the Plymouth court in 1640. In 1647 he was one of the seven men chosen by the inhabitants to order the town’s affairs, and he signed the deed by which the town gave Henry Andrews its calves’ pasture, a neck of land by the river, in return for building the meeting house. A paper he signed with other settlers is said to explain that the place was called Taunton “in honor and love to our dear native country”. He is also said to have been a selectman of Taunton every year from 1679 to 1686.

During King Philip’s War^W, the towns of Cape Cod invited the people of Taunton to bring their movable property to them for safety. By a family account published in 1849, Walter was one of the men appointed to decline the offer and thank the Cape towns for their kindness.

Family and death

When and where Walter Deane and Eleanor Cogan married is not known. By 1654 her father in Somerset was calling her the “wife of Walter Deane in New England”. Their children probably included three sons, Joseph, Ezra and Benjamin, and a daughter, Mary, who was married to Shadrack Wilbore by 1659. On 20 August 1693 Walter and Eleanor together made a deed to Isaac Dean, the last record of either of them. Walter died some time after; no will or settlement of his estate is known.

Notes

Baptism and parents

The baptism at Chard, from the Bishop’s transcripts of the parish register, and the identification of the Taunton settler with the Walter baptized there follow H. Clark Dean, “Eleanor Cogan, the Wife of Walter Deane of Taunton: An Evaluation of the Evidence”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 147 (1993), pp. 240–254. William Reed Deane’s “The Deane Family” (NEHGR 3, 1849) had placed his birth, after the Rev. Samuel Deane, “in Chard, Eng. between 1615 and 1620”. The will of William Deane of Southchard was printed in full in NEHGR 51 (1897), pp. 432–433; its editor saw “strong reasons for believing that the testator was the father of John and Walter Deane who settled at Taunton”. That John and Walter of Taunton were brothers is the 1849 account’s view.

The voyage and the freemen

The April 1637 sailing is in a Weymouth port book (E 190/876/11), abstracted in Peter Wilson Coldham’s The Complete Book of Emigrants 1607–1660: “Walter Deane and six servants”, in a list of passengers headed by Elizabeth Poole with two friends and thirteen servants. The admission of freemen on 4 December 1638 is in the Plymouth Colony Records (1:105), as quoted in the Great Migration Newsletter.

Offices and the war

The deputyship of 1640 and the selectman years come from Deane’s 1849 account, which cites the Plymouth Court Orders; so do the year at Dorchester (on the word of the Rev. Samuel Deane), the trade of tanner, the farms on Dean Street, the paper on the town’s name and the King Philip’s War letter, whose signed original the account placed in the Hinckley Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The 1647 deed to Henry Andrews is printed among the Plymouth Colony deeds in The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 3 (1901); it is dated “the eleventh day of the second month” of 1647.

Children

Deane’s 1849 account knew “the names of but three of his children”, Joseph, Ezra and Benjamin, and judged from a 1659 list of Taunton’s proprietors, which counted eight persons in Walter’s family, that he then probably had six. James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary calls Benjamin “s. of Walter”. Mary’s marriage to Shadrack Wilbore comes from Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins (entry for Samuel Wilbore), citing The American Genealogist 59:224–230.

Death

The deed of 20 August 1693 is in the Bristol County deeds (7:351). Deane’s 1849 account called it “the latest date at which we can learn that either was living” and found no will or estate settlement. The American Genealogist 59:227 is said to give the date as 25 August.