♂William Churchill

William Churchill (died after March 1722) was a man of Plymouth Colony^W and one of the first settlers of Plympton, the town set off from Plymouth in 1707. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Samuel Churchill (1688–1751).

Plymouth and Plympton

He was a son of John Churchill and Hannah Pontus, and is said to have been born at Plymouth in 1656. On 17 January 1683/4 William Churchill married Lydia Bryant (1662–1736) at Plymouth. She was a daughter of Stephen Bryant of Plymouth. The couple made their home in the part of Plymouth that became Plympton, and the Plympton records later entered their children as the sons and daughters of “William, one of the first Settlers of Plympton, and Lydia”. Six sons were born between 1685 and 1702 - William, Samuel, James, Isaac, Benjamin and Josiah - and there were two daughters, Lydia and Mehetabel. William is said to have been one of three men, with Samuel Bradford and Isaac Cushman, who on 24 November 1704 deeded eighteen acres at Rocky Run to the blacksmith Luke Perkins, to draw him to Plympton to work at his trade.

His will

On 27 March 1722 he made his will as “William Churchill Senior of Plimton”. He provided for “my six sons William Samuel, James Isaac Benjamin & Josiah” and “my two Daughters Lydia Churchill and Mehetabel Churchill”, and named his wife Lydia and his son William as executors. Both daughters were still unmarried. The date of his death is not known. Lydia died at Plympton on 6 February 1736.

Notes

His birth and parents

The year and place of birth come from a compiled family history, The Churchill Family in America (1904) by Gardner Asaph Churchill and Nathaniel Wiley Jones, page 5: “Born in Plymouth in 1656”. The same book prints his father’s spoken will of 1662, which left “his son William” the purchase land at Punckatusett, in the part of Plymouth that later became Plympton.

The deed of 1704

The deed to Luke Perkins is known from a compiled family history, Little’s Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine (1909), in its account of the Perkins family. The book does not say which William Churchill made the deed. In 1704 his son William was nineteen, so the father is the more likely of the two.

The family

The marriage is printed from the Plymouth town records in The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 13. The children’s births, with the note on the first settlers, are in the printed Vital Records of Plympton. The will survives in the Plymouth County probate files, both as the original paper and as the register copy, and names all eight children.