♂William Collier

William Collier (died 1670) was a London merchant and a magistrate of Plymouth Colony^W, one of the London investors who had put money into the colony before he came to live in it. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Sarah Collier (1616–1691).

London

No record of his birth or of his parents has been found. Savage’s dictionary of the first settlers of New England calls him a merchant of London, and one of the adventurers, the London investors who backed the Plymouth settlement. A later compilation of the Great Migration settlers adds that he served an apprenticeship with a grocer, William Russell, and was sworn into the Grocers’ Company^W on 16 August 1609. His name stands among the adventurers in William Bradford’s history of Plymouth, in the list of those who signed the 1626 agreement selling out their shares to the colonists. Bradford, setting out the private gains of the colony’s agent Isaac Allerton^W, wrote that Allerton had put £400 of his early profits “into a brew-house of Mr. Colliers in London”.

Plymouth Colony

He came from London to Plymouth in 1633, was admitted a freeman of the colony on 1 January 1633/34, and made his home at Duxbury. He was an Assistant, one of the magistrates who sat with the governor, for twenty-eight years between 1634 and 1665. In 1641 James Sherley, one of the London partners, asked him and John Atwood to help bring the long quarrel over the partnership’s accounts to an end, and Bradford names both men as the mediators. In 1643 the colony’s court commissioned him and Edward Winslow^W to ratify the articles of the New England Confederation^W on Plymouth’s behalf, and in 1652 he was among the first purchasers of Dartmouth. By 1659 he was finding the work hard: the court recorded that “by reason of age and much business on him” he could not attend the colony’s business “but with great difficulties”, and it had the colony’s treasurer find him a servant, allowing £10 of public money for it.

His daughter Sarah married Love Brewster, a son of Elder William Brewster, at Plymouth on 15 May 1634. Savage’s dictionary says that four of his daughters came over. The colony’s court records give Rebecca’s marriage to Job Cole at Plymouth on 15 May 1634, the same day and at the same place as Sarah’s, and Elizabeth’s marriage to Constant Southworth at Plymouth on 2 November 1637. Mary married Thomas Prence^W, later governor, on 1 April 1635, a date that Savage’s dictionary and a compiled Brewster genealogy both give. Sarah’s mother was his wife Jane Clark, whom he married at St Olave’s in Southwark on 16 May 1611, according to the published registers. Savage’s dictionary gives his death as 1670; the records bound it more loosely (see Notes).

Notes

The compilation of Great Migration settlers dates his death only between 29 May 1670, when he still stood on the list of Duxbury freemen, and 5 July 1671, when the court appointed administrators of his estate.