♂William Filley

William Filley (fl. 1642–1677) was an inhabitant of Windsor, in the Connecticut Colony^W, four of whose children were baptised together on a single day in 1651, when the eldest was nearly eight years old. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Samuel Filley (1643–1712).

Origins

His parents are not known, and no record of his birth or of where he lived before Windsor has been found. A history of Windsor published in 1891–92 gives his marriage to Margaret as 2 September 1642, citing the town’s early church record; her maiden name is not known. The Windsor records name the couple as the parents of Samuel, born there on 24 September 1643, the first of eight children, three sons and five daughters, entered in the town’s records between 1643 and 1665.

Windsor

Margaret was admitted to the Windsor church on 17 July 1651, and on 3 August 1651 four of the children, Samuel, John, Elizabeth and Mary, were baptized together. In the churches of New England at that time only the children of church members could be baptized, so the older children’s baptisms had to wait until a parent was admitted.

William probably paid for a seat in the meeting-house on 18 January 1660 (the record writes it 1659/60), when the town listed each householder who had paid for a seat and how much he paid. The town taxed him on 10 February 1673. William himself was admitted to the church’s communion on 8 March 1673, more than twenty years after his wife. A list of Windsor families dated 17 August 1677 credits him with seven children born in the town. His son Samuel married Anna Gillet at Windsor in 1663, and his daughter Mary married Joseph Skinner there in 1666. No record of his death has been found.

Notes

Meeting-house seat, 1660

Stiles’s The History of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut (1859), pages 149 to 150, prints an extract from an old Windsor Book of Rates dated January 18, 1659-60, listing the households that had paid for seats in the meeting-house and how much each had paid. The extract comes through a compiled history rather than the register itself, so the payment is hedged in the text. The date in the text, 18 January 1660, is the same day in the modern count of the year.