♂William Kelsey

William Kelsey (about 1609 – between June 1675 and September 1676) was one of the first settlers of Hartford, in the Connecticut Colony^W, who late in life moved to Killingworth and represented that town in the colony’s General Court. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Hester Kelsey (1636–1720).

Cambridge and Hartford

Where he came from is not known. He was in New England by 1633, when he was granted a rood of ground for a cowyard at Newtowne, the settlement in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W that was later renamed Cambridge. By October 1635 he held five parcels there, among them a house and garden in the town. Late in 1635 or early in 1636 he went with the Newtowne families who settled Hartford on the Connecticut River, and on 19 April 1636 he sold his right in Newtowne’s meadow ground to Thomas Fisher, signing the deed with his mark.

At Hartford his house lot stood on the Main Street. By February 1639 the town’s land inventory credited him with twenty-one parcels: an acre with his dwelling house, outhouses, yards and gardens, meadow and swamp in the North Meadow, pasture in the Cowpasture and the Middle Oxpasture, land on the east side of the Great River, and pieces in the neck of land, several of them bought from neighbors. In 1652 he had a “workingshopp” on his lot, though the records do not name his trade. On 24 March 1657/8 the General Court declared him “freed from watching, warding & training”, that is, from the town watch and militia drill; the record gives no reason.

Family

He was married by 1634 to a woman whose name is not known. She was born about 1613 and was living at Hartford in December 1666, and her given name is thought to have been Hester. They had eight children, Mark, Hester, John, Priscilla, Mary, Abigail, Stephen and Daniel, born between about 1634 and 1650; the last three were born or baptized at Hartford. Hester, born about 1636, was later said to have been the first girl born at Hartford. She married James Eggleston of Windsor, and her sisters Priscilla and Mary married two Gillett brothers of Windsor, Cornelius and Jonathan.

Killingworth

By 1668 he had moved to Killingworth, where his daughter Abigail married John Hull that December and his son Daniel married Mary Stevens in 1672. Five of his father’s Hartford parcels were marked in 1670/1 as given to Stephen. William was listed among the freemen of Killingworth in 1669, and on 11 May 1671 he sat in the General Court of Connecticut as the deputy for Killingworth, although he had signed his Cambridge deed with a mark rather than his name.

He died at Killingworth between June 1675 and September 1676. His will and inventory were presented at the New London County Court on 21 September 1676, but neither document survives.

Notes

Sources

The account of his life follows Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins (vol. II, pp. 1117–1119), which quotes the Cambridge and Hartford town records and the Connecticut colony records and rests on Gale Ion Harris’s study of the family in The American Genealogist 68 (1993): 208–15, which Anderson calls “a definitive study”. The Main Street house lot and the 1652 workshop come from William DeLoss Love’s The Colonial History of Hartford, which tentatively counts him among the pioneers who spent the winter of 1635–6 at Hartford; Anderson’s Great Migration Newsletter places the move of the Newtowne families “late in 1635 or early in 1636”. He appears in a Cambridge list dated 7 January 1632/3 of men who were to make fence, but Anderson notes that the list was compiled later, so 1633 stands as the year of his arrival. The records also spell his name “Kelsy” and “Callsey”.

Birth

No record of his birth or baptism is known. Anderson gives “by about 1609”, reckoned from the estimated date of his marriage, and the year here is that estimate.

His wife

Several identifications of his wife were examined and set aside by George E. McCracken and by Harris (The American Genealogist 37: 38–42 and 68: 211–14). Harris suggests from the names given to the children that she was called Hester, a suggestion only, so the body says “is thought”.

The children’s ages

Harris’s dating made the older children several years younger than earlier writers had thought. Priscilla was 17 on 22 December 1657 and Mary 14 in May 1658, ages Harris took from the Winthrop medical journals. The births of Mark, Hester and John are estimates (“say 1634”, “say 1636”, “say 1638”); Abigail was born at Hartford on 19 April 1645, Stephen was baptized there on 7 November 1647 and Daniel was born there in July 1650.

Hester and Hartford

The report that Hester was the first girl born at Hartford comes from the Windsor record of her death in 1720 and a nineteenth-century history of Windsor; no birth record survives, and Harris’s estimate of about 1636 fits a birth soon after the settlers arrived.

The death

The dates come from Norman W. Ingham, “The End of William Kelsey,” The American Genealogist 69 (1994): 218, who found the New London County Court entry of 21 September 1676 that narrows the range.