♂William Towne

William Towne (died by June 1673) was an emigrant from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and an early settler of Salem and Topsfield, Massachusetts, and the father of Rebecca Nurse, Mary Esty and Sarah Cloyce, three sisters accused of witchcraft in 1692. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Jacob Towne (died 1704).

Life

He married Johanna Blessing at St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk on 25 April 1620, as the parish register records, and their children were christened at Great Yarmouth between 1625 and 1634. A history of Topsfield records that William Towne was at Salem by 1640, with a house on a ten-acre grant in the North Fields, and that he later bought forty acres in Topsfield from William Paine, where he was a commoner by 1661. His sons Edmund and Jacob settled beside him.

He died without a will. On 24 June 1673 the court granted administration of his estate to his widow, Johana. She kept the estate together until her own death, and in January 1682/3 the six children asked the court to divide it: the land to “his three sons, Edmond, Jacob and Joseph” and the moveables to “the three daughters, Rebecka, Mary, and Sarah”. The court at Ipswich allowed the division in April 1683.

Family

Nineteen years after his death, the witchcraft accusations at Salem Village fell on three of his daughters. Rebecca, the wife of Francis Nurse, was hanged in July 1692, and Mary, the wife of Isaac Esty, in September; Sarah, by then the wife of Peter Cloyce, was accused and imprisoned but never tried. Compiled accounts give Great Yarmouth in Norfolk as the family’s English home, a claim not checked against a record here.