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Fourteenth Generation
8432. Thomas
Rev MAYHEW23 was
born in 1620 in Southampton, England or Tisbury, Wiltshire, Eng.
He died in 1657 in At Sea. THOMAS MAYHEW
ORIGIN: Tisbury, Wiltshire
MIGRATION: 1632
FIRST RESIDENCE: Medford
REMOVES: Watertown by 1634, Martha's Vineyard by 1647
OCCUPATION: Steward. Magistrate.
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP: Admission to Watertown church prior to 14 May 1634 implied
by freemanship.
FREEMAN: 14 May 1634 (as "Mr. Tho[mas] Mahewe") [MBCR 1:369].
EDUCATION: His letters to the Winthrops were direct and full of practical business
matters [WP 3:169, 6:136]
OFFICES: Watertown selectman, 10 October 1636, 30 December 1637, 10 December
1638, 6 December 1639, 29 December 1640, 21 November 1642 [WaTR 2, 3, 5, 6, 8].
Assessor, 20 December 1642 [WaVR 9]. Arbiter, 30 June 1648 [Aspinwall 135]. Appraiser
of land, 10 September 1643 [Aspinwall 136].
(Further details of his life and offices, which are, as Banks said, "interwoven
with the political and social conditions of the Island," may be found in
Martha's Vineyard Hist 1:104-26, 2:30, 3:299-301].)
ESTATE: Granted Great Dividend of eighty acres at Watertown, 25 July 1636 [WaBOP
4]. Granted Beaverbrook Plowlands of thirty acres, 28 February 1636/7 [WaBOP
7]. Granted Remote Meadows of thirty acres, 26 June 1637 [WaBOP 10].
In the Watertown Inventory of Grants "Thomas Maihue" held five parcels:
"ten acres of upland ... with a pond in it"; thirty acres of plowland
in the Further Plain; eighty acres of upland being a Great Dividend; thirty acres
in the Remote Meadows; and thirty-one acres and a half beyond the Further Plain
[WaBOP 73]. In the Composite Inventory "Thomas Maihew" held six parcels,
being the five in the Inventory of Grants, to which is added "a farm of
two hundred and fifty acres" [WaBOP 19].
On 8 May 1653 in the first division of common land at Edgartown, Mr. Mayhew
received lot number 14 [Martha's Vineyard Hist 2:26]. Following this, he received
his proportion in all subsequent divisions.
In his will, dated 16 June 1681 and proved 28 March 1682, "Thomas Mayhew
of Edgartown upon the Vineyard in this ninetieth year of my age" divided
his extensive lands on Martha's Vineyard and elsewhere among "Matthew Mayhew,
my grandson" (with conditional provisions for "Thomas and John Mayhew,
Jerusha and Jedidah"), "my daughter Hannah" and "her sons
Samuel, John and Joshua Daggett," "my daughter Martha," "Thomas
and John Harlock, and their sister at Boston," naming also to "my son
Daggett" and "my son Tupper" [DukesLR A:326-32].
BIRTH: Baptized 1 April 1593 at Tisbury, Wiltshire, son of Matthew and Alice
(Barter) Mayhew [Gen Adv 4:1-8].
DEATH: Martha's Vineyard 25 March 1682 [Gen Adv 4:4].
MARRIAGE: (1) By about 1620 _____ _____; she died before 1635.
(2) Jane (Gallion) Paine, widow of Thomas Paine, London merchant [TAG 61:256;
Lechford 184-86, 240; Aspinwall 14, 35, 111; Martha's Vineyard Hist 300]. She
died after 1666 but before her husband.
CHILDREN:
With first wife
i THOMAS, b. say 1620; m. by about 1648 Jane _____ [Martha's Vineyard Hist
3:301-02; see COMMENTS below].
With second wife
ii HANNAH, b. 15 June 1635 [WaVR 4]; m. by about 1652 Thomas Doggett, son
of JOHN DOGGETT.
iii BETHIAH, b. 6 December 1636 [WaVR 4]; m. (1) by 1658 Thomas Harlock
[Martha's Vineyard Hist 2:72]; m. (2) by 1677 as his second wife Richard Way
(child b. Boston 13 July 1677 [BVR 143]); she d. by 1678 [TAG 61:256].
iv MARY, b. 14 January 1639[/40] [WaVR 7]; no further record (unless she
is the same as Martha below).
v MARTHA, b. say 1641; m. Sandwich 27 December 1661 Thomas Tupper [MD 14:69].
ASSOCIATIONS: Thomas Macey of Nantucket called Thomas Mayhew his "honored
cousin" [Martha's Vineyard Hist 3:301]. A Thomas Mayhew of Southampton was
apprenticed to Richard Masey, merchant, and was admitted a free commoner of that
town on 9 February 1620[/1] [Martha's Vineyard Hist 300].
COMMENTS: The first documented appearance of Thomas Mayhew in New England was
on 7 November 1632, under the disguise of "Mr. Mavericke Junior" [MBCR
1:101]. On that date, he, Mr. Alcocke and Mr. Turner were commissioned by the
General Court to settle a boundary dispute between Cambridge and Charlestown.
When they completed their duties, they reported back to the Court, and their
report was recorded in two separate places in the records, in slightly different
form. The first time it is entered on its own leaf, and out of chronological
sequence [MBCR 1:94-95]; on this occasion the signatures of the members of the
committee are appended: "Tho: Mayhewe, Nath: Turner, George Alcocke."
The second version is shorter, but in the right place chronologically [MBCR 1:102].
Redating the earlier version of this document removes the presumed evidence for
Mayhew's arrival in 1631, the date stated by both Savage and Pope.
The likelihood that Thomas Mayhew came to New England in 1632 raises an interesting
possibility, based on an Admiralty suit of that year. In the case of Mason v.
Gibbs , two sailors testified that the Lyon's Whelp sailed from England in January
1631/2 and arrived at the Isles of Shoals in May 1632, and carried as its only
passengers "a man and his wife, their two daughters and their man,"
and one of the sailors added that this nameless family "were embarked for
New England on behalf of Matthew Craddock" [English Adventurers 37-38].
Thomas Mayhew is known to have come to New England as Matthew Craddock's steward
[Martha's Vineyard Hist 1:117-26].
About 1640 Mr. Valentine Hill of Boston, merchant, and Mr. Thomas Mayhew of
Watertown, gentleman, agreed to an arbitration of their troubles [Lechford 350].
On 10 March 1649[/50] Mr. Bruen informed his friend Mr. John Birke that Mr. Thomas
Mayhew was in his debt for twenty thousand of pipe staves [Aspinwall 244-45].
In 1901 Charles Edward Banks published the English ancestry of Gov. Thomas
Mayhew [Gen Adv 4:1-8].
Lechford records several documents in which Thomas Mayhew and his wife Jane
Mayhew, formerly the wife of Thomas Paine of London, act as guardians for Thomas
Paine, Jane's son with her first husband [Lechford 184-86, 240]. Savage introduced
confusion by stating that the widow Paine bore the Christian name "Grace"
rather than Jane [Savage 3:185]. It may be this confusion that led him to state
that the wife of the younger Thomas Mayhew was Jane Paine, allegedly daughter
of this non-existent Grace, and therefore his stepsister.
Edward Everett Hale Jr., Lechford's editor, showed that Grace did not exist,
and also that, based on the documents in Lechford, there is no evidence that
the younger Thomas Thomas Rev MAYHEW and Jane PAINE were married in 1647. 8433. Jane PAINE23 was born about 1625 in London,
England. Children were:
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