Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred SubjectsUpham, Charles Wentworth
History
Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects
Upham, Charles Wentworth
Salem (Mass.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem -- History -- 17th century
The daughter of Mr. Peters came over to America shortly after his
death, bringing with her her mother, who, for many years, had been
subject to derangement. They were kindly received; and some of his
property, particularly a valuable farm in the vicinity[i.58] of
Marblehead, which the daughter sold to the American ancestor of the
Devereux family, was recovered from the effect of his attainder. She
probably soon went back to England, where she spent her days. Papers on
file in the county court show that Elizabeth Barker, widow, "daughter
of Mr. Hugh Peters," was living, in March, 1702, in good health, at
Deptford, Kent, in the immediate vicinity of London, and had been
living there for about forty years.
In consequence, perhaps, of the intimate connection between Mr. Peters
and the family of John Winthrop, Jr., the name of the latter is to be
added to the cluster of eminent men who, at that time, were drawn to
reside in Salem. He was here, it is quite certain, from 1638 to 1641,
if not for a longer period. There are indications of his presence as
early as March of the former year, when he was appointed with Endicott
to administer the freeman's oath to his uncle Downing. On the 25th of
the next June, he had liberty to set up a salt-house at Royal Neck, on
the east side of Wooleston River. There he erected a dwelling-house and
other buildings, as appears by the depositions of sundry persons in a
land suit about thirty years afterwards, who state that they worked for
him, and were conversant with him there for several years. His first
experiments and enterprises in the salt-manufacture, which he
subsequently conducted on a very extensive scale in Connecticut, were
performed at Royal Neck. His daughter, the widow successively of
Antipas Newman and Zerubabel Endicott, in the suit just
men[i.59]tioned, recovered possession of that property, comprising
forty acres, with the buildings and improvements. In 1646, John
Winthrop, Jr., accompanied by a brother of Hugh Peters, Rev. Thomas
Peters from Cornwall in England, began a plantation at Pequot River;
and Trumbull, in his "History of Connecticut," says that "Mr. Thomas
Peters was the first minister of Saybrook." The fortunes and families
of Hugh Peters and John Winthrop, Jr., seem all along to have been
linked together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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