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Excerpted from
The Phelps Family of America and
Their English Ancestors, (Save
$201 by ordering through us.) Two volumes.
By Judge Oliver Seymour Phelps and Andrew T. Servin. (Eagle Publishing Company
of Pittsfield, Mass., 1899).
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As a result of the book The
Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633,
(Volume III) by Robert Charles Anderson (available in hardbound or
as a CD-ROM),
it is accepted by
a consensus of recognized genealogical scholars that William
Phelps of
Massachusetts and Connecticut was from Crewkene and
not Tewkesbury. |
James Phelps, born about 1520, supposedly at Nether
Tyne, Staffordshire,
is said to be the brother of Francis
Phyllyppe, both probably
sons of Richard Phyllyppe of that place—referred to in
1588, after his death, as late of Tewksbury.
James Phelps married Joan, born about 1542, around the year 1559.
They resided in Tewksbury, Gloucestershire, where James died
about 1588. Joan was given permission to administer his estate,
May 10, 1588, by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. They had
nine children and their oldest son William is my [Oliver Seymour
Phelps'] ancestor. Their sixth child, Edward is the ancestor
of William
Phelps of Vevery, Switzerland
(1877).
William was baptized in Tewksbury on August 4, 1560, and married
Dorothy (born about 1563) around the year 1586. William and Dorothy
had eight children before William died about 1611. Dorothy and
William's brother, Nicholas, administered his estate when he
died. When Dorothy died prior to May 31, 1613, Nicholas was commissioned
to administer William's estate during the minority of William
Jr.
In 1590, according to Church records, William was granted a
Lenten license to "eat fleshe because sieke," with
the privilege to terminate when he recovered. In 1607, William
served as the Bailiff of Tewksbury.
William Jr. was born between 1597-1599 and was baptized at Tewkesbury
Abbey Church, Gloucestershire, England, on August 19, 1599. In
about 1619 he married his first wife, Elizabeth. William and
Elizabeth's first child, Richard, was baptized at Tewksbury Abbey
around 1619, and soon thereafter, they probably removed to one
of the southern counties (probably Soberest or Dorchester) as
there is no further record of them or their children in Tewksbury.
William Phelps [since proven to be from near Crewkerne,
and not the William Phelps of Tewkesbury —Editor],
Elizabeth, their six children,
and his brother, George, aboard the ship Mary
and John, became the first of the Phelps immigrants to
the New World, landing in Massachusetts on May 30, 1630, being
with an organized church company, and becoming the first settlers
and founders of Dorchester, which claims the distinction of
being the first town in Massachusetts Colony to organize a town
government. They became original members of Reverend Warham's
church, organized March 19, 1630, at Plymouth England, the
day before embarkation.
William Phelps [orginally of Crewkerne] took an active and prominent
part in town matters. On October 19, 1630, he applied for admission
to the Colony as a freeman, and was admitted early in 1631. On
September 27 of that year, he was made Constable or Dorchester,
an important office in those days.
The following November 9, he was a jury member of the first
jury trial in New England. He was also on many committees; to
see about raising a public stock; to view the grounds at Mt.
Wollaston for the enlargement of Boston; to draw a plan there
and report to the next General Court; to arrange the bounds between
Boston and Dorchester and explain what each town wants; to arrange
bounds between Boston and Roxbury; to set out the bounds between
Wessaguscus and Barecove. On the aforementioned Boston-Dorchester
bounds committee, William Felps and Ensign Gibbs were appointed.
He was a Select-man in 1634 and 1635, a Deputy in 1634, and
the same year one of the three Delegates to the General Court
held in Newtown, now Charlestown.
His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1635. On May 2 of that year, the
first-born, Richard, referred to as seventeen years old, embarked
for Barbados Island. No further record of him is available.
With sixty members of the church, William's brother George went
with the Rev. Warham, in the first migration to Windsor, CT,
a two-weeks journey, in the fall of 1635.
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