52 ANCESTORS, 52 THEMES, No. 22, Commencement/Beginnings: Resolved WHITE 1614 - abt 1687

This year's challenge by Amy Crow is another weekly blog based on Themes. Last week, it was Military.  This week, the theme is Commencement / Beginnings:  I've chosen Resolved WHITE.     

Time to write about the Mayflower ancestors, eh? Some information may be found on The Mayflower History site, Wikipedia, and the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, among other sources.  The image on this page is of a postcard, published by Smith's Inc, Plymouth, Mass., about 1930-1945, displayed in Boston Public Library.

William & Susanna WHITE, and their two sons, Resolved, born in England [direct ancestor] and Peregrine, his younger brother, born in the Provincetown harbour, are on my children's father's lines. They link into the RICE line, first immigrant Deacon Edmund RICE, who arrived in the colony in 1632. Details of the Pilgrim's colony beginnings may be found on many sites, as noted above.

William & Susanna WHITE and 5 year-old Resolved had a very rocky start to their trip to New England. Note that the WHITE couple with their two servants were part of the London Merchant group, which boarded in London, then sailed to Leiden to add the congregation members as passengers. In Leiden, the other ship needed lengthy repairs, and the group in the Mayflower set off finally quite late in the season, early in September.  Here is an excellent set of sketches to show the inside of the ship, Mayflower.

Mentioned above, after arriving at safe harbour in Provincetown Harbour on November 9th, Susanna delivered a second son on board ship, whom they named Peregrine, at the end of November 1620. As all know who learn about the Mayflower group of settlers, their first winter was extremely challenging and approximately half of the crew and passengers died. On 21 Feb 1620/1, William WHITE died, leaving his wife and two children on their own.  

Three months later, 12 May 1621, Susanna married Edward Winslow, who had also been widowed, his wife having died two months earlier. It must have been amazingly challenging for this couple to manage. Each had been very recently widowed, and were determined to settle in this new country with extremely limited resources. Susanna and Edward went on to have five children, plus her two earlier children.  Edward Winslow served as Governor, Assistant Governor and, as the colony's agent in England. 

Resolved WHITE was born 9 Sep 1614, in England.  By the 1630s, he moved with his stepfather and mother to Marshfield, later moving to Scituate where he was granted 100 acres next to William VASSALL's land.

On 6 Nov 1640, he married Judith VASSALL, whose family (William VASSALL & Anna KING) had arrived in 1635.  William VASSALL was a founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; he left the Colony and settled in Barbados - another story altogether! 

Resolved and Judith had the following nine children, born and baptized in Scituate:

1. William, b. 10 Apr 1642, d. 24 Jan 1694/5
2. John, b. 11 Mar 1643/4
3. Sylvanus, b. 13 Mar 1645/6, d. as infant [not listed in some records]
4. Samuel, b. 13 Mar 1645/6, d. between 1720-1731; m. Rebecca ___, abt 1667.
5. Resolved [jr.], b. 12 Nov 1647, d. bef 27 Mar 1670
6. Anna, bap 10 Jun 1649, d. 25 May 1714 Concord MA; m. abt 1670 to John Hayward.
7. Elizabeth [ancestor], b. 10 Jun 1652/bap 4 Jul 1652, d. 27 Oct 1732 Concord MA; m. to Obadiah WHEELER on 17 Jul 1672; 9 children; Wheeler family arrived about 1639.
8. Josiah, b. 29 Sep 1654/bap 14 Oct 1654, d. bef 5 Jun 1710; m. abt 1680 to Remember Read; 5 known children
9. Susanna, b. Aug 1645/bap 9 Nov 1645

In 1656/7, Resolved and Judith - and likely, some of their children - travelled to Barbados, likely to aid in the settling of the estate of her father William who had settled there.

Resolved was made a Freeman of Plymouth County on June 1, 1658. By 1670, he was a Freeman of Marshfield.  He was actively involved in the early colony, and was a soldier in 1670, in King Philip's War. 

Judith, his wife, died by 3 Apr 1670 in Marshfield, aged 51 years.  On 5 Oct 1674, Resolved married for a second time to widow Abigail Lord [maiden name unknown].  Abigail died 27 Jun 1682, while they were living in Salem, where he had become a Freeman of Salem. 

After Abigail's death, Resolved moved back to Marshfield, likely living in the household of one of his children.  He is mentioned in a land transfer of his eldest son, William White, on 19 Sep 1687, and it is suggested that he died within a few years of this date. 

Resolved and his first wife Judith are buried in Winslow Cemetery in Marshfield. It is not known where his second wife, Abigail, is buried, nor when. 

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52 WEEKS, 52 THEMES: No. 2: When a VASSALL marries a KING

This year's challenge by Amy Crow is another weekly blog, but based on Themes.  Last week, it was Fresh Start.  This week, it's on King - anything related to the word, concept, or ancestral connection. 

Background:  My children's father's mother's line, the RICE line, goes back to the 1632 immigrant, Deacon Edmund RICE.  His grandson married Elizabeth WHITE, daughter of Resolved WHITE (who was the elder son of William & Susanna WHITE), an original Mayflower settler.  Um-hm, my ex-husband has Mayflower ancestors in the WHITE family.

But going back a bit further... Resolved WHITE, b. 9 Sep 1614 in Leiden, Netherlands, married first on 4 Apr 1640 in Scituate, Plymouth, Massachusetts, to Judith VASSALL, b. 1619 in Stepney, England, likely baptised in the same church as her mother; Judith was the eldest child of William VASSALL & Anna KING. Ah-ha!  Here's the KING in the family. Whew... bagged one.  The Vassall family had arrived in Massachusetts in 1635, arriving to settle, on the vessel, Blessing.

Anna KING.  
We have her baptism record as 1 Dec 1594, Woodham (Woodham Ferrers) Essex, England.  She likely was born within a few weeks of this date, but it is not listed on the record.  It does list her father - George KING, but not her mother. Likely this is because it was common for the mother to have a 'lying-in' for several weeks after the birth, and since she was not present at the baptism, she would not be listed as such. Frustrating, however. A family tree or two online have her mother listed as "Joane". An online index lists details of a likely Joane ROWSE married to a George Kinge as follows: ( Accessed: Ancestry.com. London, England, Extracted Parish Records [database on-line].):  

25 Feb 1589-90 George Kinge, of Hayes, co. Middx., Yeoman,
& Joane Rowse, Spinster, of Northall, sd co.,
dau. of William Rowse, late of same, Yeoman, decd; Gen. Lic.

And now doing a smidge of new searching, I find George KING's will, dated 14 Oct 1625, naming his wife as Joane, all three of his sons, listed in order as George, a daughter Judith, and his daughter Anna Vassall and his son-in-law, William Vassall.  Well, well, well. It wasn't posted anywhere last year, but here it is today. From the will one can find that George KING(e) owned several different farmlands and buildings, and also was Yeoman to 'his knight, Sir Arthur Harris'. His marriage lists him as Yeoman as well.

His burial record, in St George the Martyr, Southwark, Surrey, in south London on the south side of the Thames is quite clearly dated 7 Dec 1626, although I see online trees stating his death to be Dec 1625.  
The Church Register, "p.187-8, 1626, Burials - December, clearly shows written: 

                   7 | George King"

I wonder if this couple teased each other about how a King married a Vassal(l)? 

The five children they bore - 3 boys, 2 girls - all seem to have survived to adulthood and I may do a smidge more research on those other children if only to see if any others followed Anna & William over to the new colony in New England.

If you have information or corrections, please do not hesitate to let me know, either by contact through calewis at telus dot com, or in the Comments below.  Thank you so much for visiting and reading this post!