Dr. John NORTH

John married Susanna FRANCIS on 15 Apr 1671. Susanna was born on 1 Nov 1651. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

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John North sailed from London at the age of 20 in the SUSAN AND ELLEN and landed at Boston April 16, 1635. Among his fellow voyagers were many of the founders of the sturdy New England families so intimately connected with the development of the colonies and the United States. The ships lists were often headed with the words: "The men have taken the oath of allegiance and supremacie," or they swear "that they are no Subsedy men." This is explained by the fact that King James issued a proclamation that no person take passage in any ship to America (being subsidy men or their value) without license from his Majesty's Commissioners for the plantations, nor any under the degree of subsidy men, without a certificate that they have taken the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and a testimony from the ministers of the parish of their conformity to the orders and disciple of the Church of England.

John North and his wife were members of the Farmington Church, which she joined in 1656. He was made freeman of Connecticut, May 21, 1657.

There is a mystery surrounding John North's marriage. Did he marry twice? There is no authentic record. He was married before leaving Ipswich, for his first child was born, there in 1641. But the vital records of that town contain no births or marriages of any Norths or Birds. Most records state that his wife was Hannah, daughter of Thomas Bird. In the distribution of the latter's estate, August-September, 1662, portions were set to Mary Northe and to Hannah Scott, again mentioned March 3, 1663, as good wife Northe and Hannah Scott. From this statement is probably drawn the conclusion in the "Goodwin and Morgan Ancestral Lines," by F.F. Starr, that Mary Bird was John North's second wife, and that Hannah was probably the first wife of Edmund Scott. Savage does not give the name of Edmund Scott's first wife and says his second wife was Elizabeth, widow of Thomas Upson. John North's oldest daughter was named Mary. None bore the name Hannah, but both names occur among his granddaughters.

No satisfactory explanation being obtainable from this meagre information, it perhaps strengthens the reliability of the various old family records, which state that Hannah Bird was John North's wife.

It is interesting to conjecture when and where the Norths and the Birds came in contact with each other. From Mr. Starr's book we learn that the first record of Thomas Bird in America was in 1639, when he bought land in that part of Boston later set apart as Braintree, and that by May, 1644, he was in Hartford, and shortly afterward removed to Farmington, where he bought land. But the present compiler believes that the Thomas Bird who was granted in April, 1639, a house and lot in Ipswich, and six acres of planting land in "reedy marsh," according to the Ipswich town records, was this same Thomas Bird, and that he probably went to Braintree later in the same years. His stay in Ipswich therefore probably covers the period when the two families were in contact. But there is always the interesting possibility that the families may have known each other in England, as previously suggested by the fact that early in the seventeenth century there were families of Norths and Birds in Yorkshire, whence both may have come.

John married Hannah BIRD. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]