Joseph EDWARDS

Joseph married Sarah ? on 12 Nov 1670 in Wethersfield, Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Sarah died between 25 Mar 1716 and 1719. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Sarah EDWARDS was born on 20 Oct 1671 in Wethersfield, Hartford Co., Connecticut; died on 15 Feb 1725 in Hartford, Hartford Co., Connecticut.
2. Mary EDWARDS was born on 25 May 1674; died in Aug 1752 in Southold, Long Island.
3. Hannah EDWARDS was born on 21 Nov 1676; died on 10 Jan 1741/2 in Wethersfield, Hartford Co., Connecticut.
4. John EDWARDS was born on 30 May 1679; died on 25 Mar 1716 in Wethersfield, Hartford Co., Connecticut.
5. Dorothy EDWARDS was born in Sep 1681; died on 18 Apr 1760 in Wethersfield, Hartford Co., Connecticut.

Notes:

Name:
John Edwards appears often in records of local affairs after 1640, though he was in Wethersfield before his son John was born in December 1638. He served on juries at Hartford twelve times between July 1640 and September 1648.Edwards and Nathaniel Foote were co-defendants in a trespass action by Leonard Chester in July 1640, and with John Hollister he gave security for Robert Bedle's appearance at court in December 1644. In March 645/6, John Edwards and Samuel Ireland's widow, then wife of Robert Burrows of New London, presented Ireland's inventory to the court. Ten years later in Mach 1655/, William Gibbons's brother-in-law Luke Hitchcock sued John for a debt, and he was sued in May 1657 by William Gull.

John had recorded his three-acre lot with a house and barn on 26 April 1641 and sold it to John Lattimer in 1654 (Wethersfield Deeds, l:220). Stiles's brief sketch cited above shows that Edwards was townsman in 1648/9, that he bought the homestead of his wife's former husband, Abraham Finch, in 1651 (also stated as 1657), that he was Town Drummer and caretaker of the meeting house in 1659, and that in February 1661/2 he was consignee on account of his stepson, Abraham Finch, for two hogsheads and one tierce of sugar from Barbados to be delivered at New London on the 'Tryall'. John Lattimer, the buyer of Edwards's homelot in 1654, was in Hartford by 1639 and had returned to England in 1642 as an agent for Gov. Wyllys or his steward, William Gibbons. in light of other affiliation noted in the introduction, it is of interest that Lattimer, Samuel Gardner, and Richard Risley, were among the several grantees of lands in the (modern) East Hartford section of Hockanum in 1640 and 1641. Risley's inventory was taken in 1648 by William Gibbons, and his descendants appear later as spouses of Edwards's descendants. Samuel Gardner and Edward's son Thomas became the first settlers in the adjacent Wethersfield part of Hockanum, and Lattimer's widow the second-largest creditor of John Edwards's estate.....

In his last years, John was called "John Edwards, Senior, of Wethersfield" when Winthrop treated him in April 1661, in February 1663/4 (prescription "sent by his son Tho: Edwards"), in July 1664, and shortly before he died in December 1664. Aside from the local religious dissension which divided the community and the Edwards family itself, another discord had surfaced between the older half-brother Thomas, and the rest of the family. On 9 May 1665, the son John Edwards and the widow Dorothy Edwards, administrators of John Edwards's estate, sued Thomas "for illegal possessing and misprouving two allotments of the said John Edwards on the East Side of the Great River at Nabuck to the damage of L30".

John died intestate. His inventory was taken by the townsmen on 27 December 1664.

John married Dorothy MOULTON before Dec 1638. Dorothy was born in 1618 in England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Fact: Daughter of Robert and Alice Moulton

Notes:

Name:
In 1943, Mary Walton Ferris cautiously suggested, as a "theory justified by circumstantial evidence," that Dorothy was the daughter "Dorothy Edwards" whose bequest was 20 marks and two pullobers in Robert Moulton's will dated 20 February 1654/5 at Salem, Massachusetts (Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines (Milwaukee, 1943), 1:452). Except for dates, names, and the implication that Dorothy probably lived at a distance since she was to receive no share of the household goods, Mrs. Ferris had little specific evidence for this conjecture. However, it is confirmed by a combination of records in Connecticut which show that Dorothy Moulton's nephew Samuel Moulton (Robert2-1) of Salem was temporarily residing at Wethersfield when he died 25 September 1667 at the home of John Edwards's son Thomas in Hockanum (JWJ Med. rec., 759; Hartford Probate District, 3:60). the presence of this young man at Wethersfield, whose estate was also administered at Salem in June 1668, is naturally explained if Thomas Edwards's stepmother, Dorothy, was Samuel Moulton's aunt Dorothy Moulton. The two pillobers may have been in Dorothy's possession long before her father formally gave them to her in 1655. Her husband Abraham Finch's inventory a Wethersfield in 1640 included "2 prre of pilloberes" (Charles William Manwaring, 'A Digest of the Connecticut Probate Records, Hartford District (3 vols. Hartford, 1904-6; hereinafter Manwaring, 1:11).