Note 43 — HISTORICAL ADDRESS

A statement to this effect has crept into the generally accepted accounts of the settlement of Weymouth, on the high authority of Prince’s Annals. Emery Memorial (p. 88). The entry in Prince is at the close of 1624, and reads as follows:—“This Year comes some Addition to the few inhabitants of Wessagusset, from Weymouth in England; who are another sort of people than the Former (mst) [and on whose account I conclude the Town is since called Weymouth.]” To this entry the compiler appended the following foot-note: “They have the Rev. Mr. Barnard their first Non-conformist Minister, who dies among them: But whether He comes before or after 1630, or when He Dies is yet unknown (mst) nor do I anywhere find the least Hint of Him, but in the Manuscript Letters, taken from some of the oldest People at Weymouth.” Annals (p. 150).

Prince compiled his work more than a century after the events here alleged to have taken place. He carefully gives his authority, as was his custom, for his statement, and himself discredits it. It seems, so far as the date was concerned, to have been a mere “oldest inhabitant” tradition, which wholly lacked corroboration by the contemporaneous authorities. The party from Weymouth, in England, settled at Dorchester in July, 1633. Prince; II. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. (v. 7, p. 96). In 1635, Massachiel Barnard, an elder not a minister, came out with the party mentioned by Winthrop and in the Records of Massachusetts as being placed at Weymouth. This party included not only the Rev. Mr. Hull, but the original bearers of several of the names now most common in Weymouth, such as Bicknell, Lovell, Pool, Upham, Porter, &c. See N. E. Gen. Reg. (v. 25, p. 13). It is safe to say that the date of 1624 given in Prince is wholly erroneous. If the permanent settlement of Weymouth does not belong to 1623, no precise date for it can be assigned; but I cannot see any room for doubt as to September, 1623.

The discovery, in 1870, of the names of those who came out with Mr. Hull, in 1635, is very important in the genealogy of Weymouth. It is singular to study in the several lists of names which have at various times been made out, the fate of the families which bore them. Some, the Kings and Kingmans for instance, have never increased, but are still perpetuated by single families in Weymouth; others like Jeffries and Bursley have disappeared; while yet others, like the Bicknells, Frenches and Lovells have increased amazingly. Lists of names found in the town at various epochs are printed in the Appendix to the Address, with indications and figures shewing the apparent increase or disappearance of the families.