The Higleys and their Ancestry, an Old Colonial Family, by Mary Coffin Johnson 1896
CHAPTER VI.
ANCESTRAL LINKS.
It was the
star of Bethiehem that lighted their way across the Atlantic and went before them
to the place where the young child of
the Republic lay in its wilderness manger.
—CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN.
THE American colonist, John Drake, was one of the contemporary band who came with his family in the Winthrop fleet. Persecution, nearly a century before, had intensified Protestantism, and at a later period infused Puritanism into the veins of the descendants of the ancient family, and these principles were born in John Drake’s blood. Both himself and his wife were stanch Puritans.
His application to be made freeman is found in the list of the first persons who requested that franchise at Dorchester, Mass., October 19, 1630, only a few months after the arrival of the Puritan ships. It is believed by some historians that he resided for a brief period at Taunton, Mass., where members of his family remained, before he came to Windsor, Conn. In 1639 he is found at the latter place, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Land grants were not put upon record In Windsor until the year 1640. Among the earliest entries of that year is one relating to a portion twenty-two and a half rods in width, “set off” to John Drake.
In 1643 he served the General Court as juror, and was again a member in June, 1646.
From an entry upon the Colonial Records about this period, it appears that this high old Puritan sometimes permitted his temper to get the best of him, and with it fell his dignity. Using language, one day, which his fellow-jurors considered profane, they at once imposed upon him a fine to the full extent the law allowed, viz.:
“John Drake, for his misdemeanor in prphane execrations is fyned 40 s.”22-1
Singularly enough, Deacon John Moore, his friend and neighbor, was a member of the jury and of the court which condemned his unadvisable utterances.
In October, 1648, his temper was again wrought to a boiling point at the slanderous gossip of one John Bennett, a townsfellow of doubtful reputation, who declared that he—John Bennett—“had intised and drawne away the affections of his daughter.”23-1
Straight to the General Court he goes and enters complaint. John Bennett was duly brought up at the next sitting of the Court, whereupon he retracted his statement, and promising to be more careful in his conversation about the girls thereafter,23-2 the “Court was willing once more to pass by his Corporall punishment,” and he was “bownd over for good behavior.”23-3 The law was not only expressly severe upon backbiters and slanderers but “against any man who should inveigle the affections of any ‘maide, or maide-servant,’ unless her parents or gaurdians should ‘give way and allowance in that respect.”23-4
With the exception of these few unflattering experiences,—and they are the only ones that can be traced,—John Drake’s life at Windsor, Conn., among the number who were shaping the future of the young colony, was marked by usefulness, and left its good impress upon generations of posterity.
His wife, Elizabeth Drake, was born in England in 1581. This worthy pair were nearing middle age when they came to America. They left behind them all the comforts of an English home of the “gentry” class, severed themselves from cultured society and associations, and came to the strange wild shores of an uninhabited wilderness, for the sole purpose
. . . “serenely high,
Freedom to worship God.”
They were the parents of three sons, Jacob, Job, and John Drake, Jr., all of whom, together with their daughters, one of whom bore the name Hannah, were born in England. Their children accompanied them to America and became prominent in church affairs, and in founding their Christian Commonwealth. Job Drake married Mary, the daughter of Henry Wolcott, Esq., the founder of a family distinguished to this day.
It was a most natural circumstance that came to pass between these two good families of the forests, the Moores and the Drakes, who were knitted together by the common bond of religious fervor and voluntary exiles from their motherland, that Deacon John Moore’s daughter, Hannah, became the wife of John Drake, Jr. Their marriage took place at Windsor, November 30, 1648.
The following narrative of John Drake, Sr.’s, sudden death, which occurred on the 17th of August, 1659, is taken from the ancient Town Records at Windsor:
“Mr. John Drake, Sr., dyed accidentallY, as he was driving a cart loaded with corn to carry from his house to his son Jacob’s. The cattle being 2 oxen and his mare, in the highway against John Griffin’s, something scared the cattle, and they set a running, and he labored to stop them by taking hold on the mare, was thrown upon his face and the cart wheele went over him and broke one of his legs, and bruised his body so that he was taken up dead; being carried into his daughter’s house had life come again, but dyed in a short time, and was buried on the 18th day of August, 1659.”
Elizabeth Drake survived her husband twenty-two years, and died October 7, 1681, at the ripe old age of one hundred years. In the last years of her life she was ministered to by her son Jacob and his family. She was one of those mothers of colonial times of whom it has been said: “From the time when that ‘faire maide,’ Mary Chilton, first leaped upon the rock at Plymouth, to the present day, their influence has been an important element in our national character.” Mrs. Sigourney beautifully portrays them: “On the unfloored hut, she who had been nurtured amid the rich carpets and the curtains of the motherland, rocked her babe and complained not. She who in the home of her youth bad arranged the gorgeous shades of embroidery, or, perchance, had compounded the rich venison pastry as her share in the housekeeping, now pounded the coarse Indian corn for her children’s bread, and bade them ask God’s blessing ere they took their scanty portions. When the snows sifted through their miserable rooftrees upon her little one, she gathered them closer to her bosom; she taught them the Bible, and the catechism, and the holy hymn, though the war whoop of the Indian ran through the wild. Amid the untold hardships of colonial life, she infused new strength into her husband by her firmness, and solaced his weary hours by her love.”24-1
JOHN DRAKE, Jr., as has been already stated, came with his father to America and settled at Windsor, Conn. He had thorough Puritanic training in the home of his parents. Like his father, the younger Drake was active in the opening and widening field of western-world civilization. He filled many places of public trust, and became identified with the founding of both the towns of Windsor and Simsbury, Conn., being among the first grantees and landed proprietors in these “plantations.” After his marriage with Hannah Moore in 1648, he took up his residence in Windsor. In April, 1655, according to the ancient record, the “wife of John Drake” was “taken into full communion” in the transplanted Windsor church, the oldest orthodox church organization in America. Of the names and ages given of “Men and Womenkind,” “set down” as born and baptized in the same church, is a daughter whose birth is entered in this wise: “Of womenkind, Hanna, of John Drake, born Aug. 5, 1653, baptized April 15, ’55.”25-1 This girl “Hanna,” as will presently appear, grew to be a notable woman in the ancestry of the Higleys. She was one of a family of eleven children, five sons and six daughters.
At just what period John Drake, Jr. or 2d, removed from Windsor to Simsbury is not known. It appears, however, to have been between the years 1672 and 1676—if indeed he ever removed at all. It is evident that he remained a resident at Windsor for several years after he was the owner of lands in Simsbury. Among the first grants of lands at Massacoe, the Indian name of Simsbury (1677) of which there is any record, are portions “set off to John Drak.” This was, no doubt, the younger Drake, or John Drake 3d. Spots and places in the latter town retained the Drake name for one hundred and fifty years. The hill opposite the old Congregational Church upon which the residence stood bore the name for more than two centuries, and the memories of those who have scattered to every part of our broad land from the old town recur with pleasure to the familiar scenes of their early childhood about Drake’s Hill and Drake’s Brook.
In 1676 Simsbury was on the very edge of the settlements. The Indians were fierce and menacing, and a general solicitude was felt throughout the colony for the safety of the inhabitants. Finally, in the month of March a general order was issued for them to remove at once for safety, and they all left with dispatch, the larger number fleeing to Windsor. On Sunday, the 26th, the town was pillaged and burned by the powerful Phillip and his dusky warriors. Whether John Drake the elder, with his family, was among the number who fled and did not return is not clear. It is supposed that he was. His son, John Drake 3d, returned and spent his life here. His name, with others, is found signed to a petition by the owners of estates at Simsbury to the General Assembly in the following year (1677), while the town was yet deserted, requesting a lighter taxation on account “of the late afflictive bereavement, having been greater sufferers than the other plantations in the Colony,” and incapacitated “to rayse rates in the common way as the law required.” The General Assembly granted the petition, exempting “persons, land, and cattell,” for three years from taxation.
The home life of John Drake, Jr.’s, family (of Windsor), of which John Higley became a member when he landed from England, as indicated in the first chapter, was of a Christian type. They were strictly church-loving people, and were liberal to the distressed. The “distressed,” however, belonged to other colonies, for there were few poor in Windsor.
A report to the General Government about this time (1667) says: “The people, as respecting religious views, were ‘some strict men, and others more large (or liberal) Congregational men.” Both law and gospel were thoroughly taught in John Drake’s, as in all the colonial homes of this period. “You might find in every house a shelf upon which was kept a large Family Bible, and several other books of a religious kind.”26-1 Regular family worship was required, reading the Scriptures, “catechizing the children,” and “dayly prayer, with giving of thanks,” was to be attended to conscientiously by every family, “to distinguish them from the heathen whoe call not upon God.”26-1 McClure states that “the aged people among us say that they could never learn that an individual Windsor Indian ever became a Christian.”
These laws governing households were by no means a dead letter. The select men were vigilant to see that they were put into practice. If any “heads of families were obstinate and refractory,” and would not yield to the power of persuasion in the performance of these required duties, the grand jury were to present such persons to the Court to be fined or punished. The fine in every instance of neglect was twenty shillings.
The Capital Laws were required to be taught weekly in every household, and legal surveillance demanded that all should attend church services, not only upon the Sabbath day, but all thanksgivings and days of fasting and prayer, on penalty of a fine.
A young man might not “board or sojourn” in a family without permission’ granted by the Town Meeting; and it was “Alsoe, Ordered, that all such boarders or sojourners as doe live in families shall carefully attend the worship of God in those families where they so sojourn, and bee subjected to the domesticall government of the family, upon the penalty of forfeiting five shillings for every breach of this order.”27-1
Such was the discipline of the household of which John Higley became a member when he landed in America.
John Drake, Jr., the head of this
hospitable home, died at Windsor, the place of his residence, in the
latter part of September, 1689.
His son, John Drake of Simsbury, who had been John Higley’s close companion since first they met, died on the 9th of July (1689) preceding his father’s death. He was one of the very early settlers at Simsbury, where he resided until his decease. The tombstone which marks his grave is the oldest in the ancient cemetery, and has stood for more than two hundred years. The following is its inscription:
Here Leys
The Body of John Drake Who
Departed This Life
July 9th 1688 aged 39
Years.27-3
“O mind then man, thy life's a span
look here & learn To dye
how soon yt death can stop thy breath
then comes Eternity.”
The inventory of his estate was taken by John Higley and Thomas Barber. His property was valued at £393 15s.27-4
Footnotes
22-1. “Connecticut Colonial Records,” 1636-1635. [the dates are reversed in the original transcript.]
23-1. “Connecticut Colonial Records.”
23-2. “Connecticut Colonial Records,” 1636-1635.
23-3. We may conclude that his conduct improved, as in 1652 he was granted liberty by the town “to be entertained by William Hayden in his family.”
23-4. Edward Eggleston in The Century, 1884.
24-1. History of Dorchester,” by a Committee, p. 142.
25-1. Old Church Record.
26-1. From that time to this the most popular of all religious books has been the Puritans’ allegory of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and the most popular of all English poems, the Puritan epic of the “Paradise Lost .“—History of the English People, by J. R. Green, p. 582.
26-2. ” Connecticut Colonial Records,” 1665-77.
27-1. “Connecticut Colonial Records,” 1665, p. 77.
27-2. ”Hartford Probate Records,” book v. pp. 24, 25.
27-3. This date is an error. John Drake, 3d, died July 9, 1689, as recorded in “Simsbury Records,” book i. Also as shown by his Will.
27-4. “Simsbury Record of Grants,” book i. pp. 80, 82.