Thomas Prence, Governor of Plymouth Colony

Gov. Thomas Prence

• Jr. aka Prince
• Gender: Male
• Birth: August 06, 1599 - Lechlade-on-Thames, Gloucestershire, England
• Death: March 29, 1673 (73) - Plymouth Colony, British Colonial America
• Place of Burial: Burial Hill, Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States
• Parents: Thomas Prence, Sr. and Elizabeth Tolderby

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Biography

Thomas Prence (c. 1601 – March 29, 1673) was a New England colonist who arrived in the colony of Plymouth in November 1621 on the ship Fortune. In 1644 he moved to Eastham, which he helped found, returning later to Plymouth. For many years, he was prominent in Plymouth colony affairs and was colony governor for about twenty years, covering three terms.

Note: Thomas Prince, Senior, carriage maker of All Hallows, Dorking, London, England, in his will of 1630 mentions, "my son Thomas Prence now remayninge in New England in parts beyond seas." The proper spelling of this surname is Prince and it was so written by his immediate and collateral forebares, but Gov. Thomas chose to write it as Prence.

He was the first elected Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Served either as Governor or Assistant Governor for the remainder of his years.

He raised a corps of volunteers to assist the Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colonies in defeating the Pequot Indians. In 1638, he was active in the capturing, trial, and execution of four young servant men of Plymouth who attacked a solitary Indian at Pawtucket, within the Colony limits, robbing and mortally wounding him.

He was the first of a group of Plymouth residents to settle at Eastham on Cape Cod in 1644, where he built his home in 1646. Legend, woodcut and poem testify to the pear tree which he brought from England and planted on his Eastham farm. . . He again became Governor in 1657, stipulating that he must continue to reside in Eastham, contrary to the usual requirement of Plymouth residence for Governors of the Colony. In October of 1665, the Colony finally requested his removal to Plymouth 'for the more convenient administration of justice'. The Colony purchased of Edward Gray the residence 'Plain Dealing' for the Governor's use, located nearly two miles from the center of town on the road to Boston.

"It was in 1660 when Thomas Prence was Governor of the Colony, and concerned his daughter. "The tolerant course of the elder Arthur Howland toward Quakers had earned the ill will of Gov. Prence, and when in 1660 he found Arthur Howland, Jr., had woed his daughter Elizabeth, he had the swain before the General court, where he was fined œ5 because he had disorderly and unrighteously endeavored to obtain the affections of Mistress Elizabeth Prence, and was put under a bond of œ50 to refrain and desist. But Prence, like Canute, was unable to control the forces of nature. This action was in July, but before the next spring the imperious Governor seems to have been forced to capitulate, for Arthur, Jr., and Elizabeth were united and in the course of events there was a Thomas Howland and a Prence Howland. " - Lysander Salmon Richards, History of Marshfield, Volume One3rd

The Plymouth Church Records said of him, 'He was excellently qualifyed for the office of a Governour, he had a countenance full of majesty and therein as well as otherwise a terrour to evil doers

Will dated 13 March, prob. 5 June, 1673, beq. to wife Mary goods that were hers before marriage; to his seven daus. Hannah Marcye, Jane Marsh, Jane, wife of Mark Snow, Mary Tracye, Sary Howes, Elizabeth Howland and Sary Howes, Elizabeth Howland and Judith Barker; to gr. ch. Theophilus Mayo and Susanna Prence, dau. of his son Thomas, deceased; to son John Freeman. Bro. Thomas Clarke to be a help to the wife.

The mention in his will of his deceased son Thomas's daughter Susanna Prence indicates that he died without a surviving male heir in the Prence line.[2][4][36][54] Prence engaged in many land transactions and died a wealthy man, leaving a personal estate in excess of £400 and some eleven tracts of land, with at least two of the holding 100 acres each.[22]

Thomas Prence died March 29, 1673.[56] He is buried at Burial Hill, a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts where many Pilgrims are buried.[57]

Family

Thomas Prence had 4 wives. 1) Patience Brewster 2) Mary Collier 3) Apphia (Quick) Freeman (divorced from Samuel Freeman) and 4) Mary (?) Howes (widow of Thomas Howes).

From The Great Migration and The Great Migration Begins, 1620-1635. Vol 3, P-W. Page 1523. < AncestrySharing >

MARRIAGES:

(1) Plymouth 5 August 1624 Patience Brewster [ Prince 229], daughter of WILLIAM BREWSTER; she died late in 1634 (in a letter to his son John Winthrop Jr. dated 12 December 1634, JOHN WINTHROP reported that "the pestilent fever hath taken away some at Plimouth, among others Mr. Prence the governor his wife ..." [ WP 3:177]).

(2) Plymouth 1 April 1635 Mary Collier [PCR 1:34], daughter of WILLIAM COLLIER; she died perhaps by 1644.

(3) After 1 July 1644 (when she witnessed Rev. George Phillips's will as Apphia Freeman in Watertown [ NEHGR 3:78]) and certainly some considerable time before 8 December 1662 (when Thomas gave land to her son) Apphia (Quick) Freeman, former wife of SAMUEL FREEMAN, daughter of William Quick of London [ TAG 11:178].

(4) After 26 February 1665[/6] and by 1 August 1668 Mary (_____) Howes, widow of Thomas Howes [MD 6:157-65, 230-35]. She died 9 December 1695 [MD 6:230, citing YarTR 3:328].

CHILDREN:

With first wife

• i REBECCA, b. say 1625 (living at time of cattle division in 1627 [PCR 12:10]); m. Plymouth 22 April 1646 Edmund Freeman [PCR 2:98].
• ii THOMAS, b. say 1627 (in the 1627 Plymouth division of cattle is a second Thomas Prence, inserted at the end of the tenth lot; this may be the son Thomas Prence, born at about the time this list was compiled, and added separately from his family); m. _____ _____ (an appendix to the fifth edition of Morton's Memorial refers to letters from the widow and daughter of this Thomas Prence, in London, to his father, the immigrant [pp. 424-25]; these letters have apparently never been published, but copies of some of them are held by the Massachusetts Historical Society).
• iii HANNAH, b. say 1629; m. (1) Eastham 13 February 1649/50 Nathaniel Mayo [PCR 8:26]; m. (2) by 1671 Jonathan Sparrow [MD 14:193-203].
• iv MERCY, b. say 1631; m. Eastham 13 February 1649/50 John Freeman [PCR 8:26].

With second wife

• v JANE, b. Duxbury 1 November 1637 [MD 6:230]; m. Eastham 9 January 1660[/1] Mark Snow [PCR 8:28], son of NICHOLAS SNOW.
• vi MARY, b. say 1639; m. by about 1661 John Tracy [ Tracy Gen 26].

Perhaps with third wife

• vii JUDITH, b. say 1645; m. (1) Plymouth 28 December 1665 Isaac Barker [PCR 8:31], son of ROBERT BARKER; m. (2) after 1693 William Tubbs [ PPR 1:168; PLR 2:123].
• viii ELIZABETH, b. about spring 1647 [WP 5:169]; m. Marsh~field 9 December 1667 Arthur Howland [ MarVR 10], son of Arthur Howland [ NGSQ 71:90-91].
• ix SARAH, b. about 1648 ("departed this life March the 3d 1706 in the 60th year of her age," tombstone, Yarmouth, which conflicts with YarVR [NEHGR 59:217]); m. by about 1669 Jeremiah Howes (birth of child estimated by child's date of marriage), her stepbrother [MD 6:233; NEHGR 59:217-18].

COMMENTS: For many years it was believed that Prence had married only three times and that his last wife was "Mary" Freeman, but this was straightened out in 1904 by Ella Florence Elliott, who divided the erroneous construct into its proper wholes, revealing divorcee Apphia Freeman and widow Mary Howes as Prence's last two of four wives [MD 6:230-35].

Establishing the probable date of marriage for Apphia and Thomas Prence has significant implications for the parentage of Prence's last three children. Apphia is last seen as a Freeman 1 July 1644, about a year before the birth of Prence's seventh child, and at the end of a six-year hiatus in the birth dates of his children. She is called "Mrs. Freeman" as late as 15 October 1646 in a deed where she appears as an abutter, but this does not necessarily imply that she had not remarried by this date, since it was not unusual for archaic bounds to be used in this sort of description [ SLR 1:78].

In a letter dated at Plymouth 8 June 1647, Thomas Prence wrote to John Winthrop that "since my parting company [with you] I have almost met with Jacob's trial in his travel between Bethel and Ephrath: God's having been heavy upon my wife and that for diverse months and is not yet removed" [WP 5:169]. In Genesis 35:16-19 Jacob's favorite wife Rachel died between Bethel and Ephrath after giving birth to a son she named Benoni, but he called Benjamin. Prence here is referring to the birth of his own daughter Elizabeth, apparently a difficult childbirth.

On 6 March 1637/8, having been elected governor, Thomas Prence was excused from the requirement that the governor live in Plymouth, and was permitted to retain his residence in Duxbury [PCR 1:79]. When he was again elected governor, in 1657, he was allowed to maintain his residence in Eastham, but in 1663 the court ordered that the governor's house at Plymouth be enlarged, and by 1665 Prence again became a resident of Plymouth [ Dawes-Gates 2:684].

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE: Perhaps due to the fact that Thomas Prence had no grandsons that carried the Prence surname, little attention has been directed to this family. A very brief account of his family was prepared in 1852 by David Hamblen and a more substantial treatment was published in 1931 by Mary Walton Ferris [Dawes-Gates 2:682-94].

Thomas Prence's descendants number in the thousands today. Some of his notable descendants include:

• Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry[58] (1785–1819) an officer in the US Navy. He served in the War of 1812 against Britain and earned the title "Hero of Lake Erie"
• Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794–1858) was the Commodore of the U.S. Navy who compelled the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854.
• Linus Carl Pauling (1901-1994) American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, educator and winner of two Nobel Prizes (Chemistry, Peace).
• Benjamin F. Tracy (1830-1915) Secretary of the Navy under President Harrison and lawyer who represented the preacher Henry Ward Beecher.
• Vice Presidents Hannibal Hamlin and Dan Quayle,
• Rev. Edmund H. Sears (composer of "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear")
• artist Norman Rockwell
• actor John Howard Payne (America's First Hamlet)
• Bing Crosby and his brother Bob Crosby

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Plymouth in Plymouth Colony

Plymouth deed mentioning Josiah Winslow and Thomas Prence

Source: < Wikipedia > This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

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Epithet

“Thomas Prence Esquire Gov^r: of the Jurisdiction of New Plymouth Died the 29^th of March 1673 and was Interred the 8^th of Aprill following; after hee had served God in the office of Gov^r:sisteen yeares or neare therunto hee finished his Course in the 73 yeare of his life: hee was a worthy Gentleman very pious: and very able for his office and faithfull in the Discharge therof studious of peace a welwiller to all that feared God; and a terrour to the wicked, his; Death was much lamented, and his body honorably buryed att Plymouth the Day and yeare abovemensioned”

Source: Plymouth Colony Records. < GoogleBooks >

References

1. New England, The Great Migration and The Great Migration Begins, 1620-1635. Vol 3, P-W. < AncestryImage >. Page 1518-1524
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Prence cites
   1. 1. Ward, Harry (ed.). The United Colonies of New England-1643-90. Vantage Press (1961).
   2. 2. A genealogical profile of Thomas Prence], (pub. Plimoth Plantation and New England Historic Genealogical Society. Retrieved 2013-03-23 Archived 2012-11-01 at the Wayback Machine. < PDF >
   3. 3. Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, 1620–1691, (Salt Lake City: Ancestry Publishing, 1986), p. 340, p. 55, p. 46,
   4. 4. Charles Edward Banks, The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers: who came to Plymouth on the "Mayflower" in 1620, the "Fortune" in 1621 and the "Anne" and "The Little James" in 1623, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing 1965), p. 125
   5. 9. George Willison, Saints and Strangers, (Reynal and Hitchcock 1945), p. 311, pp. 286–293
   6. 10. Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A story of Courage, Community and War, (New York:Viking Publishing, 2006), p. 168, p. 135
   7. 16. Shawnie M. Kelley, It Happened on Cape Cod (Guilford, CT: TwoDot, 2006), pp. 32–33
   8. 17. "Governors of Plymouth Colony". Pilgrim Hall Museum. 1998. Archived from the original on 2007-02-15. Retrieved 2007-04-02. < link >
   9. 18. John Abbott Goodwin, The Pilgrim Republic; An Historical Review of the Colony of New Plymouth, (Boston: Ticknor and Co., 1888), p. 455
   10. 57. Jacob Bailey Moore, Lives of the Governors of New Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay, p. 173 < GoogleBooks >
3. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Prence-1
4. Plymouth Colony Wills 3:60-70, http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/P205.htm
5. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~bucknum/f_22.html
6. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~wingfamilyofamerica/p982.h...
7. http://mayflowerhistory.com/famous-descendants
8. http://massandmoregenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/08/thomas-prence-gov-...
9. http://rodgersgen.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/thomas-prence-patience-b...
10. https://trees.wmgs.org/getperson.php?personID=I2058&tree=Schirado cites
    1. [S14] Transcribed by George Ernest Bowman, Plymouth Colony vital records.
    2. [S114] Leon Clark Hillspy, (Genealogical Publishing Co., 1990, Baltimore, MD).
    3. [S115] .
    4. [S61] Barbara Lambert Merrick, (General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1996).
    5. [S94] Josiah Paine, Early Settlers of Eastham.
    6. [S11] Robert Charles Anderson, (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, 1995).
11. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7497193/thomas-prence “Colonial Royal Governor. He was born about 1600 (based on his age at the time of his death), and was the son of Thomas Prence, carriage-maker, of Lechdale, County Gloucestershire, England. He came to America on the ship "Fortune" in 1621, and he served as the fourth Governor of Plymouth Colony from 1634 to 1635, then from 1638 to 1639, and again from 1657 until his death in 1673.”
12. https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Thomas_Prence_(1) Other Resources:
    1. Banks, Eng. Ancestry and Homes of Pilgrim Fathers, p. 125.
    2. Gilmore, Albert F., Keene Descendants, 1975.
    3. Hinchman, Lydia, Early Settlers of Nantucket, 1901.
    4. New England Historic and Genealogical Register, Vol. VI, p. 234.
    5. Savage, James, Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1986, 3:477.
    6. Willison, George, Saints and Strangers, New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, pp. 380, 381, and 445.
    7. Winsor, Justin, History of Town of Duxbury

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