Not the same as John Ayer, Jr., of Haverhill

Captain John Ayres of Ipswich

• Born after 1615 in England
• Died 2 Aug 1675 in Brookfield, Worcester Co., Massachusetts
• Parents unknown
• Brother of sisters, Sarah (Ayres) (Lamson) Hartshorn (who married her first husband, William Lamson about 1641); and Mary (Ayer) Fellows (who married her husband William Fellows about 1636).
• Husband of Susanna (Symonds) Ayres — married about 1644 in Ipswich, Essex Co., Massachusetts

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John Ayres Sr. was a prominent Ipswich resident who promoted the settlement in Quaboag. He also was killed in the ambush by the Indians in New Braintree the same day as the Brookfield massacre. His wife Susannah Ayres survived the attack at Brookfield and moved back to Ipswich with her six sons and one daughter.

Disambiguation

Not the same as John Ayers of Haverhill and not his son.

”Of the name of Ayres, there were three early colonists between whom no relationship is known or supposed to exist. These were 1, Moses Ayres, of Dorchester, 1667, whose descendants were of Boston ; 2, Samuel Ayres, of Ipswich, whose line probably ceased after two generations ; and 3, Capt. John Ayres, of Ipswich, our progenitor.”

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Immigration

https://minerdescent.com/2012/04/10/john-ayre/

On June 3, 1635, John Ayer set sail for the New World with his family, including his two brothers-in-law, John and Stephen, aboard the ship James. As they approached New England, a hurricane struck, and they were forced to ride it out just off the coast of modern-day Hampton, New Hampshire. According to the ship’s log and the journal of Increase Mather, whose father Richard Mather and family were passengers, the following was recorded;

“At this moment,… their lives were given up for lost; but then, in an instant of time, God turned the wind about, which carried them from the rocks of death before their eyes. …her sails rent in sunder, and split in pieces, as if they had been rotten ragges…”
They tried to stand down during the storm just outside the Isles of Shoals, but lost all three anchors, as no canvas or rope would hold, but on Aug 13, 1635, torn to pieces, and not one death, all one hundred plus passengers of the James managed to make it to Boston Harbor.

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Family

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ayres-616

While living in Ipswich, John and Susanna had "seven sons and one daughter." [4] [11]

Their children are as follows:

1. John Ayres Jr. (b. abt 1649)
2. Samuel Ayres (b. abt 1650)
3. Thomas Ayres (b. abt 1652)
4. Joseph Ayres (b. abt 1655)
5. Susanna Ayres (b. abt 1656)
6. Edward Ayres (b. 12 Feb 1658)
7. Marke Ayres (b. 15 Dec 1661)
8. Nathaniell Ayres (b. 6 Jul 1664)

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Biography

A record of the descendants of Captain John Ayres of Brookfield, Mass by Whitmore, William Henry, 1836-1900. Page 10. Archive.Org

CAPT. JOHN 1 AYRES was of Ipswich in 1648, and was then a tenant of John Norton's. I know nothing of his parentage, but it seems highly probable that he was accompanied hither by two of his brothers-in-law, William Lamson and William Fellows.*

• The ground for the conjecture is this. William Lamson died at Ipswich in 1659, leaving eight children. His widow Sarah wished to marry one Thomas Hartshorn, but was opposed by her brothers William Fellows and John Ayres. Now as Ayres married a Symonds, and there is no record of any sisters of his wife who married Lamson and Fellows, it is fair to conclude that their wives were own sisters of John Ayres.
  

He married Susanna, daughter of Mark Symonds, of Ipswich. This Mark Symonds, aged 50 years in 1634, died 28 Apr. 1659, leaving wife Joanna, daus. Susanna Ayres, Abigail, wife of Eobert Pierce, Pris- cilla, wife of John Warner, and had had Mary, wife of Edward Chapman, who died before her father. He may possibly have been a very distant relative of the noted Samuel Symonds, of Yeldham, co. Essex, and Ipswich, Mass., — though there were several families of the name in ~New England not known to be con- nected.
John Ayres removed to Brookfield, Mass , when the settlement of that place was commenced, and in Nov. 1672, sold all his rights at Ipswich, including those " belonging to my father-in-law Mark Symonds, and used by me while I was a tenant upon Mr. John Norton's farm."
He was killed 3 Aug. 1675, with seven others, at the fight at Brookfield with the Indians. Though he had received large grants of land at Brookfield, some 2,000 acres, his family undoubtedly returned to Ips- wich and its vicinity, the settlement having been broken up, and rendered unsafe.
His widow presented an inventory of his estate, now recorded at Salem, on which she wrote, “I have seven sons and one daughter."
Although the births of these children are not all recorded, I have been able to recover all their names without doubt,* and I think to arrange them chronologically.
The children were

• 2 i John 2
• 3 ii Samuel 2
• 4 iii Thomas 2
• 5 iv Joseph 2
• 6 v Edward 2 b. 12 Feb. 1658. ^
• 7 vi Mark 2 b. 14 Dec. 1661. Sail recorded at Ipswich.
• 8 vii Nathaniel 2 b. 6 July, 1664. )
• viii Susanna 2 b. ; m. Day

Estate

In 1703, Samuel, John and Thomas were appointed executors of the estate of John Sr. On Jan 14, 1716, as recorded in Worcester in 1741, the land formerly possessed at Brookfield by John Ayres Sr., was conveyed to Joseph Ayres of Ipswich by Thomas, Mark, Edward, and Nathaniel, sons of Sgt. John; and by Samuel, son of Samuel and grandson of Sgt. John; and by Robert Day, son of Suzannah (Ayres) (Day) and grandson of Sgt. John.

Notes

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/landscape/K2J5-7RR

The Ayres and Ayer Families, by W. H. Whitmore. (NEHGR 17:307) and The Hammatt Papers.
Genealogy of the Ayres Family Author: James Noyes States Call Number: 929.2 A98.1
Vol. XV, Page 331-332.

… John m 1st, Sarah Williams, and had a daughter Sarah by her. [???] His second wife was Susannah Symonds, but by which wife respectively were his children, I do not know. He removed to Brookfield, was a Captain, and was killed by Indians, Aug. 3, 1675. His family was of course scattered, and we will now try to trace them. In May, 1703, his sons Samuel, John, and Thomas, were appointed adm., and in 1713. Thomas, Joseph, Mark, Edward and Nathaniel, brothers, claimed the estate. Samuel we know was dead in 1714, as it was then so stated by his son, Edward. John we may presume was also dead, and these seem to have been his oldest sons. In 1714 the heirs were Edward, son of Samuel, John, son of Edward, Abraham, and Thomas, sons of Thomas, Nathaniel, son of Nathaniel, and John, William, and Benjamin, sons of Joseph. We will see where these children were settled after the Brookfield settlement was destroyed. Edward, Mark, and Nathaniel, sons of Capt. John, doubtless settled in New Hampshire, as Savage notes persons of these names as living there in 1685-9. Thomas went, without doubt, to Newbury and is the one mentioned by Savage, as we can hardly suppose there were two Thomases each having a son Abraham. Joseph's locality is still unknown. Nathaniel and John perhaps came to Boston, and were the persons mentioned in Gleanings No. 26, (ante pp 56-7) as the circumstances agree. Viz., Nathaniel having a son of the same name, and John's dying in 1711 without children. The Boston John's birth seems conclusive and he died just before the date of the deed in which his name is omitted from the list of heirs. There remains now only Samuel, when I presume to have settled, like Thomas, at Newbury, and to be the one mentioned by Coffin, who had a son Jabez b there, Dec. 27, 1690; because a Jabez Ayres, the only one I have found yet, settled at Brookfield when it was resettled, and tradition as given by his grandson, says that he was a descendant of Capt. John. I can hardly conceive of any other person than a descendant returning to the town. I am aware that this record is very incomplete and largely conjectural, but I hope some one may be interested enough to confirm or confute my conclusions.

References

• https://minerdescent.com/2012/04/10/john-ayre/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ayer
• http://www.anamericanfamilyhistory.com/Stanhope%20Family/StanhopeJo...
• http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/l/a/Peter-J-Blake/WEBS...
• http://www.themorrisclan.com/GENEALOGY/AYER%20John%20F15036.html
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~arlene/
• http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/f/e/l/Mark-D-Fellows/GEN...
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~ayergenealogy/story.htm
• http://www.cholet.us/Families/Ayres/capt_john_ayres_biography.htm
• Quaboag Plantation – Alias Brookfield: A Seventeenth Century Massachusetts Town by Louis E. Roy, M. D., West Brookfield, MA; Worcester, MA: Heffernan Press, Inc., 1965
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ayres-616
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Dec 1 2020, 22:16:13 UTC
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ayres-616
• https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Susanna_Ayers_%281%29
• https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:John_Ayers_%2827%29

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Capt John Ayres

• BIRTH unknown
• DEATH 2 Aug 1675 Brookfield, Worcester County, Massachusetts, USA
• BURIAL Burial Details Unknown
• MEMORIAL ID 63167894 Photo by John Ayres, Auburn, CA; 10th GGS, 28 June 2003, West Brookfield, MA.

He married Susanna Symonds, daughter of Mark Symonds of Ipswich. He lived in Ipswich in 1648, removing to Brookfield as one of its first settlers by 1672. He was killed by Indians (at Squakeag or Northfield) when they destroyed Brookfield on Aug. 3, 1675. The inventory of his estate was done in 1676 indicating 7 known children

CAPTAIN JOHN AYRES (ca 1627-1675) of Quaboag (portion of West Brookfield, MA); Memorial of 1675 in West Brookfield, Massachusett. [5]

The memorial reads as follows: JOHN AYRES * Killed by Indians * 2d - 1675 - Aug. * By graunt of the Great & General Court, 1660 a founder of "Quaboag * Plantation" an isolated frontier outpost, now Brookfield 1960. * First Sergt. Ayres, Prichard and Coy were massacred " on an affayre * to meet with Indians who declare themselves to be enemyes * and reduce them." "Set upon, scalped and none left to bury them." * "Ayres Tavern was the 'fortified hous' wherein tounefolk defended * themselves as flaming roof and walls, from brimstone shot with * arrows, balls of wildfire, carts aflame heaped with flax. Water, * to slake thirst, was spent to quench fires." * "The towne was abandoned for lack of shops, noe more stockins, * shurts, and corn cribs burnt flat." * John Ayres' family only returned to rebuild. Many eighth-in-line * sons are builders of America today. One is * Fairfax Ayres, donor to Quaboag Historical Society.

General Court, 1660 a founder of "Quaboag * Plantation" an isolated frontier outpost, now Brookfield 1960. * First Sergt. Ayres, Prichard and Coy were massacred " on an affayre * to meet with Indians who declare themselves to be enemyes * and reduce them." "Set upon, scalped and none left to bury them." * "Ayres Tavern was the 'fortified hous' wherein tounefolk defended * themselves as flaming roof and walls, from brimstone shot with * arrows, balls of wildfire, carts aflame heaped with flax. Water, * to slake thirst, was spent to quench fires." * "The towne was abandoned for lack of shops, noe more stockins, * shurts, and corn cribs burnt flat." * John Ayres' family only returned to rebuild. Many eighth-in-line * sons are builders of America today. One is * Fairfax Ayres, donor to Quaboag Historical Society. [4]

Spouse
Susanna Symonds Ayres unknown–1682

Children [4]
John Ayres 1648–1711 m. Mary ____
Thomas Ayres m. Hannah Errington
Susanna Ayres Day m. ____ Day
Joseph Ayres 1655–1740 m. Sarah Caldwell
Samuel Ayres 1658–1713 m. Abigail Fellows
Edward Ayres b. Feb. 12, 1658-9, res of Kittery or Portsmouth in 1717.
Nathaniel Ayres 1664–1731
Mark Ayres b. Dec. 14, 1661, res. Kittery or Portsmouth in 1717.
Nathaniel Ayres b. July 6, 1664, res. Boston 1717.

Notes

Also Descendant: Gloria Odom Trommler of Lancaster Co., PA through 2nd son Samuel Ayres and Abigail FELLOWS //GJOT.

GEDCOM Note

He was killed 3 Aug. 1675, with seven others, at the fight at Brookfield with the Indians. Though he had recieved large grants of land at Brookfield, some 2,000 acres, his family undoubtedly returned to Ipswich and its vicinity, the settlement having been broken up, and rendered unsafe.

References

[1] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/63167894/john-ayres

[2] "Old Families of Salisbury and Amesbury, Mass.", p. 41.

[3] "A Record of the Descendants of Capt John Ayres of Brookfield, MA" by William Henry Whitemore, 1879:

[4] https://archive.org/stream/recordofdescenda00byuwhit#page/8/mode/2up Added by: GJOdom Enterprises, LLC on 4 Nov 2012

[5] http://www.westbrookfield.org/qp_ayres_john.htm (URL Active as of 9/3/2012).
"Biography on Capt. John Ayres." by the WEST BROOKFIELD HISTORICAL COMMISSION celebrating 360 years in 2020