James Pine, Sr.

Biography

http://www.billputman.com/the-genealogy/families-related-to-my-putm...

JAMES PYNE SENIOR

James Pyne was born in Exeter, Devonshire, England in May or June of 1608. He was baptized there on June 4, 1608.

The bulk of the information that I have on the early Pine history comes from an article by John B. Pine in the January 1912 issue of the NEW YORK

GENEALOGICAL & BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. The following comes from that journal:

It seems very probable that he was the James Pyne, son of William and Mary Pyne, who was baptized in Woodbury, near Exeter, Devonshire, England, on June 4, 1608, and who married Edith Williams in St. Mary Magdalen Taunton an adjoining town in Somersetshire in September of 1630.

This James Pyne continued to live in Woodbury until 1640, when his mother Mary died, appointing him as her executor. His father had died in 1636, leaving considerable property, consisting mostly of horses, cattle and sheep, from which it is to be inferred that he was a yeoman (a freeman and a landholder).
After 1640 the name disappears from the town records of Woodbury in England almost simultaneously with its appearance at Stamford, Connecticut in America. The name of James Pyne or Pine as it is afterwards spelled, is found in the Town Records of Stamford, Connecticut, which was settled in the Summer of 1641 by a companie of Wethersfield men' under a grant from the New Haven Colony. He does not seem to have been of this company

but to have followed them very soon, as he received an allotment from the Town of the usual house lot and wood lot on December 7, 1641.

This James Pine Senior seems to be the father of James who came to America. It is my feeling that the two James came to America together. If James junior was born about 1630, he would have been too young to come by himself at age ten. I think they both came and early American references were to the father and later ones to the son. This is, of course, simply a lot of guesswork and no facts at all. Pay heed.

When he came to Massachusetts Bay, or by what vessel is not known, tradition has seemed to indicate that he was from Devonshire.

There was a Thomas Pyne who was admitted as a Freeman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. This Thomas fought in the Indian Wars, and probably in the Pequot War of 1637 in the Connecticut River Valley. There is, of course, a possibility that Thomas was the brother of our James as this was the area the early settlers of Stamford came from. I do not know, and I gather that no one is certain of the exact ancestry of James Pine.

At any rate, James Pine seems to have resided in Stamford through the mid to late 1640s, after which he moved to Hempstead on Long Island. Hempstead had been formed in 1643 by English settlers originally from Hemel Hempstead near London. My ancestor on another line, Captain John Betts, was among the founders of Hempstead.

These original settlers had first settled in Stamford, but felt that they were being given no voice in their own affairs. The main colony at New Haven had complete jurisdiction over Stamford. The New Haven Colony was also a very strict observer of the Puritan ways. Many people felt that their intolerance was as bad as that which sent them from England to America in the first place. These original settlers of Hempstead left Stamford under the leadership of the Rev. Richard Denton. They purchased land from the Indians and acquired a town charter on November 16, 1644 from the Dutch government who still controlled New Netherlands (New York) at that time.

James Pyne died June 13, 1685, and his wife Edith most likely also died in Hempstead.