Rev. John Wheelwright

Summary

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13656308/john-wheelwright

John Wheelwright was born 1592 at Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the son of Robert Wheelwright and his second wife, Catherine Mawer Kingerby Wheelwright. Both are buried in Saleby, Lincolnshire, England. He died 15 November 1679 at Salisbury, Essex County, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and was buried there in the Salisbury Colonial Burying Ground.

Puritan clergyman, he was a Cambridge College classmate and friend of Oliver Cromwell who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to escape persecution for his puritan beliefs, only to be banished by the ruling puritan theocracy of the colony for speaking in defense of his sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson, and her antinomian views. During his banishment he founded what would become Exeter, N.H., but moved to Wells, Maine, with his followers when Massachusetts extended its jurisdiction into what would become southern New Hampshire. He then appealed to have his banishment remitted, and was invited back into Massachusetts. His connection with Cromwell during the commonwealth period benefited the colonies. His last pastorate was at Salisbury, where he died.

His first wife was Mary Storer Wheelwright, who died in England in 1629, and is buried in Bilsby, Lincolnshire, England.

His second wife was Mary Hutchinson Wheelwright, daughter of Edward Hutchinson and Susannah______Hutchinson.

Children(by first marriage):

1. John Wheelwright Jr,
2. Thomas Wheelwright,
3. William Wheelwright, and
4. Susanna Wheelwright Risworth.

Children(by second marriage):

1. Catherine Wheelwright Nanny Naylor,
2. Mary Wheelwright,
3. Elizabeth Wheelwright Parsons,
4. Mary Wheelwright Lyde Atkinson,
5. Samuel Wheelwright,
6. Rebecca Wheelwright Maverick Bradbury,
7. Hannah Wheelwright Checkley, and
8. Sarah Wheelwright Crispe Williams.

Biography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wheelwright

WHEELWRIGHT, John, clergyman, born in Lincolnshire, England, about 1592; died in Salisbury, Massachusetts, 15 November, 1679. He was graduated at Cambridge in 1614, and, entering the ministry of the established church, was vicar of Bilsby, near Alford, but he became a Puritan, and in 1636 emigrated to Boston to escape persecution. He was made pastor of a church at Mount Wollaston (now Braintree), and his sympathy with the religious opinions of his sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson, caused dissensions, which were increased by a sermon that he delivered in Boston on the occasion of a fast that had been appointed by the general court in January, 1637. A majority of the congregation approved it, but he was tried by the general court and pronounced guilty of sedition and contempt, "for that the court had appointed the fast as a means of reconciliation of differences, and he purposely set himself to kindle them." In November, 1637, he was banished, and in 1638, with a company of friends, he founded Exeter, New Hampshire, and became its pastor. Five years later, as the town came under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, he obtained a grant of land from Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Wells, Maine, and removed thither with part of his church. In 1644 his sentence of banishment was revoked, on his admission that he had been partially in the wrong, and in 1646 he returned to Massachusetts, where he was for six years pastor at Hampton. About 1657 he returned to England, where he was well received by Oliver Cromwell, who had been his fellow-student and friend; but in 1660 he came again to this country, trod after 1662 he was pastor at Salisbury. The genuineness of an Indian deed to Mr. Wheelwright, dated 1629, has been the subject of much controversy. He published "Mercurius Americanus" in answer to Thomas Wilde's "Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the Familists, Libertines, etc., in New England" (London, 1645), and his "Vindication " (1654). The sermon that caused his banishment is in the possession of the Massachusetts historical society, and was published in its "Collections," edited by Charles Deane (1867). His "Writings, with a Paper on the Genuineness of the Indian Deed of 1629, and a Memoir," by Charles II. Bell, have been published by the Prince society (Boston, 1876).--His descendant, William, capitalist, born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1798; died in London, England, 26 September, 1873, was apprenticed to a printer, but early entered the merchant marine, and when he was nineteen years old commanded a bark that was bound to Rio Janeiro. In 1823 he was in charge of the "Rising Empire," which was wrecked near the mouth of La Plata river, and on his arrival in Buenos Ayres he became supercargo on a vessel bound for Valparaiso. Thenceforward his home was in South America. In 1824-'9 he was United States consul at Guayaquil, Ecuador, and in the latter year removed to Valparaiso. In 1829 he established a line of passenger vessels between Valparaiso and Cobija, and in 1835 began his efforts to establish a line of steamers on the west coast. He was three years in obtaining the necessary concessions from the Pacific coast countries. Chili granted him her permission in August, 1835, but the more northern countries were slow to see the advantages of his plan. In 1838, after vainly endeavoring to enlist American capital in his enterprise, he went to England, where he was more successful. His scheme embraced the adoption of the route across the Isthmus of Panama, and the result was the formation of the Pacific steam navigation company, with a capital of £250,000. In 1840 he accompanied his new steamers, the "Chili" and "Peru," through the Straits of Magellan. He was received with unbounded enthusiasm at Valparaiso and Callao, but the steamers were laid up for three months on account of lack of coal, and to supply them Wheelwright began to operate mines in Chili, which proved very productive. He met with trouble at every step, and it, was not until 1845 that his plan was completed by the extension of his line to Panama. The Pacific steam navigation company, of which he was the founder, operated fifty-four steamers in 1876. Mr. Wheelwright suggested in 1842, and afterward built, a railroad from Santiago to Valparaiso. In 1849-'52 he constructed the railroad from the port of Caldera, which he created, to Copiapo, and in 1855 he planned a railway from Caldera across the Andes to Rosario, on the Parana, 934 miles. This was opened from Rosario to Cordoba, in the Argentine Republic, in 1870, but, its completion was postponed for years by the action of the government, which rescinded its concessions on Wheelwright's refusal to negotiate a loan of $30,000,000, which he suspected was to be diverted to the construction of iron-clads, from its ostensible purpose of building the road. In 1872 he completed a railway, thirty miles long, from Buenos Ayres to the harbor of Ensenada, on the Atlantic coast, whose great advantages as a port he had long urged. Wheelwright also constructed the first telegraph line, the first gas and water works, and the first iron pier in South America. He gave for benevolent purposes during his life about $600,000, and left one ninth of his estate (about $100,000) to found a scientific school in Newburyport. His full-length portrait was placed in the Merchants' exchange at Valparaiso by his friends, and a bronze statue of him has been erected by the board of trade in the same city. He published "Statements and Documents relative to the Establishment of Steam Navigation in the Pacific" (London, 1838) and " Observations on the Isthmus of Panama" (London, 1844). His life was written by Juan B. Alberdi, minister of the Argentine Republic to England and France, under the title of "La Vida y los trabajos industriales de William Wheelwright en la America del Sud" (Paris, 1876; English translation, with introduction by Caleb Cushing, Boston, 1877). See also " Biographical Sketch of William Wheelwright, of Newburyport, Massachusetts," by Captain John Codman (Philadelphia, 1888).--William's cousin, John Tyler, lawyer, born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, 28 February, 1856, is the son of George W. Wheelwright. He was graduated at Harvard in 1876, and at the law-school in 1878, and practised his profession in Boston. Mr. Wheelwright was founder of the Harvard "Lampoon " in 1876, and has been a frequent contributor to "Life." He is the author of dramatic sketches, which have been read in public by George Riddle; " Rollo's Journey to Cambridge," with Frederick J. Stimson (Boston, 1880); "The King's Men," with Mr. Stimson, John Boyle O'Reilly, and Robert Grant (New York, 1882); and "A Child of the Century " (1886).

Early Exeter History 1638-1887
Written by Edward Chase Jr.

From Exeter, New Hampshire: 1888-1988, by Nancy Carnegie Merrill
Published by Peter E. Randall, Portsmouth, NH, 1988

https://www.exeterhistory.org/exeter-history/2016/6/24/early-exeter...

The area had another attraction for a band of exiles hounded into the wilderness by the Massachusetts General Court in the late 1630's: it was without any kind of central government. It lay within the bounds of grants given by the Plymouth Company to John Mason in 1622 and 1629. Mason, however, had died; his grandson and heir, Robert Tufton Mason, was a minor in 1638 and could not pursue his claims. The English government was too preoccupied with the troubles that eventually resulted in the Civil War to listen to complaints by Mason's advisors. As a result, the area and the earlier settlements, such as Portsmouth and Dover, were without any central government.

Although there were a few scattered settlers in the area that became Exeter before the Reverend John Wheelwright arrived, the title of Founder belongs to him because he brought a number of settlers with him and provided an organized government. The kind of people Wheelwright and his followers were and the religious beliefs that drove them were central to their reasons for coming to Exeter and to their ability to make a success of the new settlement.

Wheelwright and those who came to Exeter with him from the Massachusetts Bay Colony were English Puritans who had left England to escape religious persecution and who, from necessity or choice, had left Massachusetts after Wheelwright was exiled. In England they had been members of the middle and lower middle class, small landowners, merchants, and craftsmen. In other words, they came from the stratum of English society that was the backbone of the Puritan movement, which was eventually to overthrow the monarchy and make Oliver Cromwell the head of an English republic. They had preferred to give up their relatively comfortable and secure lives in England for the life of hardship and insecurity in an unknown land rather than to keep quiet in the face of church authority. They also made Exeter the only New Hampshire town settled for reasons of religion.

Wheelwright, his second wife, and his five children had arrived in Boston on May 23, 1636, to find the colony in a state of near crisis. The religious teaching of Anne Hutchinson (Wheelwright's sister-in-law), combined with political and economic disputes, had split Massachusetts into a Boston faction and a country faction. Mrs. Hutchinson and her Boston supporters welcomed Wheelwright as one of their own and helped him find a parish. He therefore became the clergyman most closely identified with Anne Hutchinson and so was the natural target of former Gov. John Winthrop, who led the country party and who was assembling his forces to return to political power.

Wheelwright, who seemed to have been oblivious to his danger, played into Winthrop's hands with his Fast Day sermon of January 19, 1637. The General Court had proclaimed a fast day to reconcile the opposing factions in the colony. Wheelwright, however, preached an inflammatory sermon that cast scorn on the teachings of most Massachusetts ministers. In March the Massachusetts General Court tried him and declared him guilty of sedition and contempt. On November 7, 1637, it disenfranchised him and told him to be gone by the end of two weeks. Wheelwright's supporters were given harsh penalties by the court, and Mrs. Hutchinson was also banished. Wheelwright had to go into exile in a bitterly cold winter, which had begun in early November.

We have no description of Wheelwright's feelings; no firsthand information of how he managed the move-where he got the money for transportation, the chattels and livestock he would need in a wilderness settlement; no mention of the arduous trip, except one line in his book, Mercurius Americanus - "I confess it was marvelous he got thither at that time, when they expelled him, by reason of the deep snow in which he might have perished." We can speculate that he chose the Exeter area because there was no church established there to dispute his authority and because, as mentioned earlier, there was no central government in the area. We can guess that he used the months between his trial in March and his banishment in November to make some plans, because he must have realized, at least by May 1637, when Winthrop was reelected governor, that he was going to have to move.

Independent Republic: 1638 - 43

Our only information about Wheelwright's earliest activities in the Exeter area comes by inference from the two deeds, dated April 3, 1638, that he obtained from the local Indians. From them we learn that he was sufficiently acquainted with the Piscataqua region to have made friends with Darby Field, Edward Hilton, and Edward Colcord, who were already there; to have chosen the area near the falls as the spot to settle; and to have negotiated with Wehanownowit, Sagamore of the Piscatoquake, for the deeds. These two deeds gave to Wheelwright and his fellow settlers such rights as the Sagamore could bestow (which in English law were none at all) to an area thirty by thirty miles. Both deeds ran thirty miles inland from the ocean, but while one set the southern boundary at the Merrimac River, the other set it three miles north of the river.

There about thirty-five heads of family, estimated at perhaps 175 souls in all, proceeded to erect a settlement, which survived and grew into present-day Exeter. Aside from the few Europeans who had been in the area before Wheelwright, most were either Wheelwright supporters from Massachusetts or friends, neighbors, or relatives of his or the Hutchinsons who had arrived in Boston in early July 1637 and had been excluded by the Alien Act (an act of the Massachusetts General Court designed specifically to exclude newly arrived friends of Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson).

The first settlers accomplished a great deal in their first five years in Exeter, despite the enormous difficulties they faced, with no outside financial backing and Massachusetts' continuing animus against them. Wheelwright organized a church sometime in 1638, one would expect immediately after arriving. He wrote the Exeter Combination (it is considered to be in his own hand), which on July 4, 1639, thirty-five freemen of Exeter signed. That document declared the settlers' intention of establishing their own government. The government consisted of three elders, the chief of them called "ruler", who had judicial and executive functions. The whole body of freemen chose the elders and served as a legislative body, with their enactments subject to the approval of the ruler. The government thus set up endured for five years. It never had recognized jurisdiction over the whole of the area covered in the Indian Deed, but it did control the area of the present-day towns of Exeter, Newmarket, Newfields, Brentwood, Epping and Fremont.

In the winter of 1639 Exeter parceled out to its inhabitants its salt marshes, natural meadows, and upland lots for planting. The government functioned: it passed regulations controlling lumbering and the pasturage of swine; in 1640 it authorized Thomas Wilson to operate a grist mill; it ordered the owner of swine that had damaged and Indian's corn fields to make restitution in kind; it made provisions for a "band of soldiers"; and it passed a number of other regulations, which give us some idea of life in earliest Exeter. We know little about how the town looked but can assume that some of the settlers built substantial houses because there were two carpenters among the first settlers, and because we know that at least two of their houses were in use many years later. Most of the first settlers, including Wheelwright, lived on the west side of the river, but a few lived on the east side. The settlers raised cattle and swine; they made barrel staves and shakes entirely with had tools; they did some planting; and they exploited the abundant fish in the rivers.

Under Massachusetts Jurisdiction: 1643-80

In 1643 Exeter twice petitioned the Massachusetts Bay Colony to take Exeter under its jurisdiction. The second petition was accepted in September; thus Exeter joined Dover and Portsmouth, which had already accepted Massachusetts' jurisdiction under favorable terms. (Hampton had been part of Massachusetts since its founding in September 1638.) No doubt the pressure of being alone on the frontier and the influence of new families that had settled in Exeter since its founding overcame the opposition of Wheelwright and others who were under the ban of Massachusetts. Wheelwright and a number of his followers went into exile once again, this time to Wells, Maine. The remainder of Wheelwright's life was long and eventful. Massachusetts lifted its sentence of banishment against him in 1644; he accepted a call to the Hampton Church in 1647, remaining there until going to England in 1657. There he was warmly received by his college classmate Oliver Cromwell and his friend from Boston days, Sir Harry Vane. He returned from England to the pulpit of the Salisbury, Massachusetts Church in 1662, where he remained until he died at about eighty-seven in 1679.

John Wheelwright (Whelewright) was born in Lincolnshire, England, in the year 1592, and died November 15, 1679 at Salisbury, New Hampshire. He was a classmate of Oliver Cromwell at Cambridge University. He arrived in Boston May 16, 1636. Was banished to Piscatuqua in 1637 for sedition. Along with 33 others, he signed the “Combination for a Government at Exeter, New Hampshire” in the year 1639.

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wheelwright
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/reference/encyclopedias-almanacs-trans...
• https://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Portraits/bios/150.pdf
• Burrage, Sweetser Henry, and Stubbs, Albert Roscoe. "Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume 4"" Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1909 - Maine
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=bfulgham&...
• https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/K8SR-3T6/reverend-john-wheelw...
• http://capecodhistory.us/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I77081&tr...
• Vital Records of Salisbury, Massachusetts: To the End of the Year 1849. Page 631. “Salisbury deaths.” < GoogleBooks >. “WHEELWRIGHT, John, Rev., "Pastor of ye Church of Salisbury," [2d minister in Salisbury, called from Wells, apoplectic fit. C. R. 1.], Nov. 15, 1679. [in an advanced age,”
• https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/K8SR-3T6/reverend-john-wheelw...
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wheelwright-7
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13656308/john-wheelwright