John Pease ⁸¹⁰

   FamilySearch ID: G77W-7BJ. Find a Grave ID: 37316691.

  General Notes:

November 1634: Sailed with his brother Robert on the ship Francis from Ipswich arriving at Boston late in 1634.

3 Nov 1635, Salem court record: "Ordered that John Pease shalbe whipt and bound to his good behaviour for strikeing his mother [in law] Mrs. Weston & deryding of her & for dyvers other misdemeanors & other evell carriages" (Mass. Col. Records, I, 155)

1637, Salem: mentioned as having land in the early Salem Town Record. "Robert Pease and his brother"

23 April 1638, Salem: granted "five acres of land next adjoining to Samuell Cominge neer unto the watermill"

18 June 1644, Salem: sold his house and 75 acres of land to his neighbor, Richard Ingersoll.

//His father in law being arrested in 1643, his wife arrested and/or recanting her 'heretical views', his mother and brother dying in 1644, all make his removal to Martha's Vineyard in 1645 understandable//

23 March 1646/7, Edgartown: sold ten acres of land at Mattakeeset to John Bland.

1650, New London, CT: evidently involved in land transactions here. Probable that in these years he was involved in some land transactions in Connecticut before returning to the Vineyard.

Little record of him in the next twenty years, although he acquired a good deal of land and scattered lots on the Vineyard. Evidently lived first at Mattakeeset and then on the first lot of the Five and Twenty, situated at the north end of town at the place ever since known as Pease's Point (land which eventually was sold to Hannah Mayhew Daggett in 1692)

4 March 1674: will (Dukes Deeds, I, 340)

Evidently left the island following the dispute with Governor Mayhew. Not known when or where he died, but it is highly likely it was at Portsmouth, NH, as that is where his widow remarried.

He died sometime between Sept. 1677 and June 3, 1689, when his widow disposed of her interests in his estate.

This man lived a troubled life. Emmigrating to Salem at the age of 27, he married into the Weston family, which was embroiled with the local authorities over theology. His father in law was banished and later died in prison for his heretical teachings. His mother in law went mad and his wife, faced with arrest, was forced to recant shortly before she died. In 1644, the year his father-in-law was banished, his mother and brother died and John Pease sold his property in Salem and 'fled' to Martha's Vineyard, becoming one of the original settlers. There he remarried and peaceably raised a second family until he joined in the rebellion against the autocratic rule of Governor Mayhew in 1673. In the wake of reprisals by the Governor following his reestablishment of authority, John Pease left Martha's Vineyard for the mainland, probably for Portsmouth, NH, although it is not known for sure when or where he died. ⁸¹⁰

  Research Notes:

Banks states that he devoted more time to John Pease's history than anyone owing to the claim that John Pease first settled on the island in 1632 and had a claim prior to Thomas Mayhew. This alledged settlement could not be born out by the discovered facts of his life.

Caulkins, an early historiagrapher of Norwich and New London, CT, confounds John Sr. and John Jr., the latter living on a lot granted to his father, he not being of age when the grant was made. This is perhaps where the death place entry of New London in the Ancestral File comes from, although it is not known for sure where John Sr. died.

Other references:
1. PEASE Pease, Reverend David, edited by Austin S. Pease. A Genealogical and Historical Record of the Descendants of John Pease, Sen., Last of Enfield, Connecticut. (1869). CS/71/P363/1869a (NEHGS)

2. Facts Relative to the Pease Family [England] NEW ENGLAND HISTORICAL & GENEALOGICAL REGISTER Vol. 9 #1 1855.

3. Vincent, Hebron, The Early Settlement of Martha's Vineyard (The Pease Tradition) - 1889 (Dukes County Intelligencer, Vol IV, No.2, Nov. 1962, Edgartown, MA) argues for the tradition that John Pease settled on Martha's Vineyard prior to the Mayhews.

///Two extant genealogies of the Pease line: 1st compiled by Frederic S Pease (1847) adopts the legend of the landing of John Pease on the Vineyard in 1632. 2nd compiled by Austin Spencer Pease (1869) (above) discards this legend. One or the other or both try to deny the violence to Mrs. Weston, with no evidence. (Vol II, 96)/// (See notes on Lucy Weston, his first wife) ⁸¹⁰

John married Lucy Weston, daughter of Francis Weston and Margaret, circa 1630.

John next married Mary Browning, daughter of Malachi Browning and Mary Collier, in 1648 of Edgartown, Dukes, Mass. (Mary Browning was born about 1629 ⁸¹⁰ and died after 1695 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, British Colonial America ⁸¹⁰.)