640. documentation for william worth (before 25 …-william/640...640. documentation for william...
TRANSCRIPT
640. Documentation for William Worth (before 25 February 1642 to December 1724)
father of John Worth (19 May 1666 to 11 February 1731/2)
William Worth was baptized 25 February 1642, son of John and Barbara Worth, in St. Andrews Parrish, Plymouth, Devon, England.(1) John Worth, father of William, was baptized 11 April 1606, in St. Andrews parish.(2) John married twice, first circa 1626 and had son Lionel by this union.(3) John married second 15 April 1634 at Uffculme, Barbara Strong.(4) This union produced Richard, William, and Olyve. Lionel Worth was an early settler of Newbury, Massachusetts. According to Carol Clark Johnson, “Worth is simply a place-name taken from the Saxon ‘weord’, a farm or estate with enclosures to protect cattle from wild beasts, and located near the head of a river. The Worth of Devonshire is adjacent to the river Exe.”(5) Plague killed one-half the population of Plymouth in 1625. John died in 1643 at the seige of Plymouth Fort where his father also died. The family estates were seized by the crown and government.(6) William Worth is thought to have come with his older brothers, Lionel and Richard, to Salisbury, Massachusetts prior to 1647.(7) Afterwards they went to Newbury, Massachusetts.(8) William later went to Nantucket where he was the first Caucasian person to marry on the island.(9) William married Sarah Macy 11 April 1665, on Nantucket.(10). Sarah, a daughter of Thomas Macy and Sarah Hopcott, was born 01 August 1646.(11) Sarah (Macy) Worth, wife of William, died in 1701.(12) William was a blacksmith and mariner, a Justice, and in 1678 a highly esteemed Clerk of the Court.(13) William Worth was quite active in Nantucket affairs -- chosen a selectman 5 times, an Assistant Magistrate, 3 times, the Assessor 4 times, and was the Clerk of the Court for many years. William Worth (1640-1724), a Quaker, left England during the Revolution and settled in Nantucket in 1662. As an educated man and owner of a half-share of common land, he became active in local affairs and served as Selectman, Assistant Magistrate, Assessor and as Clerk of the Court. His marriage to Sarah Macy was the first performed on Nantucket. Some of William Worth’s descendants settled in Martha’s Vineyard, North Carolina or Hudson, New York while others joined the gold rush in California. Many, however, remained on the island and took part in whaling as well as local affairs. William Worth kept a record of Nantucket births, deaths and marriages.(14) Only one child is recorded for the first marriage of William Worth.(15) A son, John Worth was born to William Worth and Sarah Macy on 19 May 1666.(16) He married Miriam Gardner, daughter of Richard Gardner and Sarah Shattuck.(17) They were married 22 September 1684.(18) Miriam died about 1700.(19) John moved to Martha's Vineyard where he married twice again.(20) The children of John Worth and Miriam Gardner were: Jonathan, Nathaniel, Judith, Richard, William, Joseph and Mary.(21) William Worth married again on 03 September 1703.(22) His second wife was Demaris Sibley.(23) William Worth died in December 1724.(24) His second wife, Demaris Sibley, died in 1745.(25) The following list contains some records in the Nantucket Historical Association
related to William Worth: 1) Image Number worthlands-206 Owners of Shimmo, Fish Lots, West and South Monomoy. From Nantucket lands and land owners by Henry Barnard Worth, p. 206. Written to CD 474 Plan showing original layouts on the harbor of Nantucket, including Wesco, Bocochico, Academy Hill, Crooked Record: Eleazer Folger and heirs, William Worth and George Gardner, James Gardner, Clay pits, Thomas Macy, Edward Allen, Joseph Gardner Heirs, Jethro Gardner, Solomon Gardner. 2) Image Number MS1000-1-1-6 Manuscript Collection Digital photograph or scan House-Lot Section 1665-1680, Location Approximate – scale indeterminable Written to CD 473 Plat shows the locations of the early homesteads of Nantucket’s first settlers. Lots belong to Richard Swain, Nathaniel Wyer, John Swain, Robert Pike, Thomas Coleman, Chris Hussey, Thomas Mayhew, Nathaniel Starbuck, James Coffin, Stephen Greanlaaf [Greenleaf], Edward Starbuck, John Coleman, Robert Barnard, Thomas Barnard, Peter Folger, William Worth, William Bunker, William Pile, Tristram Coffin, Tristram Coffin Jr., Peter Coffin, John Bishop, Thomas Macy, John Rolfe, Shows Capaum Harbor, Washing Pond, Wyer’s Pond, Trot’s Swamp, Parliament House, No Bottom Pond, and the bounds between English and Indians. 3) Image Number MS17-27 Land sale from Wassaqual (Indian) to William Worth, September 1691 MS17, p. 27 Written to CD 473 4) Collection: ! 17 - Early Documents / Swain Collection, 1665-1876 Location: !VOLUME 2 Summary note: !Documents were put through the Emery Process & bound in 1916! Volume 2, 1662-1728: ! Book of William Worth ( -1724)! Record of births, deaths and marriages, 1665-1728 Also see other related sources: Macy, Sylvanus, Macy Genealogy, see page 67, for the signature of Thomas Macy and page 29 for the signature of William Worth.(26) Avery, Mark, Nantucket Real Estate: 1659, A Semiseptcentennial [350th] Edition, Historic Nantucket, A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association, Spring 2009, Volume 59, No. 1. Philbrick, Nathaniel, Away Off Shore, Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602-1890, Mill Hill Press, Nantucket, pages 32-33. The New England Historic and Genealogical Society contains an article entitled Nantucket Ear Marks written in 1996. On page 205 the following information was found: “William Worths Mark is a Crop in the left ear & a slit in the same Ear & a half penny
under the Slit.” William Worth is mentioned on pages 9 and 36 of Quaker Nantucket by Robert J. Leach and Peter Gow. Page 9, "Within a few years more of the proprietors' families had moved to the island, creating a microcosm of religious New England. Among them were several Coffins, who as a clan owned the largest block of shares and whose diffidence in religious matters earned them the epithet 'Nothingarians.' Thomas Macy and Edward Starbuck were Baptists. Richard Swain was probably a Quaker who had been disenfranchised as well as fined in Salisbury for harboring fellow Quakers, and Stephen Hussey was a longtime but inconsistent Quaker who came to occupy his fathers share. Another Quaker settler, William Worth, soon married Macy's daughter and emigrated to Martha's Vineyard. John Swain, Richard's Quaker son, wed a Puritan and then drifted into a small Baptist group that formed around Macy and a later arrival named Peter Folger. Sarah Shattuck, a Quaker whose brother Samuel had delivered the King's Missive, also married a Puritan, Richard Gardner. The rest of the island pioneers were at least nominally Congregationalists, as the Puritans were more properly called. Notable among them was Richard Gardner's brother John, a religious arch-conservative who appointed himself defender of the Puritan faith." Page 36, "The single greatest factor in Quakerism's growth was the islanders' own fecundity. Ten families had founded the English settlement on Nantucket in 1660, and by the 1720s the patriarchs and their wives had produced an astounding 225 Quaker grandchildren (as well as a number of non-Quaker grandchildren, many of whose children would join Meeting in later decades). First-comer William Worth, for example, had ten children by two wives and a total of thirty-three Quaker grandchildren. Nathaniel and Mary Coffin Starbuck added seventeen grandchildren of their own. Infant mortality among whites on the island seems to have been below the colonial norm, and members of the Meeting's founding generation tended to be long-lived (only eight Meeting members died between 1708 and 1718). the low death rates also contributed to the Quaker population explosion." Children (Worth), born on Nantucket: i. John, born 19 May 1666
REFERENCES
[Note: In regard to the following notation for references in Nantucket Vital Records to 1850: P.R. 38 - private record, from the William C. Folger genealogical records in the possession of the Nantucket Historical Association (This compilation has been used because of the valuable clues it affords, but its statements should be received with caution, as it is not free from errors. It should also be understood that in many instances the events recorded did not take place in Nantucket, and in a few cases attention has been called to the question of residence.) (1) Johnson, Carol Clark, A Genealogical History of the Clark and Worth families and Other Puritan Settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Privately Printed, 1970, page 238; Starbuck, Alexander. The History of Nantucket, County, Island, and Town including Genealogies of First Settlers. Charles E. Tuttle Company: Rutland, Vermont, page 825; Macy, Sylvanus, Macy: Genealogy of the Macy Family from 1635-1868, (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1868.), page 82.
(2) http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cecebibby/ancestral-stories, This information was derived from "A Genealogical History of the Clark and Worth Families" by Carol Clark Johnson; "Ancestral Roots of Certain Colonists" by Frederick Weis; "Plantagenet Ancestry" by Moriarity and from documents found on the Harvard Law Library web site. (3) Clark, page 237. (4) Clark, page 237. Clark cites Phill. V.2 as the source for the second marriage of John Worth in 1634. (5) Clark, page 230. (6) Clark, page 236. (7) Clark, page 238. (8) Ibid. (9) http://www.nha.org/, Nantucket Historical Association website, William Worth and Sarah Macy were the first Caucasian couple to be married on Nantucket Island on April 11, 1665. (10) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Marriages, page 532, Worth, William and Sarah Macy, Apr. 11, 1665, Intention not recorded, [William, s. John of Devonshire, Eng., and Sarah Macy, d. Thomas and Sarah Hopcot, “m’d . . . . among Friends,” P.R. 38.]; also see Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Marriages, page 174, Macy, Sarah and William Worth, Apr. 11, 1665, Intention not recorded, [Sarah, d. Thomas and Sarah Hopcot, and William Worth, s. John of Devonshire, Eng., “m’d. . . . among Friends,” P.R. 38.]; Macy, Sylvanus, Macy: Genealogy of the Macy Family from 1635-1868, (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1868.), page 67; Clark, page 238. (11) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Births, Macy, Sarah, w. William Worth (s. John of England), d. Thomas and Sarah Hopcot, 6th [dup. 8th], 1 mo. 1646, in Salisbury, P.R. 38; Macy, Sylvanus, Macy: Genealogy of the Macy Family from 1635-1868, (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1868.), page 67; Clark, page 238. (12) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Deaths, Worth, Sarah, first w. William (s. John), d. Thomas Macy and Sarah Hopcot, ____, 1701, P.R. 38; Macy, Sylvanus, Macy: Genealogy of the Macy Family from 1635-1868, (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1868.), page 67; Clark, page 238. (13) Clark, page 238. (14) Nantucket Historical Association website: http://www.nha.org/library/ms/msguide.html (15) Clark, page 238.
(16) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Births, page 629; Clark, page 238. (17) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Marriages, page 525; Clark, page 238. (18) Ibid. (19) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Deaths, page 616; Clark, page 238. (20) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Marriages, page 525; Clark, page 238. (21) Clark, page 238 and 239. (22) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Marriages, page 532 and Deaths, page 620; Clark, page 238. (23) Ibid. (24) Nantucket Vital Records to 1850, Deaths, page 620, Worth, William, h. Sarah (d. Thomas Macy and Sarah), h. Damaris Sibley of Salem (“no chn.”), brother of Francis (“went to Portugal”), Lionel (“to the eastward of Boston”) and Richard (“to New Jersey”), s. John of Devonshire, Eng., ____, 12 mo. 1724, P.R. 38. (25) Clark, page 238. (26) For an image of the signature of William Worth, see Macy Genealogy, pages 28 and 29, Petition from Nantucket to Gov. Andros, [New York Colonial MSS, xxiv, Secretary’s Office.], letter signed by Edward Starbuck, Thomas Macy, and William Worth.
