My Beach family line leads back to the earliest days of the American colonies. As far as anyone's been able to find, three brothers sailed aboard the ship Elizabeth & Anne to New Haven colony in July 1638. These were Thomas, Richard and John Beach. I'm descended through John, but it is his brother, Thomas (born after 1611 and died in 1662), that I want to focus on today.
Like all good men of the colonies, Thomas had mustered in with the local militia. But he appears to have been a little less than the perfect militiaman because on 6 April 1646, a note was made in the New Haven records: "Thomas Beach defective in his rest (gun) fyned 6d." Another similar record appears a little later as we see on 7 July 1646, "Thomas Beach (and four others) defects in their guns, fyned 1s each." Thomas became a freeman on 7 March 1647, but returns to court records on 2 November 1647. In this last instance, the records show his testimony:
"Thomas Beach declareth that he went to Richard Sperries farm upon some occasion betwix his brother Richard. Ed Camp was there and quarreled with him. He started home and Camp followed him and beat him with a stick. Camp fyned."
Thomas was known as a shoemaker and because of his skilled trade he was granted 1 acre of land in the newly established town of Milford upon which to build his home in 1654. His father-in-law, Deacon Richard Platt invited Thomas to Milford, and there is a note in the New Haven records that his move caused a little trouble on 3 October 1654: "Francis Brown - absent at trayning - answered that he was carrying away Thomas Beach and his household goods to Milford."
1 comment:
Hi Sean,
Fascinating to think that when your ancestor arrived in New Haven, mine had arrived just a few months earlier in Port Royal (Acadia, now Nova Scotia).
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find much in the way of interesting "black sheep" ancestors in that period. My ancestors were too busy farming and draining salt water marshes!
Evelyn
A Canadian Family
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