The Pope Chest, dated 1679 At the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts |
POPE
The English origins of Joseph Pope, my 8th great
grandfather, are unknown, but the
records in Salem are full of stories about him and his family. He arrived in Massachusetts in 1634 aboard
the ship Mary and John and settled in
Salem, Massachusetts. He joined the First
Church (Puritan) in 1636, but he was also in the first group of early Quakers
in Salem. There is a long list of fines
levied against him in the court records, for absence from church until they
were finally excommunicated. Many other
Quakers in Salem were whipped and jailed.
The Quaker persecution in Salem ended when Samuel Shattuck
went to London in 1661 to deliver a plea to King Charles II, who sent a
mandamus to Massachusetts and ended the Quaker persecutions. It is unknown whether or not Shattuck is
related to Joseph Pope. Joseph named “my
bothers George and Richard and Joseph Gardner and cousin Samuell Shatok the
elder to be overseers” of his last will
and testament. All these families were
Quaker. In a TAG article in 1954 the
author was unable to find a genealogical relationship between these families [The American Genealogist, Volume 30:
164-66]
Joseph Pope, Jr. is my 7th great grandfather. He was the constable for Salem Village (now
the town of Danvers) in 1683, and was one of the more wealthy citizens
according to a tax list. He ran a saw
mill with his brother, Benjamin, and brother-in-law, Joshua Buffum. The Buffums were also a Salem Quaker family
(another sister, Hannah Pope, married Joshua’s brother, Caleb Buffum). I descend from Joshua’s sister, Deborah
Buffum, who married Robert Wilson (my 9th great grandparents) and
was whipped for appearing “naked” in the
Puritan church to protest these persecutions of the Quakers (she was also probably suffering from some sort of mental illness). Click HERE
for that story.
Joseph Pope, Jr. and his bride, Bethshua Folger, were
married in 1679. This year, and their
initials, was carved into a valuables chest attributed to the Symonds furniture
shop of Salem. This chest was passed on
in the family as the “Franklin Chest” because Joseph and Bethshua Pope were the
uncle and aunt to Benjamin Franklin (Bethshua’s sister, Abiah, was Benjamin Franklin’s mother).
When the chest was sold at a Christies Auction on 20 January 2000 it was
bought by the Peabody Essex Museum for a record breaking $2,422,500. Now it is on display as the “Pope Chest”. To read more about this chest, click HERE.
The Popes were witnesses against some of their Salem neighbors in the 1692 Salem witch trials. Perhaps this was payback for all the earlier the Quaker persecutions? Besides being connected to the infamous Witch Hysteria, they were also related to founding father Benjamin Franklin. Bethshua's sister, Abiah Folger, was Franklin's mother. This branch of my family tree touches a lot of interesting American history!
The Popes were witnesses against some of their Salem neighbors in the 1692 Salem witch trials. Perhaps this was payback for all the earlier the Quaker persecutions? Besides being connected to the infamous Witch Hysteria, they were also related to founding father Benjamin Franklin. Bethshua's sister, Abiah Folger, was Franklin's mother. This branch of my family tree touches a lot of interesting American history!
For more information on the Pope family:
The Great Migration, by Robert Charles Anderson, NEHGS, 2007,
Volume V, pages 487-491.
A History of the
Dorchester Pope Family, 1634 – 1888 by Charles Henry Pope, (Boston 1888)
pages 299 – 301.
Also see The Records of the First Church in Salem,
Massachusetts, 1629 -1736, and The Records and Files of the Quarterly
Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts (too many to list here, see the
sketch at The Great Migration for details on the volumes and page
numbers)
Also, please see last week's "Surname Saturday" post on the FOLGER family at this link:
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/11/surname-saturday-folger-of-watertown.html
My POPE genealogy:
Generation 1: Joseph
Pope, born about 1606 in England, died 1667 in Salem, Massachusetts; married
first to Damaris Unknown (mother of 8 children); married second to Gertrude Unknown. She died 27 April 1667 in Salem.
Generation 2: Joseph
Pope, baptized 27 October 1650 in Salem, Massachusetts, died in February 1712
in Salem; married in 1679 in Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts to
Bethshua Folger, daughter of Peter Folger and Mary Merrill. She was born about 1650 on Nantucket. Nine children.
Generation 3: Jerusha
Pope, born 1 April 1695 in Salem, died 29 June 1781; married on 9 July 1713 to George
Flint, son of George Flint and Elizabeth Putnam. He was born on 1 April 1686 in Reading,
Massachusetts. Seven children.
Generation 4: George
Flint m. Hannah Phelps
Generation 5: Phebe
Flint m. John Flint
Generation 6: Olive
Flint m. Luther Simonds Munroe
Generation 7: Phebe
Cross Munroe m. Robert Wilson Wilkinson
Generation 8: Albert Munroe Wilkinson m. Isabella Lyons Bill
Generation 9: Donald Munroe Wilkinson m. Bertha Louise
Roberts (my grandparents)
----------------------------------
The URL for this post is
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/11/surname-saturday-pope-of-salem.html
You know what's interesting? I'm related to Thomas Pope, of Plymouth Plantation, he arrived in the same year and on the same boat as Joseph Pope. I bet they were brothers.
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting! I never knew this.
Delete