Saturday, April 21, 2018

Surname Saturday ~ GREEN of Cambridge, Massachusetts


Cambridge City Seal


GREEN / GREENE

Bartholomew Green (about 1590 – 1636) is my 9th great grandfather.  According to an article in the NEHGS Register, Bartholomew Green and his family arrived in Massachusetts aboard The Griffin on 4 September 1633 with Rev. Thomas Hooker’s company.  The Green family settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Fresh Pond, and Bartholomew died there in 1636, just a year after becoming a freeman.

The first printing press in New England, and maybe in all the English colonies, was in Cambridge, brought there in 1638 by the widow of Rev. Josse Glover, who had died at sea on his way to Massachusetts.  T the widow married Henry Dunster, president of Harvard College.  Eventually Samuel Green, son of Bartholomew and a clerk at Harvard, became the printer.  My 8th great uncle Samuel Green ran the Harvard Press until 1692, when the original press was removed to New London, and then moved around New England until 1781 when it was removed to Vermont to print the newspaper Vermont Gazette. The press is now on display in the Vermont state capital building in Montpelier. 

One of Samuel Green’s sons, Bartholomew (1666 – 1732) was also a printer. He published the Boston Newsletter from 1704 – 1707 and from 1711 – 1732. Another son, Samuel Green, Jr., managed Samuel Sewell’s printing press.  Several other descendants also were printers and publishers, and the granddaughters married printers.  It was a family of printers (see the NEHGS Register article below).

I descend from Samuel’s sister, Phebe Green, who married William Hele/Healy as the fourth of his five wives.  You can read more about William Healy HERE at a previous blog post.  He was a notoriously violent man, and also the Cambridge town jailor.  In 1666 Phebe’s brother Samuel Green (obviously a prominent man in town) and her brother-in-law, Thomas Langhorn, filed a formal complaint with the court for spousal abuse.  Two of Healy’s servants testified against him, as well as Phebe’s mother.  The testimony survives, but I do not know the court’s decision towards Healy.  Phebe died in childbirth in 1671.  Her infant daughter, Hannah, survived and Langhorn became the guardian.  Healy remarried to a fifth wife but was caught sexually abusing one of the female prisoners in his charge.  He was sentenced to serve time in his own jail and died there in 1683.

And so my Green lineage daughters out on a sad note, and my line continues with Phebe’s son, Paul Healy (about 1664 – 1717), my 7th great grandfather, who removed to Rehoboth, Massachusetts.

For more information:

Great Migration Begins, Volume II, pages 809 – 810.

Cambridge Cameos, pages 123 – 128 (Son Samuel and daughter Phebe)

New England Historic Genealogical Register, “The Green Family a Dynasty of Printers”, Volume 104 [1950], pages 81 – 93.

My GREEN genealogy:

Generation 1:  Bartholomew Green, born about 1590 in England and died before 8 February 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; married before 1615 to Elizabeth Unknown.  Four children.

Generation 2:  Phebe Green, born about 1629; married 15 August 1661 in Cambridge to William Hele/Healy as his fourth wife.  He was born about 1613 and died 18 November 1683 in Cambridge.  Four children.

Generation 3: Paul Healy m. Elizabeth Unknown
Generation 4: Ebenezer Healy m. Grace Bullen
Generation 5:  Comfort Haley m. Abigail Allen
Generation 6:  Comfort Haley m. Rebecca Crosby
Generation 7:  Joseph Edwin Healy m. Matilda Weston
Generation 8:  Mary Etta Healy m. Peter Hoogerzeil
Generation 9:  Florence Etta Hoogerzeil m. Arthur Treadwell Hitchings
Generation 10:  Gertrude Matilda Hitchings m. Stanley Elmer Allen (my grandparents)

A link to my previous GREEN “Surname Saturday” post, “Green of Malden, Massachusetts”:

A Surname Saturday post about William Healy and his descendants:

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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, “Surname Saturday ~ GREEN of Cambridge, Massachusetts”, Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 21, 2018, (  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/04/surname-saturday-green-of-cambridge.html: accessed [access date]). 

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