Surname Saturday ~ ROLLINS of Dover (Newington), New Hampshire

ROLLINS / RAWLINGS / RAWLINS

My 9th great grandfather, James Rollins (about 1613 - about 1687) first lived in Newbury, Massachusetts and then removed to Dover, New Hampshire where he was made a freeman on 14 May 1634.  He was granted six acres at Dover on 18 March 1648.  His occupation is unknown, but sometime around 1661 he returned to London where "he received cloth to be delivered to Mr. Cogswell of Ipswich and Mr. Raynes of York" [Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, page 595].  This is interesting to me because John Cogswell (1650 - 1724) of Ipswich is my 8th great grandfather.  James Rollins was back in New Hampshire again in 1663.

Around 16 December 1685 James Rollins made his will which mentioned his wife Hannah; sons Benjamin, Ichabod, and Joseph; and his sons-in-law Obadiah Morse and Phillip Chesley.  He must have died sometime between writing this will and 13 September 1689 when his son had a deed written that mentioned him as "Benjamin Rawlings son of James Rawlings deceased".  His will was not proven until 25 July 1691.

Very little is known of James Rollins' life, but he did sign the Dover Combination on 22 October 1640, and the May 1654 petition.  The Dover Combination was the document that established the town government, and a copy was found in the Public Record Office in London with the names of the men who signed (including my ancestors James Rollins, Thomas Leighton, John Heard, Anthony Emery, and Peter Garland).

I descend from James Rollins' daughter Sarah who married Phillip Chesley about 1678.  They lived at Oyster River (Durham), New Hampshire.

Some ROLLINS resources:

The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620 - 1633, by Robert Charles Anderson, Volume III, pages 1552 - 1555.

Records of Families of the Name Rawlins or Rollins in the United States, by John R. Rollins, 1874 [errors in the children of James Rollins in generation 1]

Granite Monthly: The New Hampshire Magazine, Volume 1 (September 1877), pages 129 - 134

My ROLLINS genealogy:

Generation 1: James Rollins, born about 1613, died between 16 December 1685 and 13 August 1687 at Bloody Point (now the town of Newington), Dover, New Hampshire; married about 1638 to Hannah Unknown; seven children.

Generation 2:  Sarah Rollins, born about 1658; married about 1678 to Phillip Chesley, son of Phillip Chesley and Elizabeth Leighton.  He was born about 1646 at Oyster River, New Hampshire, and died 18 December 1695 at Oyster River.  Six children.

Generation 3:  Jonathan Chesley m. Mary Weeks
Generation 4: Comfort Chesley m. Stephen Perkins
Generation 5:  Mary Perkins m. Nathaniel Batchelder
Generation 6:  Jonathan Batchelder m. Nancy Thompson
Generation 7:  George E. Batchelder m. Abigail M. Locke
Generation 8:  George E. Batchelder m. Mary Katharine Emerson
Generation 9:  Carrie Maude Batchelder m. Joseph Elmer Allen
Generation 10:  Stanley Elmer Allen m. Gertrude Matilda Hitchings (my grandparents)

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Surname Saturday ~ ROLLINS of Dover (Newington), New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted January 5, 2019, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/01/surname-saturday-rollins-of-dover.html: accessed [access date]).

Surname Saturday ~ CHESLEY of Oyster River (Dover), New Hampshire

CHESLEY / CHESSLEY / CHESLIE

The first record I can find of my 9^th great grandfather, Phillip Chesley, is when he witnessed a deed from Rev. Thomas Larkahm to William Waldron on 13 September 1642.  There are some online sources that say he arrived at the Oyster River Plantation at age 15 in 1633, but I have not found any source for that.  There are also some who say he was from the Isle of Jersey, son of Thomas Chesley and Margaret Rogers, but I have not seen any proof of his origins.

Phillip Chesley’s first wife was Elizabeth Leighton, with whom he had two sons.  Elizabeth and Phillip signed a deed for a house lot on Dover Neck.  Some time after this he remarried to a woman named Joan or Joanna.  On 12 August 1663 he and Joan deed his land and house to his sons, keeping only one room in the house for himself.  He had three daughters with his second wife.

Life was difficult on the New Hampshire seacoast. It was on the border of the frontier with French Canada.  Most of the settlers were involved with logging and lumber which was dangerous work.  In 1657 he was on the jury that investigated a drowning of a logger.   In 1660 he was the local constable when Thomas Canyda was killed by a falling tree.   He was present at the coroner’s inquest of an Alexander McDaniel who drowned in the Piscataqua River in 1663.  Chelsley was chosen to lay out the road from Oyster River to Cochecho with Patrick Jamison in 1664.

My ancestor appears to have been a drunk and a belligerent neighbor.  He was also the Oyster River constable for a time, which seems incongruous. Because of his behavior, the court records are full of mentions of Phillip Chesley.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t know much about his life in early New Hampshire. He appeared in court with Stephen Jones in 1668 “upon suspicion of having a hand in ye untimely death of Edmond Green blacksmith” [NH Provincial Deeds, 2: 150b, 151a].  In April 1661 there was a bond issued to Phillip Chesley to keep the peace, especially towards his wife, and to appear in court in Dover to answer the complaint of his wife, Joan. 

In June of the same year two witnesses claimed Chesley called Edward Colcord “Rogue & Rascall, & that he deserved to be sold to the Berbadoes or Virginia, & he would doe it if he Could.”   In another slander case Mr. Samuel Hall claimed that Chelsey was “Cozening and cheating saying yt he was a Knave & yt he had Cozened & cheated him the sd Chesley of 10 pounds or more wch was a Just debt whereby the sd Hall is damnified in his Credit 500 pounds.”  The jury found him guilty but only chared him 50 shillings in damages and 21 shillings court costs.  [New Hampshire Court Records 1640 – 1692, Court Papers 1652 – 1668, in the New Hampshire State Papers Series, 40 (State of New Hampshire, 1943), 172, 474 – 7, and Court Papers, 1: 69, 89, 93, 95, 115 – 123.]  This case is explained in great detail in Diane Rapapport’s 2007 book The Naked Quaker: True Crimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England, on pages 83 – 88 in a sketch she calls “Chesley and the Cheating Knave”. 

In the second generation I descend from his son, Phillip Chesley, Jr.  His older brother, Thomas Chesley, was killed in an Indian massacre near Johnson’s Creek on 15 November 1697, leaving seven children and a widow.  Phillip, Jr. married Sarah Rollins and had six children.

In the third generation I descend from Philip’s youngest son, Jonathan.  He lived in Greenland, and was a representative to the General Court in 1745.  He married Mary Weeks and had three children.  I descend from their daughter Comfort Chesley, my 7^th great grandfather, who married Stephen Perkins of Wells, Maine, and they had twelve children born in Wells and in the part of Canterbury, New Hampshire that became the town of Loudon.  

Some other Chesley resources:

History of Durham, New Hampshire, Volume 1, by Everett Schermerhorn Stackpole, 1913.

Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, by Charles Thornton Libby, Walter Goodwin Davis and Sybil Noyes, 1928.

Batchelder Genealogy, by Frederick Clifton Pierce, 1898

My CHESLEY genealogy:

Generation 1:  Phillip Chesley, born about 1606 and died after 30 April 1685 at Oyster River, New Hampshire; married first to Elizabeth Leighton, daughter of Thomas Leighton and Joanna Sisbee.  She was born about 1625 in Dover, New Hampshire; married second to Joan Unknown.  Two sons with the first wife, three daughters with the second wife.

Generation 2:  Phillip Chesley, born about 1646 in Oyster River, and died 18 December 1695 at Oyster River; married about 1675 to Sarah Rollins, daughter of James Rollins and Hannah Fry.  Six children.

Generation 3:  Jonathan Chesley, died about 1785; married on 17 November 1720 in Greenland to Mary Weeks, daughter of Joshua Weeks and Comfort Hubbard.  She was born about 1700 in Greenland and died about 1755. Three children.

Generation 4:  Comfort Chesley, born about 1735 and died 12 February 1818; married to Stephen Perkins, son of Jacob Perkins and Anna Littlefield.  He was born about 1736 in Wells, Maine and died 13 May 1818 in Loudon, New Hampshire.  Twelve children.

Generation 5:  Mary Perkins m. Nathaniel Batchelder

Generation 6:  Jonathan Batchelder m. Nancy Thompson

Generation 7:  George E. Batchelder m. Abigail M. Locke

Generation 8: George E. Batchelder m. Mary Katharine Emerson

Generation 9: Carrie Maude Batchelder m. Joseph Elmer Allen

Generation 10:  Stanley Elmer Allen m. Gertrude Matilda Hitchings

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, “CHESLEY of Oyster River (Dover), New Hampshire”, Nutfield Genealogy, posted November 10, 2018, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/11/surname-saturday-chesley-of-oyster.html: accessed [access date]). 

A New Hampshire Man Imprisoned in the Tower of London, 1683, Facing Execution for Treason!

The GOVE memorial
at Hampton, New Hampshire's Founder's Park

Almost a century before the American colonies rose up in resistance against Mother England during the Revolutionary War, a New Hampshire man rose up against the crown.  Edward Gove (about 1635 – 1691) was a large land holder in Hampton, New Hampshire. He was made a member of the assembly in 1680, and became the leader of a group opposed to the Royal Governor Edward Cranfield.

Edward Cranfield had been appointed Governor in 1682 by the king, and came to New Hampshire with the plan of transforming the colony into plantations for the gentry. He attempted to nullify many land deeds existing in New Hampshire for his plan.  He also dissolved the Council, which was a very unpopular move.  Edward Gove and a group of other men opposed the new Governor.

Gove and eleven others (Jonathan Thing, Nathaniel Ladd, Joseph Hadley, Robert Wadley, Thomas Rawlins/Rollins, Mark Baker, John Sleeper, John Gove (Edward’s son), and others)  were arrested and brought before the court in Portsmouth on 1 February 1682/3.   The entire group was found guilty of treason, but only Edward Gove was sentenced to death by Judge Richard Waldron.  This was the charge:

“You, Edward Gove shall be drawn on a hedge to the place of execution, and there you shall be hanged by ye neck, and when yet living be cut down and cast on the ground, and your bowels shall be taken out of your belly, and your privy members cut off and burnt while you are yet alive, your head shall be cut off and your body divided into four parts, and your head and quarters shall be placed where our Sovereign Lord the King pleaseth to appoint.  And the Lord have mercy on your soul”

His desperate wife presented this petition:

“The wretchd & Deplorable Condition of her selfe and family, but chiefely her husband, who by means of a distemper of Lunacy or some such like, which he have benn Subject unto (by times) from his youth, and yet is untill now (as his mother was before him) (though at some times seemingly very Rationall) which have occationed him Irationally and evily to demeane himselfe (by means of some unhappy provocation) to such actions whereby he have incured unto himselfe the Sentence of Death; past upon him by yor Maties Court in the same Province, with Loss of all his Estate; and is now sent over into England to attend yor Maties further pleasure therein, on whose Royall favour only now depends all possibility of Releise. And for as much as he never had the least expression of disloyalty or Disafection to yor Maties person, Crown & Dignety or Interest neither then, nor at any other time that wee know of nor nothing tending that way (when Rationall) but the Contrary, as he would have pleaded at his tryall had be been himselfe and doubt not but he would upon tht accompt now begg for his own life either to the Honorable Govt here or of yor Royall Majties there, but he being not capable of so doeing.
Your most deploreable Supplicant Doe in most Humble wise Pray your Sacred Majties favourable admitance of her humble Request for the life of her said Husband (by your Majties Gratious pardon) or what way soever it shall seem good to yor Majties, yor poore petitioner haveing no knowlidge of Law, of the privilidges that a Subject may plead, and yor Majties poore Petitioner, and all her Distressed family, Shall as in duty they are bound ever pray for yor Majties long life and Happy Reigne.
HANNAH GOVE”

No New Hampshire authorities wanted to carry out the sentence, and Mrs. Gove’s petition was ignored (yet survived for us to find in the records!).   On 2 April 1683 he was put on the ship Richard to England and sent to prison in the Tower of London, where it was assumed his sentence would be carried out by the royal executioners.  During his time in prison, King Charles II died and King James II ascended the throne.  Gove successfully petitioned the new king to pardon him on 26 August 1685, but he was not released.  On 12 April 1686 the king sent a letter to the President and Council of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, stating that Gove had been pardoned. 

In the meantime, the unpopular Royal Governor Cranfield tried to continue his plans in New Hampshire.  The sentence Gove had received did not push the people into submission, but made them more rebellious.  The new King removed Cranfield, and he was escorted to the Massachusetts border with a rope around his neck.   England sent him to Barbados to serve as a customs official.

Gove returned to Hampton, New Hampshire, where he died in 1691.  Most of his land was returned to him, which he left to his sons in his will.

Edward Gove is buried at the Pine Grove Cemetery in Hampton.   He holds the distinction of being the only New England colonist convicted of treason and sentenced to be drawn and quartered.  This incident is known in New Hampshire history as “Gove’s Rebellion”. 

For the truly curious:

History of Hampton, by Joseph Dow, 1893 (available online at Google Books and at the Hampton, NH Lane Library website http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/dow/index.htm )

“Hampton’s Gove – Ahead of his Time”, by Doug Gove, Rockingham County Newspaper, July 8, 1988, transcribed for the Hampton, NH Lane Library website 

http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/hampton350th/page_19.htm

Biography of Edward Gove, an excerpt from The History and Genealogy the American Family of Gove, By William Henry Gove, 1922 transcribed for the Hampton, NH Lane Library website http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/biog/gove.htm

For more information about Royal Governor Edward Cranfield, see The History of New Hampshire by Jeremy Belkap, 1813, Volume II, page 369 (available online at Google Books)

The magistrate Richard Waldron was a notoriously cruel man in New Hampshire history.  Click this link to see a blog post about another sentence he issued against the Quakers, and how he died at the hands of the Native people he had abused during his time in office:

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-women-went-from-dover.html

A few years ago I helped my Godfather with his Gove lineage.  His mother was a Gove.  We had a lot of fun tracing this line, and looking for a reprint or original copy of the Gove compiled genealogy listed above.  I previously blogged about his Gove family in Nahant, Massachusetts at this link:  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/10/tombstone-tuesday-greenlawn-cemetery.html

Here is his descent from Edward Gove:

Generation 1:  Edward Gove, born about 1635 in England, died 29 May 1691 in Hampton; married about 1660 to Hannah Partridge, daughter of William Partridge and Ann Spicer.  She was born about 1638.

Generation 2: Ebenezer Gove, born 23 June 1671 in Hampton, died 16 April 1758 in Hampton; married on 20 December 1692 in Hampton to Judith Sanborn, daughter of John Sanborn and Judith Coffin.  She was born 8 August 1675 and died about 1760.

Generation 3: Edward Gove, born 29 May 1696 in Hampton Falls, died 10 July 1765 in Hampton; married on 18 June 1728 to Mary Moulton, daughter of Daniel Moulton and Mary Unknown.  She was born 16 December 1706 and died 20 October 1793 in Hampton Falls.

Generation 4: Winthrop Gove, born 3 November 1732 in Hampton, died 3 June 1808 in Hampton; married 3 June 1754 to Elizabeth Ring, daughter of Jonathan Ring and Esther Batchelder.

Generation 5: Levi Gove, born 29 June 1759 in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, died in Seabrook, New Hampshire; married Mary Chase, daughter of Charles Chase and Mary Griffith.  She was born 19 April 1760 in Hampton, died 19 September 1852 in Seabrook. 

Generation 6:  William Gove, born 15 February 1794 in Seabrook, New Hampshire, died 1834 in Seabrook; married in 1815 to Elizabeth Chase, daughter of Aquila Chase and Anna Moulton.  She was born 28 November 1796 in Seabrook, and died 1882 in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Generation 7: Worthen Augustus Gove, born 12 July 1819 in Seabrook, died 28 March 1885 in Nahant, Massachusetts; married on 15 January 1836 in Lynn to Emeline A. Spencer, daughter of William Spencer and Mary Gale Homan.  She was born 12 April 1819 in Beverly, Massachusetts, died 9 February 1897 in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Generation 8: Charles Edward Gove, born 23 July 1839 in Lynn, died 26 January 1920 in Nahant; married Elvira E. Whitney, daughter of Charles Whitney and Adeline Strong.  She was born 26 November 1833 in Dublin, New Hampshire and died 15 April 1901 in Nahant.

Generation 9: George Alvah Gove, born 17 September 1870 in Nahant, died 1945 in Beverly, Massachusetts; married on 16 April 1894 to Frances L. Harris, sister to the wife of George’s brother Charles.  She was born 12 April 1873 in New London, Connecticut, died 1962 in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Generation 10: Grace Mildred Gove, born 18 October 1897 in Nahant, died 18 March 1834 in Beverly; married Erwin McKenney as his first wife.

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "A New Hampshire Man Imprisoned in the Tower of London, 1683, Facing Execution for Treason!", Nutfield Genealogy, posted February 10, 2014, ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-new-hampshire-man-imprisoned-in-tower.html: accessed [access date]).