Troublesome Thomas Tuck of Beverly, Massachusetts

 

The town seal of Beverly, Massachusetts

I share this ancestor, Thomas Tuck (1611 - 1667) with my fellow genealogy blogger, Bill West, who unfortunately passed away last year.  Bill wrote three interesting blog posts about Thomas Tuck, and you can find the links below at the end of this post.  It was Bill who called our common ancestor "Troublesome Thomas Tuck".  

Thomas Tuck was my 9th great grandfather, born about 1611 probably in England.  He died in Beverly, Massachusetts on 20 March 1667.  Years after he died his ghost became part of the 1692 witch trails, when someone accused him of coming back from the dead to urge her to buy some land!  In my opinion his ghost was mentioned because he was not particularly law abiding during his life.  But we will never know, will we? 

" And for seeing the devill, or any spirit but ones, & that was soon after old Thomas Tuck dyed (w'ch I take to be about ten yeare since) & that shee took it to be the Ghost of Thom: tuck coming to speak w'th her about some land s'd Tuck had told her of before his death. But that shee fled from the Ghost & got away."  Salem Witch Papers No. 68.18 Examination of Dorcas Hoar 2 May 1692 

I'm on a search to learn more about Thomas Tuck's wife.  Or his wives.  I wasn't sure how many times he married, or which wife might have been the mother of my 8th great grandfather, John Tuck, born in 1646 in Beverly and died there in 1722.  There is no mention of Thomas Tuck, unfortunately, in any of the Great Migration Books, so I can assume he came to Massachusetts after 1635 (which is the drop off date for Robert Charles Anderson's research).  He is not found in many other records except for court records, where I can find many, many mentions of his misadventures.

In Sidney Perley's History of Salem, 1924, Volume 1, pages 399 - 401 there is a very short mention of Thomas Tuck.  No, not three pages on him, just three sentences in the footnotes:

"Thomas Tuck, a blacksmith, aged about twenty-five, lived on Cape Ann side in 1636.  In 1643 he was living apart from his wife, and in 1650 he had married the widow of George Harris.  His wife was Joan in 1679.  In 1643 he was complained of for living absent from his wife, but was discharged."

What facts do I learn from this tiny paragraph?  Or what new questions do I have?  How many wives did Thomas Tuck have? Which wife was my ancestress? Where can I find more records? Does he appear anywhere except in court records? Why was he a part of the Salem Witch Hysteria? 

Fortunately, after a lot of digging over many months, I found a terrific resource.  Someone had done a sketch of Thomas Tuck and his children in the 2018 edition of the New England Historic Genealogical Society Register journal, hidden inside an article about George Harris (Yes!  The same George Harris mentioned in that brief little paragraph in the History of Salem.) And this article answered all my questions about Troublesome Thomas Tuck, and even brought up some new questions and further things to investigate.

My question was how many wives did Thomas Tuck have?   Apparently he had two, one before "Joan".  Joan's previous marriage to George Harris left her with three sons.  One of these sons, Samuel Harris (1644-1682) was married to Mary Hoar, the daughter of accused witch Dorcas (Galley) Hoar.  This news explained a lot of the mentions in court records of Thomas Tuck being the "father-in-law" (step-father) to Joseph Harris.  It also explains why the Tuck and Harris children were called to testify at Dorcas Hoar's trial for witchcraft in 1692. 

The article also listed many, many resources in the footnotes for additional deeds, court records, and other information.  Some of the best I found were compiled genealogies done on the Harris family, which helped me to sort out the Tuck family!  

Thomas and Joan Tuck had only one known child, my 8th great grandfather John Tuck (1646 - 1722) who married a Rachel (________) - another brick wall female line to untangle.  But they had six children including my 7th great grandfather John Tuck (1674 - 1717), and his sister Mary Tuck (1682 - 1741/2) who married John Balch the grandson of my 8th great grandparents Benjamin Balch and Sarah Gardner. Another daughter-in-law, Sarah Reith, remarried, when her husband Joseph Tuck died, to Samuel Allen of Manchester, Massachusetts (My mother's maiden name is Allen, a descendant of William Allen (1602 - 1678) of Manchester, so I need to find the kinship connection for this Samuel Allen). I had some notes on these Balch/Tuck/Reith/Allen families already in my files. I'm sure that I can unravel it all now with this new information. 

Don't forget to check journal articles, blog posts, and compiled genealogies of related families when you hit a Brick Wall ancestor!  Especially new articles published in the last five years, which may not be mentioned as much as articles from the 20th century or early 2000s (or show up on online searches).  

For the truly curious:

History of Salem, by Sidney Perley, 1924, Volume 1, pages 399 - 401.

NEHGS Register, 2018, Volume 172, pages 302 - 304  George Harris 1 of Salem, Massachusetts, with Sketch of Thomas 1 Tuck, by Gale Ion Harris https://www.americanancestors.org/DB202/i/55221/304/73267555

The Salem Witchcraft Papers, at salemlib.virginia.edu/texts/transcripts.html, SWP No. 68.4 (deposition of Rachel Tuck and Hannah Cox v. Dorcas Hoar, 14 May 1692)

From Bill West's blog West in New England, more about Thomas Tuck: 

https://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/2015/04/thomas-tuck-and-stolen-bell-pt1.html  

https://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/2015/04/thomas-tuck-and-stolen-bell-pt2.html  

https://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/2015/04/thomas-tuck-and-stolen-bell-pt3.html

------------------------------

To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Troublesome Thomas Tuck of Beverly, Massachusetts", Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 22, 2025, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2025/04/troublesome-thomas-tuck-of-beverly.html: accessed [access date]).  

Tobacco in Early Colonial New England

from the pamphlet "Tabaco"
by Anthony Chute, 1594

Whilst mining some early Massachusetts court records for my genealogy research, I was struck by how often my ancestors and their neighbors were mentioned along with documents mentioning tobacco use, abuse, and fines.  I found this very interesting, and I collected some of the stories to tell you in this blog post. You might want to mine the early court records, too!

Tobacco originated in the New World. Soon after European contact tobacco was traded, sold, and imported back to Europe where it was extremely popular.  King James I of England found tobacco to be extremely distasteful, and even penned a book A Counter-blaste to Tobacco where he mentioned on page 11 “That the manifolde abuses of this vile custome of Tobacco taking…” and condemned the practice of using tobacco.  The pope in Rome at this time period, Urban VIII threatened to excommunicate anyone who smoked in a church!

My ancestor, Isaac Allerton, a Mayflower passenger, was a merchant and trader.  He was a witness to the peace treaty with the Wampanoag people on 23 March 1620/21 “Captain Standish and Isaac Allerton went venturously, who were welcomed of him after their manner: he gave them three or four ground nuts and some tobacco." And on 8 June 1654, "Thomas Adams and Isaac Allerton gave a bond...for the delivery of 3000 pounds of tobacco to Director (Governor) Stuyvesant." Again, on June 11, 1649, "Mr. John Treworgie [of Kittery] did acknowledge to have received four thousand wt of Tobacco by Isaac Allerto[n] for the Account of Mr. Georg Ludlow.” [see the website https://sail1620.org/content.php?page=Isaac_Allerton_and_Tobacco ]

In 1637 in Plymouth County the first anti-smoking law was written in New England.  It threatened a 12 pence fine for smoking in any street, barn, outhouse or highway, and for smoking further than 1 mile from home.  A second offense was 2 shillings. One year later, on 4 December 1638, the Mayflower passenger Francis Billington was fined 12 pennies for “drinking tobacco in the highway.” [Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, in New England by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, Volume 1, page 106.]

My ancestor George Soule was appointed in 1646 to a committee to deal with Duxbury’s problem of the disorderly smoking of tobacco.  They drew up strict limitations on where tobacco could be smoked and the fines to be levied. [History of Scituate, Massachusetts: From Its First Settlement to 1831 by Samuel Deane, page 308.]  In the Plymouth Colony records, from 1633 – 1643 there were 8 convictions for tobacco smoking, with 6 fines extracted from the guilty.  Compare this to 6 convictions for swearing and 6 convictions for Lord’s Day violations.  Smoking was more popular, but not as popular as drinking, with 13 convictions resulting in 13 fines.

Also in the Plymouth Colony records “Richard Berry, Jedidiah Lombard, Benjamin Lombard, and james Maker, fined for smoking tobacco at the end of Yarmouth Meeting-house on the Lord’s Day”  Faithful tradition informs us, that the early settlers were greatly addicted to smoking, and they would often disturb divine service by the klicking of flints and steel to light their pipes, and the clouds of smoke in the Church. Hence that law of the Colony, passed 1669: “It is enacted that any person or persons that shall be found smoking of tobacco on the Lord’s day, going to or coming from meetings, within two miles of the Meeting-house, shall pay 12 pence for every such default, for the Colonie’s use, to be increased,” &c.”

And from the book The Language of the Law by David Mellinkoff, 2004  “Tobacco smoking ‘gretlie taken-vp and vsed’ in late sixteenth-century England, troubled the Puritan law makers of the Massachusetts Bay Colonly.  It was a fire hazard, and bothered non-smokers (Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, Farrand, 1929, page 50) Worse, it led to idleness ‘Tobacco takers’ bore special watching (Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, Farrand, 1929, page 26”.

Eventually the profits from the cash crop tobacco and the profitable taxing of tobacco eased the Purtian fear of idleness.  Even when doctors and scientists began to identify tobacco as unhealthy, the profits won over reason and settlers began to plant tobacco for sale as a cash crop in New England, as well as all over the middle colonies and the south. 

In my own family history I find a story about Sarah Belden, daughter of Daniel Belden and Elizabeth Foote, about age 14, who in 1696 escaped the Deerfield massacre by hiding in a tobacco field.  Clearly the settlers were growing their own tobacco right from the beginning.  By the 1800s tobacco farming as a large cash crop was well established in the Massachusetts Connecticut Valley. [“History of Tobacco Production in the Connecticut Valley” by Elizabeth Ramsey, Smith College Studies in History, Volume 15 (Apr – July 1930), pages 133 – 134].

The Puritan fear of idleness and sin lead eventually led to the Blue Laws which banned all sorts of activities on Sundays, including smoking and alcohol.  The legacy of the Puritans was strict control over tobacco use, including taxes and fines.  These rules forbade the sale of Tobacco on Sundays until 1983.  The control over tobacco still persists through health codes and recent laws such as raising the age to buy tobacco to age 21 in Massachusetts in 2018.  Some blue laws remain on the books (yet unenforced) such as hunting on Sundays. 

For the truly curious:

A Counter-blaste to Tobacco, by James I (King of England), 1604 – available online through Google Books.

The Pennsylvania Mayflower Society “Isaac Allerton and Tobacco” by John M. Hunt, Jr. https://sail1620.org/content.php?page=Isaac_Allerton_and_Tobacco

 -------------------

Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Tobacco in Early Colonial New England", Nutfield Genealogy, posted September 17, 2019, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/09/tobacco-in-early-colonial-new-england.html: accessed [access date]).