 |
The First Church, Salem, MA
Founded in 1629, this building
dates from 1836 |
SKELTON
Samuel Skelton matriculated at Clare Hall, Cambridge
University on 7 July 1608 and received his Batchelor of Arts degree in 1611,
and his Master’s degree in 1615. He was
Governor John Endicott’s spiritual advisor in England, and he arrived in New
England on the “George Bonaventure” with several of his children on 19 June 1629.
He was ordained as the pastor and
Reverend Higginson was made the teacher of the First Church in Salem on 6
August 1629. It was the first church
founded in the Massachusetts Bay colony.
"Upon the eighteenth day of March
came one from Salem and told us that upon the fifteenth thereof there died Mrs.
Skelton, the wife of the other minister there, who, about eighteen or twenty
days before, handling cold things in a sharp morning, put herself into a most
violent fit of the wind colic and vomiting, which continuing, she at length
fell into a fever and so died as before. She was a godly and an helpful woman,
and indeed the main pillar of her family, having left behind her an husband and
four children, weak and helpless, who can scarce tell how to live without her.
She lived desired and died lamented, and well deserves to be honorably
remembered" [ Thomas Dudley, Letter to Lady Bridget, Countess of Lincoln
12 and 28 March 1630/1 in Letter from New England in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, 1629 – 1638, Everett Emerson, editor, Amherst, MA, 1976].
Richard Charles Anderson made this
humorous note about the Skelton family in his Great Migration Begins, Volume
III, pages 1684-1687: “In 1939 Nora E. Snow published an account of
the family of Samuel Skelton which assigned to him another wife, prior to
Susanna Travis, and two sons with that wife, Benjamin and Nathaniel [
Snow-Estes 2:214]. She reached this incorrect conclusion by deciding that the
tentative entries for Benjamin and Nathaniel Skelton in Savage must have been
real people and must have been sons of Samuel [ Savage 4:103]. Savage, in turn,
was misled by Felt, who included men of those names in his list of first
settlers of Salem, giving the first appearance of Benjamin as being in 1639 and
of Nathaniel as being in 1648 [ Felt 1:170]. In both cases Felt had misread
entries in the Salem church records for baptisms of children of Benjamin and
Nathaniel Felton [ SChR 17, 22]. Skelton Felton, a great-grandson of the Rev.
Samuel Skelton, might have appreciated the humor of the situation.” [At the annual Felton family reunion, the
name of “Skelton Felton” often comes up, with much giggling]
For more Skelton information:
The History of Salem by Sidney
Perley, Massachusetts, 3 volumes (Salem
1924-1928)
An Emerson-Benson Saga: The Ancestry of
Charles F. Emerson and Bessie Benson and the Struggle to Settle the United
States Including 194 Allied Lines by Edmund K. Swigart, Baltimore, MD:
Gateway Press, 1994
The Records of the First Church in
Salem, Massachusetts, 1629-1736 by Richard D. Pierce, ed. , Salem, MA,
1974
The Reverend Samuel Skelton,
A. M., by Herbert Parker, Society of the Descendants of Colonial Clergy,
Lancaster, MA, 1943 call number
BX7260. S54 S6 1943 at NEHGS library
My Skelton lineage:
Generation 1: Reverend Samuel Skelton, son of
William Skelton and Sarah Unknown, baptized on 26 Feburary 1593 at Coningsby,
Lincolnshire, England, and died on 2 August 1634 in Salem, Massachusetts;
married on 27 April 1619 at Horbling, Lincolnshire, England to Susanna Travis,
daughter of William Travis, born before
11 September 1597 at Horbling, died on 15 March 1631 in Salem. Five children:
1.
Sarah Skelton, baptized 12 August 1621 at Sempringham, Lincolnshire, England,
probably died young
2.
Samuel Skelton, baptized 8 January 1623 at Tattershall, Lincolnshire, England,
married Margaret Unknown
3.
Susanna Skelton, baptized 3 April 1625 at Tattershall, married 1st John
Marsh, married 2nd Thomas Rix
4.
Mary Skelton (see below)
5.
Elizabeth Skelton, born about 1630, married
Robert Sanford
Generation
2: Mary Skelton, baptized on 28 June
1627 at Tattershall, died May 1701 at Salem; married about 1643 to Nathaniel
Felton, son of John Felton and Eleanor Thrower, born about 1615 at Great
Yarmouth, England and died 30 July 1705 at Salem. Eight children.
Generation
3: John Felton married Mary Tompkins
Generation
4: Nathaniel Felton married Elizabeth Foot
Generation
5: Malachi Felton married Abigail Jacobs
Generation
6: Sarah Felton married Robert Wilson
Generation
7: Robert Wilson married Mary Southwick
Generation
8: Mercy F. Wilson married Aaron Wilkinson
Generation
9: Robert Wilson Wilkinson married Phebe Cross Munroe
Generation
10: Albert Munroe Wilkinson married
Isabella Lyons Bill
Generation
11: Donald Munroe Wilkinson married Bertha Louise Roberts
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To Cite/Link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Surname Saturday ~ Rev. Skelton, first minister at Salem, Massachusetts",
Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 14, 2014, (
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/04/surname-saturday-rev-skelton-first.html: accessed [access date]).
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