Willey

Mary Willey b. 1648

/ Kirstin Miller

Mary Willey 8th great grandma on RootsMagic tree.

Mary was born in 1648 in New London, Connecticut. Her parents, Isaac and Joanna Willey, were in Boston, Massachusetts by 1640, no clues on where in England Issac and Joanna came from. Willeys were some of the first immigrant settlers of the town. New London was first called Nameaug by native Pequot Indians, in New London for 1000s of years. The English settlers wanted to call their new home ‘London’. The Connecticut General Assembly proposed ‘Faire Harbour’. Settlers “protested, declaring that they would prefer it to be called Nameaug if it couldn’t be officially named London.The legislature relented, and the town was officially named New London on March 10, 1658.”

In 1664 Mary married Samuel Tubbs and they had at least 6 children. Mary’s husband and her brother John Willey were soldiers in King Philips War. Both survived and after the war in 1678, with their families, they settled 30 miles northwest of New London in Haddam or East Haddam, CT.

Widow Tubbs returns to New London, joins church 1701

Mary was a widow in 1696, she returned to New London with her younger children, the older ones married with homes and families of their own. Mary died around 1732. She lived in Closed Cove, a coastal town absorbed into Shaw’s Cove, an inlet, now part of New London. Today only restaurants and medical offices are associated with Shaw’s Cove. In Mary’s time it was one of the busiest colonial ports and in the 1800s was the 2nd biggest whaling port in the world.

Mary Willey Tubbs’s burial place isn’t known. Like her dad Isaac she is probably buried at Ye Antientist Burial Ground in New London. “Pursuing our investigations we might make a long list of the fathers of the town whose graves have not been found, but whom we suppose to have been gathered into this congregation of the dead.–Where were interred, if not here … Isaac Willey.”

Mary’s 2nd great grandson Obed Gaines, born in 1793 was in the first generation to leave New England. He traveled west to Indiana, Michigan and in 1854 to Iowa where his granddaughter Mary Ella Gaines born in 1855 married James Miller, grandparents of Faber Miller born in 1905, my grandpa.

Sources

Joanna b. 1618

/ Kirstin Miller

Joanna 9th great grandma on RootsMagic tree

Joanna was born around 1618. There’s no information on her last name, parents and arrival in America. She probably came from England in the 1630s when King Charles 1 had dissolved Parliament, imprisoned 9 members and was cracking down on “non-conformist preachers” and believers. English Protestants and Puritans, broke away from the Pope & Catholic Church, and left for America.

In America Joanna married Isaac Willey around 1638 in Boston and their first son, Isaac Jr., was baptized at the First Church in Boston. The church was created on July 30, 1630 by John Winthrop of the Winthrop Fleet, “their first official act, even before drawing up a charter for the city, was to create by themselves, and sign, a Covenant for the First Church in Boston. In this document we find these words: [Wee] solemnly, and religiously Promise, and bind ourselves, to walke in all our ways in mutuall love, and respect each to other.”

In 1646 with John Winthrop, the Willey family were original settlers of New London, Connecticut- on the south edge of Connecticut 20 miles north of Long Island, New York. “1. John Winthrop, Esq., whose home-lot was undoubtedly selected by himself before all others. The next five were probably John Gager, Cary Latham, Samuel Lothrop, John Stebbins, and Isaac Willey, whose home steads lay northwest of Mr. Winthrop’s, on the upper part of what are now Willams Street and Main Street.”

In New London, Joanna and Isaac had 5 more children. In 1667 Joanna was written up in the court records, 2nd on the list, she had failed to bring herself and her children to church and was fined 5 shillings. “Minutes of cases, chiefly before the County Court … Goodwife Willey presented for not attending public worship and bringing her children thither; fined 5s”.

Joanna’s death date isn’t known, it was before 1670 when widowed Isaac married again.

History of New London, Connecticut, Joanna fined

Sources