Thomas Danforth

Bef 1623 - 1699  (> 75 years)

• Name	Thomas Danforth  [1]
  Birth	Bef 20 Nov 1623  [2]
  Baptism	20 Nov 1623	Framlingham, Suffolk, England   [2]
  Gender	Male
  Death	5 Nov 1699	Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts   [2, 3]
  Siblings	2 siblings
  + 1. Anne Danforth ,   b. Bef 3 Sep 1622   d. 9 Dec 1704, Lexington, Middlesex, Massachusetts  (Age > 82 years) ▻ Matthew Bridge ,  m. Bef 1645 + 2. Thomas Danforth ,   b. Bef 20 Nov 1623   d. 5 Nov 1699, Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts  (Age > 75 years) ▻ Mary Withington ,  m. 23 Feb 1644 + 3. Rev. Samuel Danforth ,   b. Sep 1626, Framlingham, Suffolk, England d. 19 Nov 1674, Roxbury, Suffolk, Massachusetts  (Age ~ 48 years) ▻ Mary Wilson ,  m. 5 Nov 1651
  Person ID	I40434	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	15 Feb 2024

  
  

  Father	Nicholas Danforth,   b. Bef 1 Mar 1589   d. Apr 1638, Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age > 49 years)
  Mother	Elizabeth Barber   d. Bef 22 Feb 1629
  Marriage	11 Feb 1618	Aspall, Suffolk, England   [4]
  Family ID	F19929	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Mary Withington,   b. Abt 1623   d. 26 Mar 1697, Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age ~ 74 years)
  Marriage	23 Feb 1644  [3]
  Children	1. Sarah Danforth,   b. 11 Nov 1646, Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts d. Aft 20 Jan 1681 (Age > 35 years)
  Family ID	F6772	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	14 Feb 2024

  
  

• Notes

  He is often called Governor of Maine; of course, Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820 and had no governors as such prior to that. He was "president in the district of Maine" in the 1680s. He was also Deputy Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1679 to 1686, and again from 1689 to 1692. He was politically and religiously conservative by inclination, but he was opposed to the Salem witch hysteria, particularly the decision by judge William Stoughton to unconditionally accept "spectral evidence". A letter by Thomas Brattle, dated 8 Oct 1692, includes Danforth in a list of "several about the Bay, men for understanding, judgement and piety...that do utterly condemn the said proceedings, and do freely deliver their judgment." After Bay Colony royal governor William Phips ordered Stoughton to disallow spectral evidence, Danforth sat alongside Stoughton and others on the final Superior Court convened to address the witchcraft accusations, and Danforth appears to have been by and large a force for moderation, even relocating some of the accused individuals to lands he owned west of Boston. Given all this, it seems a bit unfair of Arthur Miller to have, in his play The Crucible (1953), combined the various judges involved in the trials into a single domineering and prosecutorial judge named Danforth. The 1957 film adaptation, whose screenplay was written by Jean-Paul Sartre, made the same decision.

  
  

• Sources

  [S7421] Marilyn Fitzpatrick, "The Whiting Family of Lynn." The Essex Genealogist 23:218, 2003. [S7062] Danforth Genealogy: Nicholas Danforth of Framlingham, England, and Cambridge, N.E. (1589-1638) and William Danforth, of Newbury, Mass. (1640-1721) and Their Descendants by John Joseph May. Boston: Charles H. Pope, 1902. [S7405] Frederic Scherer Withington, "Henry Withington of Dorchester, Mass., and Some of His Descendants." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 75:142, 1921. [S101] The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volumes 1-3 and The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes 1-7, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996-2011.