John White

Family/Spouse: Mildred Weston. Mildred died before 8 Jan 1567; was buried on 8 Jan 1567. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Bef Sep 1618

Notes:

Probably a son of Robert White, whose brother Thomas White (b. 1514) was Warden of New College, Oxford, and Chancellor of Sarum. Thomas White died 11 Jun 1588 and is buried in Salisbury Cathedral.

Family/Spouse: Isabel Bawle. Isabel (daughter of John Bawle) died after 1600. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Martha married Rev. William Cooke on 27 Apr 1597 in Stockton, Wiltshire, England. William died between 7 Feb 1614 and 4 Apr 1615 in Crediton, Devon, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Mary married Rev. John Terry about 1591. John (son of Stephen Terry) was born in 1555 in Crondal, Long Sutton, Hampshire, England; died on 10 May 1625; was buried in Stockton, Wiltshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"White was associated with Dorchester for over forty years and if his remaining sermons display a distinct Calvinistic streak he none the less remained a conforming minister of the Church of England, holding traditional views on the nature of divinely appointed authority. Even though he attempted to conduct his religious services within the letter of the law and continued to wear a surplice into the 1640s White became an important figure in the puritan transatlantic network which opposed the religious reforms of Archbishop Laud. His successful attempt to reform Dorchester, a sleepy backwater with something of an unsavoury reputation, eventually won him the title of the Patriarch of Dorchester." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

From Wikipedia (accessed 1 Sep 2021):

White himself never sailed to America. About 1623 he interested himself in sending out a colony of Dorset men to settle in Massachusetts, allowing nonconformists to enjoy liberty of conscience. The attempt by the Dorchester Company to plant a colony at Cape Ann with Thomas Gardner as Overseer, at what would become Gloucester, Massachusetts, did not prove at first successful; in the previous decade, only about 500 English colonists had established a foothold, and this Company was wound up by 1625. White then recruited emigrants from the western counties of Dorset, Somerset and Devon, who set sail a few years later as a better-supported expedition and organised church aboard the ship Mary and John.

White made many trips to London from Dorchester, working to obtain a patent in 1628 for lands between the parallel lines 3 miles (5 km) south of the Charles River to 3 miles (5 km) north of the Merrimack River. He obtained the sponsorship of London merchants for a new colony in the New World. Concerned about conflicting claims to land given to several companies active in the north-east of the New World, the New England Company sought and was granted a Royal Charter on 4 March 1629, becoming the Massachusetts Bay Company.

The Massachusetts Company had Richard Saltonstall as a chief shareholder. White was a member of the company, and on 30 Nov. he was nominated one of the committee to value the joint stock. John Endecott was sent out as governor. Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton were chosen and approved by White as ministers, and sailed for the Dorchester colony on 4 May 1629 aboard the George Bonaventura. The charter enabled John Winthrop to hire a fleet of what would eventually comprise eleven ships, later called the Winthrop Fleet, to bring a new wave of emigrants across the Atlantic. John Winthrop sailed in the Arbella, White holding a service on board before she sailed. The Mary and John was the first, carrying 140 people recruited by White. In June 1630 they landed and founded the settlement of Dorchester, Massachusetts. The eleven ships transported about 700 colonists to the New World. In 1632 and 1636 White was corresponding with John Winthrop (who urged White to visit the colony) about cod-lines and hooks to be sent, as well as flax of a suitable growth for Rhode Island. From 1630 to 1640 ships carried about 10,000 English colonists to the New World in what has been called the Great Migration.

Later in the 1630s White was under suspicion for his financial dealings. About 1635 or 1636 White was examined before Sir John Lambe about some papers seized in his study, and relating to a considerable sum of money sent by White to Dr. John Stoughton. This turned out to be in part a legacy from one Philippa Pitt, bequeathed to White for good causes, and in part disbursements for the colonists in New England. White produced particulars of these in his note-books, and after six months' attendance before the court of high commission, he was discharged and the informant against him reprimanded.

Elizabeth married Rev. William Walton on 10 Apr 1627 in Holy Trinity, Dorchester, Dorset, England. William was born about 1602; died before 9 Nov 1668; was buried on 9 Nov 1668 in Marblehead, Essex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Emigrated in 1630 on the Mary and John. First at Dorchester. Returned briefly to England by 1633, where he married his first wife; back in New England by 1634. Was in Hadley as early as 1663, and was its first constable.

Stephen married Jane Hardey on 13 Mar 1634 in Symondsbury, Dorset, England. Jane died before 5 Jun 1647; was buried on 5 Jun 1647 in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]