| Notes |
- From William B. Saxbe, 1998 (citation details below):
Alexander Innes, soldier, prisoner-of-war, and deportee. Not everyone who came to America came by choice. One of these was yet another Alexander Innes, a Scottish soldier of the Covenanter forces defeated by Cromwell's troops at the Battle of Dunbar in southeastern Scotland on 3 September 1650. Three thousand Scots were slain in this debacle, and 10,000 taken prisoner. The fittest of these were marched south to Durham in northeastern England, where 3500 were penned up in the massive cathedral. The confined Scots passed their time by smashing windows, statues, tombs, and everything else they could reach. Since "to maintain them in England would be costly, to send them home politically inexpedient," most of these prisoners-of-war were transported abroad. Many were exiled to Ireland, some were sent to Barbados, and a contingent were sold into indentured servitude in New England. The latter, about one hundred and fifty men, were soon found from Maine to New Jersey, with the largest groups -- perhaps sixty in total -- at the new iron smelters at Lynn and Braintree, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Alexander "Ennis" was one of the workers at Lynn. Relations with the surrounding Puritan communities were not always smooth: a local observer noted thatAt the Iron Works wee founde all the men wth smutty faces and bare armes working lustilie....The headmen be of substance and godlie lives. But some of the workmen be young, and fond of frolicking, and sometimes doe frolicke to such purpose that they get before the magistrates. And it be said, m[u]ch to their discredit that one or two hath done naughtie workes with the maidens living thereabouts. When iron production faltered at Lynn and Braintree in 1653, the industry and some of its workers moved to Taunton in Plymouth Colony. Again, Alexander "Aines" was there, and by 1656 he was married. His wife's maiden name and the date and place of their marriage are unknown. She was Irish, and perhaps she was one of Cromwell's deportees from his campaign in Ireland; several hundred Irish captives were landed at Marblehead, not far from Lynn, in 1654. The couple soon came to the attention of the local authorities: "an Irish woman named Katheren Aines" was brought before the court at Plymouth in February, 1656/7, "vpon suspision of comiting adultery." The trial was the following month, and justice was swift and harsh:Att this Court, Willam Paule, Scotchman, for his vnclean and filthy behauiour with the wife of Alexander Aines, is centanced by the Court to bee forthwith publickly whipt...which accordingly was p[er]formed...Katheren Aines, for her vnclean and laciuiouse behauior with the abouesaid Willam Paule, and for the blasphemos words that shee hath spoken, is centanced by the Court to bee forthwith publickly whipt heer att Plymouth, and afterwards att Taunton, on a publicke training day, and to were a Roman B cutt out of ridd cloth and sowed to her vper garment on her right arme; and if shee shalbee euer found without it soe worne whil shee is in the gou[vern]ment, to bee forthwith publickly whipt...Alexander Anis, for his leauing his family, and exposing his wife to such temtations, and being as baud to her therin, is centanced by the Court for the p[re]sent to sitt in the stockes the time the said Paule and Katheren Ainis are whipt, which was p[er]formed.... Following this humiliation, it is not surprising that Alexander and Catherine Innes left Plymouth Colony, although the date of their departure is not known. Catherine does not appear by name in any other record. Alexander is next seen when he bought land at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1659. About 1664 the family moved to Block Island, ten miles off the Rhode Island coast.
Block Island became the home of several of the Dunbar Scots: besides Alexander Innes, these included Robert Guthrie, "Tormut" Rose, William "Tosh," James Danielson, Duncan McWilliams, and William Cahoon. Some of the island's proprietors were of Braintree; they probably knew the Scots through the iron works there, and encouraged their move to the island. The first European settlers of Block Island arrived in 1661 from Massachusetts, but it was to Rhode Island that the town was admitted in 1664. Incorporation as the Town of New Shoreham came in 1672.
Guthrie, the unofficial leader of the island's Scots, wrote to Innes on 10 August 1664, promising that if he came to the island he would be given six acres of land free, with the option of buying another 40 acres and a home lot. Although Innes was not explicitly named in the text of the letter, the salutation was to "Country Man" (i.e., a fellow Scot), and the letter appears early in the New Shoreham Town Book, on the same page as -- and immediately following -- two deeds in which Innes was the grantee. When Innes sold a parcel of land in 1678/9, he identified it as "a gift from the Propriators & Inhabitants of Blockisland."
Alexander and Catherine Innes's presumed daughter Elizabeth "Enos" married William Harris on Block Island in 1672. Among Elizabeth and William's eight children were a Catherine and an Alexander. In 1679 Alexander Innes died at the Harris home, and his nuncupative will made William Harris his heir.[43] Catherine (-----) Innes's date of death is unknown. She was alive in 1664, when Guthrie's letter mentioned her, but her absence from the will and the fact that Alexander died at their daughter's home suggest that Catherine's death preceded Alexander's. Elizabeth (Innes) Harris married twice more, had three additional children, and died in 1729.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Abt 1632 - 1679 (~ 47 years)
[1]