| Notes |
- Emigrated 1623 from Leiden to Plymouth, on the Anne or the Little James; returned permanently to England by 1654.
From the Find a Grave entry for Stephen Tracy:He was a Sayworker who came from Leiden, Holland to Plymouth Colony in 1623 in the Anne. He first settled in Plymouth, then Duxbury, and then he returned to England permanently, perhaps as early as 1643, and certainly by 1654. [...] In Dexter's The England and Holland of the Pilgrims, in the Oct. 15, 1622 Leiden poll tax census the Tracy family is recorded to have been living at the Zevenhuysen quarter represented as: Steven Truer, Truy Voorsta, his wife. Six months later Stephen arrived at Plymouth in April 1623, along with at least 111 others, either on the Anne or the companion Little James. These ships must have sailed from England not later than February 1622/3. Stephen's dau. Sarah was born in or near the month of Jan. 1622/3 and was a "suckling babe" when her father ventured to Plymouth. In the subsequent May 1623 first division of land at Plymouth, Stephen was assigned a three-acre garden parcel, composed of one acre per member of his family. The accepted assumption was the three members of Stephen's household at Plymouth in May 1623 consisted of himself, wife Triphosa and daughter Sarah, which is not the case. He was given three acres because that is what his known family consisted of in May 1623, whether actually residing at Plymouth or elsewhere. In a list of persons to who "licences to pass from England beyond the seas" were granted by England's Exchequer, on May 1, 1624 a license was granted to "Trifoza Trace, 27 years, wife of Steephen Trace resident in Laiden, to the same, also her daughter Sara Trace, 15 months old," to return to Leiden. This means only Stephen Tracy was present at Plymouth in May 1623. In May 1627 the Plymouth Colony made a division of its cattle into various 13 person groups by drawing, resulting in the first practical census of the inhabitants of the Plymouth Colony. The drawing was made first by those that had arrived in 1620 on the Mayflower, followed by those who arrived in 1621 on the Fortune, followed by those who had arrived in 1623 on the Anne. In this division, Stephen "Tracie", wife Triphosa and two daughters, Sarah and Rebecca, constituted the basis of the family at Plymouth. They were attached to the "tenth lott" as persons number 5, 6, 7 and 8 headed by Francis Eaton and his family. Stephen Tracy was elected a freeman of the Plymouth Colony Corp., had a compliment of land in the colony either by purchase or grant, served on minor civil committees and juries, and was constable of Duxbury for the year 1639. He was sworn a member of the colony's Jury of Grand Inquest on June 7, 1642, was nominated as a referee in a civil case in Sept. 1642, but then ceases to be mentioned in the first person in further records of the Plymouth Colony. According to Adrian Marsden (citation details below), the last sentence of the above is in error. From Marsden:Some sources suggest that Stephen Tracey may have returned to England as early as 1643 but the fact that he was still listed amongst the freemen of Duxbury in 1643 and 1646 and was involved with others in the acquisition of a large tract of land to the west of Duxbury at Dartmouth in March 1652 implies that he was still in Massachusetts at this point. Nonetheless, it is clear that he was back in England a year or two after the Dartmouth deal as the next record shows. This document, a letter written in London on 20th March 1654/5, has been erroneously described as a will. In it 'Stephen Tracye at present of Great Yarmouth in Old England' gives power to 'my loving friend Mr. John Winslow of Plymouth in New England to dispose of all my estate I have in land and cattle in Duxburrow in New England.' He goes on to mention that if any of his unmarried children die before this be done then their part shall remain at my disposing till further order.' There is no mention of Tryphosa, surely evidence that she was dead by this time, if not many years before. The document is not, however, a will but rather a power of attorney vested in a letter. The phrase 'shall remain at my disposing till further order' is clearly not a phrase that would occur in a will. It is, then, not a will but it is precisely the sort of letter Stephen Tracey would have written were he contemplating--or had already made--a second marriage back in Old England, settling his lands and property in New England on the children of his deceased first wife, Tryphosa. Writing for an audience primarily interested in tokens, i.e., non-specie coins of numismatic interest, Marsden continues with a discussion of multiple tokens evidently issued by a man of Great Yarmouth named Stephen Tracy between 1654 and 1656 (or perhaps between 1653 and 1656, as stated elsewhere in Marsden's article). He establishes convincingly that this man was married to a woman whose given name began with "A", as this initial appears on his tokens in the place where a token-issuing couple would be expected to place the first letter of the wife's name. He then turns to the noncupative will of what seems very likely to have been the token-issuing Stephen Tracy, dated 25 Feb 1673, proved 11 Mar 1673, recorded as having been dictated "the day before his death" and leaving all his possessions in Great Yarmouth to his wife Anne.
What is missing is technically-clinching proof that the token-issuing Stephen Tracy of Great Yarmouth was the same man as the Plymouth colonist of that name. Marsden is clearly correct that the document of 20 Mar 1655, described as the Plymouth colonist's "will" by distinguished genealogists ranging from Mary Walton Ferris to Robert Charles Anderson, was not a will at all but rather a letter conveying power of attorney. And the narrative he hypothesizes, in which Stephen Tracy of Plymouth (who very certainly did return to England by the early 1650s) used his New England connections and accumulated capital to establish himself as a merchant in his home town, marrying a second wife in the process, is at the very least quite plausible, even if the evidence mustered fails to clear the bar for absolute genealogical proof. Notably, the Stephen Tracy of the 20 Mar 1655 document clearly refers to himself as previously of New England but now at Great Yarmouth in Old England. This seems to us one of those cases where the accumulation of circumstantial evidence adds up to an extremely high probability of truth.
As a final note, Professor Marsden has shared with us an image of the record of Stephen Trac[e]y's burial on 28 Feb 1673 at St. Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, and also the fact that an Ann[e] Trac[e]y is recorded in the Hearth Tax--Seaman, Norwich Hearth Tax, Cathedral Close, p.6, "Widow Tracey 2 hearths at 4 Dec. 1673".
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Bef 1596 - Aft 1655 (> 59 years)
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]