Joseph Hills

Bef 1602 - 1688  (> 85 years)

• Name	Joseph Hills  [1]
  Birth	Bef 3 Mar 1602  [2, 3]
  Baptism	3 Mar 1602	Great Burstead, Essex, England   [2, 3]
  Gender	Male
  Death	5 Feb 1688	Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts   [2, 3]
  Person ID	I23037	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of TWK
  Last Modified	2 May 2022

  
  

  Father	George Hills,   b. Abt 1571   d. Aft 1611 (Age ~ 41 years)
  Mother	Mary,   b. Abt 1575   d. Aft 16 Jun 1611 (Age ~ 36 years)
  Marriage	13 Oct 1596	London, England   [3]
  Family ID	F13872	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Rose Clarke,   b. Abt 1604   d. 24 Mar 1650, Malden, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age ~ 46 years)
  Marriage	22 Jul 1624	Great Burstead, Essex, England   [2, 3]
  Children	+ 1. Mary Hills,   b. Bef 13 Nov 1625   d. 25 Nov 1674, Malden, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age > 49 years)
  Family ID	F13871	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	2 May 2022

  
  

• Notes

  He and his family arrived at Boston 17 July 1638 on the Susan and Ellen. He was a woolen draper. Selectman of Charlestown in 1644; in 1646, representative to the General Court. Re-elected in 1647, he was chosen speaker of the House of Deputies. Captain of the Malden train-band. He is most remembered for having, in 1648, led the committee that first codified and published all the laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Ironically, this led to a small spot of bother on the occasion of his third marriage, to Helen Atkinson, as reported in Genealogical Data Relating to the Ancestry and Descendants of William Hills (citation details below): "In the early days of the Colony all marriages were solemnized by magistrates, the clergy having no part in the ceremony. In 1641 Governor Bellingham, as magistrate, married himself to Penelope Pelham, and when called on to come down from the bench and plead to a complaint against him for the act, refused to do so. Joseph Hills was a magistrate for the trial of small causes, and followed the Governor's example in his marriage of January, 1656, but, unlike the Governor, did not escape public censure. The records of the Court for Middlesex County show that, April 1, 1656, 'Mr. Joseph Hills of Mauldon being presented by the Grand Jury for marrying of himself, contrary to the law of this Collony page 38 in ye old Booke. Hee freely acknowledged his offence therein, and his misvnderstanding the grounds whereon he went which he now confesseth to be vnwarrantable, And was admonished by the Court.'"

  
  

• Sources

  [S4092] Deloraine-Pendre Corey, "The Waite Family of Malden, Mass." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 32:188, Apr 1878. [S2990] Genealogical Data Relating to the Ancestry and Descendants of William Hills, the English Emigrant to New England in 1632, and of Joseph Hills, the English Emigrant to New England in 1638 by William Sanford Hills, ed. Thomas Hills. Boston: Hills Family Genealogical and Historical Association, 1902. [S628] The Ancestry of Eva Belle Kempton 1878-1908, Part IV: The Ancestry of Linda Anna Powers 1839-1879 by Dean Crawford Smith; edited by Melinde Lutz Sanborn. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2000.