Clement Weaver Jr (1625-1683) 

Clement Weaver Jr was one of my 10^th great maternal grandfathers and he was born in September 1625 in Glastonbury, Somerset, England to Clement Weaver Sr and Rebecca Holbrook.

Clement Jr, his parents and sister Eleanor were part of the Great Migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony-1620-1640. The “migration” was also known as “The Puritan Migration to New England”. 1620 was the date the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Puritans left England mainly due to religious persecution. England was in religious turbulence in the early 17th century, the religious climate was aggressive and frightening, mainly towards religious nonconformists like the puritans. A nonconformist at the time meant that they were against the Church of England, they felt that the church was corrupt.

In the book “History and Genealogy Of A Branch Of The Weaver Family” by Lucius E Weaver, it is stated that Clement Jr and family were in Boston, Massachusetts in 1640, in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1643 living next to his maternal uncle, Thomas Holbrook, one of my maternal 11^th great granduncles. In 1645, the family was in Rhode Island, Clement Jr married Mary Freeborn, one my maternal 19^th grandmothers who was born in Maldon, Maldon District, Essex, England and came to Massachusetts in 1634 and moved to Portsmouth, Newport, Rhode after her and her family were driven out of Massachusetts on 7 Mar 1638.

The Pilgrims left England to escape religious intolerance, but sadly they brought the spirit of intolerance with them. If any religious views did not measure up to their standards, the people were expelled from the colony and either had to go back to England or go live in the wilderness. This intolerance led to the settlement of Rhode Island. In the book entitled “Family Records of the Descendants of Thomas Wait of Portsmouth, R,I” by John Cassa Wait, it is written “when Roger Williams landed in Boston, he found the territory in possession of two distinct colonies, the colony of Plymouth founded in 1620 by the followers of John Robinson of Leyden, and known as the colony of Separatists, men who separated from the Church of England, but were willing to grant to others the same freedom of opinion which they claimed for themselves; and the colony of Massachusetts Bay, founded ten years later by a band of intelligent Puritans, many of them men of position and fortune, who, alarmed by the variety of new opinions and doctrines which seemed to menace a total subversion of what they regard a religion, had resolved to establish a new dwelling place in a new world, with the Old and New Testaments for statue books and constitutions.” In 1635, Roger Williams was sentenced to banishment, his friends made sure that the sentence was not carried out. The following winter, Williams fled into exile and was received by Massasoit and Canonicus, chiefs of Indian tribes who gave him a tract of land on the Seekouk River. The governor of Plymouth claimed jurisdiction over that part of the River. Williams and five friends in the summer of 1636, went down the River and up the Providence River and started a new settlement which they called “Providence” which is probably why Clement Sr and family eventually went to Rhode Island.

March 5, 1651, it is documented “Clement Weaver “Juneor of Nuport” bought of Joshua Coggeshall of Portsmouth for a valuable consideration a “parsell” of land lying in a “Tyrangle forme” butted and bounded as followeth: on the Southeast by the “Comon” sixty pole from thence on a straight line to a great white oake marked on “boath” sides and from that white oake a lot the line between this “Parsell” of land ad land formerly and still is in the possession of Clement “Weavor” aforesaid”.

The earliest known list of Freemen for the Colony was made in 1655; Clement Sr and Clement Jr became a Freemen which is a person who possesses & enjoys all the civil & political rights belonging to the people under a free government. A member of a city or borough who possesses full civic rights.  

On July 4, 1659, Clement Jr sold 30 acres of land to Joshua Coggeshall of Portsmouth. On March 6, 1664, Clement Jr became in possession of land in Westerly. On October 31.1677, Clement Weaver Jr was one of the fifty people to be granted 5000 acres near the sea in East Greenwich. On August 28. 1680, Clement Jr of Newport deeded “my farm in East Greenwich of 90 acres to my son Clement Weaver of East Greenwich for life” then to his son William. In 1681 and 1682 Benedict Arnold, who was my maternal 4^th cousin 7 times removed stirred up trouble by charging Clement Jr with trespassing.

Bmwtx, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Clement Jr died November 24, 1683 in Newport as was buried in the same area.

 

History and Genealogy Of A Branch Of The Weaver Family by Lucius E Weaver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Weaver