Clement Weaver Sr (1591-1683)
Clement Weaver Sr, one of my maternal 11th great grandfathers
was born in Glastonbury, Somersetshire, England in 1591 to Thomas Weaver and Margaret Adams who
were both from Presteigne, Radnorshire, Powys, Wales. While Thomas and Margaret
were in their 20s, they moved to Glastonbury. I have not found documentation
for any other children of Thomas and Margaret.
On May 19, 1617, in Glastonbury, Clement married one of my maternal
11th great grandmothers, Rebecca Holbrook of Glastonbury. The parish Register of the St. John’s Church in
Glastonbury states “1617 Menso May Clementus Weaver duxit in uxorem Rebecca
Holbrook 19 Maij p’dict.” Clement and Rebecca had one daughter, Eleanor, and
one son who was named Clement Jr, both born in Glastonbury.
Clement and his family 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 they 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 Sr and family were in
Boston, Massachusetts in 1640, in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1643 living next
to his brother-in-law, Thomas Holbrook, one of my maternal 11th great
granduncles, and then moving to “the Island of Rhodes” (Rhode Island) in 1650
which Clement felt was a more religious tolerant colony. Clement’s occupation
was a “was a builder”
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, they persons 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.
In about 1655, Clement became a Freeman 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. In 1633, shortly
after the English settled Monmouth County, New Jersey, Clement Sr purchased
lands, which he sold in 1674.
In 1677, Clement Sr was one of the patentees named in the charter of East Greenwich and in 1678, he was elected a deputy to the General Assembly and re-elected in 1681. Clement Sr was one of the fifty people granted land in the township of East Greenwich on October 31, 1677.
SalSauco, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Clement Sr died on October 10, 1683, in Newport, Newport County
Rhode Island and was buried in the same area. His Will may not be existence now
because when the British occupied Newport in the Revolutionary War, they seized
the records of the town and they were sunk in Hell Gate, the vessel in which
they were stored. The ship was raised ad efforts have been made to restore some
of the records.
https://www.the-curates-line.com/resources/Weaver%20family.pdf
https://www.americanancestors.org/new-englands-great-migration
History and Genealogy Of A Branch Of The Weaver Family
by Lucius E Weaver
https://historyofmassachusetts.org/the-great-puritan-migration/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_settlers_of_Rhode_Island
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