Family:William Swift and Joan Unknown (5)

"The American Genealogist" for July of 2002, Vol 77, No 3" has an article some twelve pages long and titled "William Swift, Citizen and Leatherseller Of London, And Planter Of Sandwich, Massachusetts"

This article identifies William as having recently lost his first wife Sara (?) and several children to the plague ridden summer just prior to their wedding on 3rd of January 1625/6. He marries a Joan Dimbleby, also recently widowed, who has lost her husband Roger Dimbleby and four of her children. Of Williams family, just two children survive, Hannah and Edward. As the migration to America takes place, Edward is destined to stay in England as an apprentice to a butcher by the name of Andrews and also subsequently dies young and is no part of the migration. The son William (2) who carries on the line in America is a child of William and Joan but born in America.

> A couple of years after arriving in America, William is required to return to England to answer court charges relating to a debt and it is during this court case that reference comes up to his land and holdings in Watertown in America. The relationship between the English Swift and the American Swift is further cemented by letters sent from England by the court or it's officers to America after Swift returns there. He is imprisoned briefly in Whitechapel but either pays his debt or is released and returns to America ( the debt is not really his but he has stood as surety with a Josiah Smith for another person, that person defaulted and William and Josiah are held responsible for the debt) William contends that his part of the debt has been paid from funds that were owed to him from John Smithman and William Stacey, clothiers, both of Bocking in Essex. It is thought that this may be the reason that William was thought by Savage ( recording early settlers) to have come from Bocking!

The article shows that whilst William was certainly a youth in Bermondsey because he was an apprentice there and may well have been born in Bermondsey, the son of Richard Swift who died there in 1598, there is no positive evidence to show that he WAS born there and COULD be from elsewhere, ie. Bocking.

1.   Jacobus, Donald Lines. The American Genealogist and New Haven Genealogical Magazine. (New Haven, Connecticut, United States: D. L. Jacobus)
   v77 #3 p168, Jul 2002.

   Article by Jane Fletcher Fiske, FASG
   "William Swift, Citizen and Leatherseller of London And Planter Of Sandwich, Massachusetts"

2.   Savage, James. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England: Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1860-1862)
   v4 p241.

   WILLIAM, Watertown 1634, had been here some time prob. com. from Bocking, Co. Suffk. or its neighb. sold his est. 1637, and rem. prob. to Sandwich, there d. Jan. 1644. His wid. Joan, perhaps a. sec. w. made her will 12 Oct. 1662, nam. s. William, and his ch. and sev. others, whose relat. is not discov. but we may inf. that Daniel Wing, to whose two s. she makes gifts, had m. Hannah, d. of her h. also that other gr. ch. were Experience and Zebediah Allin, and Mary Darley.

3. ↑ William Swift, in Anderson, Robert Charles; George F. Sanborn; and Melinde Lutz Sanborn. The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635. (Boston, Massachusetts: NEHGS, 1999-2011)
   VI:629.

   (William Swift married) (2) St. Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey, Surrey, 3 January 1625/6 Joan (-----) Dimbleby, widow of Roger Dimbleby [TAG 77:161-72].