VII. John Winthrop, generally distinguished as
"John Winthrop, F. R. S." (born in Boston, Aug. 26,
1681; died at Sydenham, near London, Aug. 1, 1747),
Harvard College, 1700. He married Katherine [Anne], one
of the daughters of Gov. Joseph Dudley, and, in 1711,
removed from Boston to New London, in order to
devote himself to the improvement of the family
property in Connecticut. The occupation was ill-
suited to his tastes and habits, and he gradually
became involved in litigation with his tenants and
neighbors, as well as in costly mining speculations,
which ultimately proved disastrous. Believing him-
self wronged by certain decisions of the Courts and
Legislature of Connecticut relative to the distribu-
tion of his father's estate, he went to England in
1727 and obtained redress from the Privy Council ;
but failing to receive the political preferment to
which he conceived he had a sort of hereditary
claim, he continued to reside abroad until his death,
twenty years later, becoming an active member of
the Royal Society, one of the volumes of whose
Transactions is dedicated to him.1 His wife survived
him, and married Jeremiah Miller, of New London
(Yale College, 1709), dying, in 1776, at the great age
of ninety-two.
-----
1His diary gives an interesting account of his visit to the old family
seat at Groton in April, 1728, nearly a hundred years after Gov. John
Winthrop the elder left it for New England. The manor-house, built by
the second Adam Winthrop in 1551, has since been pulled down ; but there
is still standing an ancient house known as Groton Place, which by tradi-
tion is associated with the family. The church contains the brass of the
second Adam Winthrop, and near by is the tomb of his son, the third
Adam. There are also modern memorial windows to Gov. John Winthrop
and his first and second wives, both of whom were buried in the chancel.
Groton, since the decline of the Suffolk cloth-trade, has dwindled to a
small agricultural village ; but it is within an easy drive of Sudbury,
Melford, and Lavenham, — all three places of interest to the antiquarian
traveller.
