Person:Matthew Sension (1)

Origins

The origins of Matthew/Matthias and his brother Nicholas were identified through London records by Jerome Lafayette Santken, administrator of the St. John DNA project, and published in the April 2013 Register.^[5] Past researchers had attempted to identify him as the son of Sir Oliver ST. JOHN (and thereby tied to British nobility), but research from the 1970s to 2000s discouraged that view; e.g., the work of Jim Churchyard. ^[1]

In 1977, Robert Leigh Ward identified the immigrant in London through comparing two Matthias Sensions in London during the early 1630s.^[2]. The likely candidate was a chandler, had a wife Mary, and lived in the St. Nicholas Cole Abbey parish. The St. Nicholas Cole Abbey records listed a son Marke baptized on 10 June 1633. In 1995, Douglas Richardson discovered the marriage and baptism of son Matthias in New Windsor, Berkshire.^[6] Ward had also identified a James Sension, also a chandler, living near the Matthias the chandler in St. Nicholas Cole Abbey. In addition, there is a Nicholas Sension in Windsor, a contemporary of Matthias's, and therefore assumed to be closely related.

Jerome Santken, using a long list of name variants of St. John/Sension, found baptismal records for Christopher St. John/Saynt John/Sangins that matched these three men, and the timing likely for them to marry when they did. He also found records that ruled out the other Matthias Sension as the immigrant (showing that he was in England when the immigrant was in New England), and found no other records in London that matched. Further records of the Dutch Reformed Church showed that Christian, his brother, and father were "Strangers," Dutch immigrants in 1583.^[5]

DNA Results

As of May 2006, ten St. Johns have been tested. All the American St. Johns who believed themselves to be descendants of Matthias St. John (although most did not know one another previously) were matches with one another. One English St. John and one Irish St. John were not matches for the Matthias group or for one another. We have found three American St. Johns who are a match for the one English St. John in the project, but we believe it is too early to draw any conclusions from this fact.

The 2013 NEHGR article does not provide significant details, but indicates that further testing has proven that the Matthias descendants are not related to the aristocratic St. John family in England, and that their results are consistent with origins in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Emigration

Matthias and his wife came to New England presumably between the baptism of their son Mark in June 1633 and when Matthias was made a freeman at Dorchester, Mass. on 3 September 1634. They removed to Windsor, Connecticut, about 1640, and then to Wethersfield, CT, about 1648. In 1654 they moved to Norwalk, CT, where his will was made on 19 October 1669, and recorded on 10 March 1669. The will mentions his wife, but does not name her... The will uses the spelling Sention, and this spelling is used on other documents apparently signed by family members. Senchon is another spelling found in the original documents. The St. John version of the name is not found in these earliest records and apparently surfaces in the early 1700s."^[1][5]

Ancient Historical Records of Norwalk, CT makes reference to a "Catalogue of the Names of the First Puritan Settlers of the Colony of Connecticut" by RR Hinman, Hartford 1846, that says Matthias Senchion or St. John came in 1640. This would be when he arrived in Connecticut which matches above.

Life in New England

Ancient Historical Records of Norwalk, CT, p. 23 (chapter on home-lots):

"Matthias Sention, Sen., bought of Mr. Steeile of Farmington, who married the widow of Richard Seamer, 4 acres (granted in addition 1, April 6, 1661), 5 acres. Bounded east by Common land, wst by Town's Highway, north by Samuel Hale's home-lot, now Robert Stewart's, south by Matthew Camfield's home-lot." [Question is the "widow of Richard Seamer" the wife of Mr. Steeile or of Matthias Sention, Senior? - Answer is that she married John Steele 25 November 1655, recorded at Farmington.]

Mercy Ruscoe, widow of Richard Seymour (Seamer) married, as his second wife, John Steele of Farmington. ^[7]

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Data (Mostly Negative) on the English Origins of Matthias St. John
   Accessed 19 May 2015.
2. ↑ Ward, Robert Lee. Two Contemporaries Named Mathias Sension. American Genealogist (D.L. Jacobus). (Oct 1977)
   53:241-243.
3. ↑ ^{3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11} Matthew Sension, 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)
   6:228-34.

   ORIGIN: London [TAG 53:241-43].
   MIGRATION: 1634 (based on admission to Massachusetts Bay freemanship on 3 September 1634 [MBCR 1:370].
   OCCUPATION: Chandler (in England) [TAG 53:241-43]. Herdsman. On 16 January 1636/7, the town of Dorchester "ordered that Mathias Sension and Thomas Sampford shall keep the coes this year … to have for their pay in keeping 5s. the head for as many as are brought in" [DTR 22].
   CHURCH MEMBERSHIP: Admission to first Dorchester church prior to 3 September 1634 implied by freemanship.
   FREEMAN: 3 September 1634 (as "Matthias Sension," second in a sequence of two Dorchester men) [MBCR 1:370]. "Math[hew] Sention Senior" is in the 11 October 1669 list of Norwalk freemen {CCCR 2:522].
   The inventory of the estate of "Mathias Sension Senior late of Norwocke deceased," taken "in January last 1669," totalled £300 4d., of which £100 was real estate: "houses and land," £100 [Fairfield PR 2:48].
   BIRTH: Say 1602 (based on date of marriage)

4.   Mathias Saint John, in Find A Grave.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4} Santken, Jerome Lafayette. Origins of Mathias and Nicholas Sension Determined. New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Apr 2013)
   167:85-95.

   "Mathias¹ Santken (later Sension), bp. (St. Olave Silver Street, London) 9 Aug. 1601; m. New Windsor, Berkshire, in 1627, Mary Tinker. He emigrated to New England in late 1633 or early 1634, settling in Dorchester, then Windsor, and then Norwalk. They had six children and probably a seventh."

6. ↑ Richardson, Douglas. The English Ancestry of the Merwin and TInker Families of New England: Part II: John Tinker of Boston and Lancaster, Massachusetts and Windsor and New London, Connecticut. New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Oct 1995)
   149:410-13.
7. ↑ John Steele, in Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995)
   3:1758.
8. ↑ There were multiple spellings of this man's baptismal name (Matthias, Mathias, Matthew, Mathew) and his surname (Sension, Sention, St. John, Saint John, et. al.). In order to try and keep the family together, the names Matthew and Sension should probably be used for the first three generations in this country. St. John appears to be the preferred form after about 1700.

Founders of Windsor, CT

Windsor was the first permanent English settlement in Connecticut. Local indians granted Plymouth settlers land at the confluence of the Farmington River and the west side of the Connecticut River, and Plymouth settlers (including Jonathan Brewster, son of William) built a trading post in 1633. But the bulk of the settlement came in 1635, when 60 or more people led by Reverend Warham arrived, having trekked overland from Dorchester, Massachusetts. Most had arrived in the New World five years earlier on the ship "Mary and John" from Plymouth, England. The settlement was first called Dorchester, and was renamed Windsor in 1637. See: Stiles History of Ancient Windsor - Thistlewaite's Dorset Pilgrims - Wikipedia entry Loomis homestead, oldest in CT. Settlers at Windsor by the end of 1640, per the Descendants of the Founders of Ancient Windsor: Abbot - Alford - S. Allen - M. Allyn - Barber - Bartlett - M. (Barrett) (Huntington) Stoughton - Bascomb - Bassett - Benett - Birge - Bissell - Branker - Brewster - Buckland - Buell - Carter - Chappel - D. Clarke - J. Clarke - Cooke - Cooper - Denslow - Dewey - Dibble - Dumbleton - Drake - Dyer - Eels - Eggleston - Filley - Ford - Foulkes - Fyler - Gaylord - Francis Gibbs - William Gilbert - Jere. Gillett - Jon. Gillett - N. Gillett - Grant - Gridley - E. Griswold - M. Griswold - Gunn - Hannum - Hawkes - Hawkins - Hayden - Haynes - Hill - Hillier - Holcombe - Holmes - Holt - Hosford - Hoskins - Hoyte - Hubbard - Huit - Hulbert - Hull - Hurd - Hydes - Loomis - Ludlow - Lush - Marshfield - A. Marshall - T. Marshall - Mason - M. (Merwin) (Tinker) Collins - M. Merwin - Mills - Moore - Newberry - Newell - Oldage - Orton - Osborn - Palmer - Parsons - Parkman - Pattison - Phelps - Phelps - Phillips - Pinney - Pomeroy - Pond - Porter - Preston - Rainend - Randall - Rawlins - Reeves - J. Rockwell - W. Rockwell - B. Rossiter - St. Nicholas - Saltonstall - Samos - M. Sension (St. John) – R. Sension - Sexton - Staires - Starke - F. Stiles – H. Stiles - J. Stiles – T. Stiles - Stoughton - Stuckey - Talcott - E. Taylor - J. Taylor - Terry - Thornton - Thrall - Tilley - Tilton - Try - F. (Clark) (Dewey) (Phelps) - Vore - Warham - Weller - Whitehead - A. Williams - J. Williams - R. Williams - Wilton - Winchell - Witchfield - Wolcott - Young Current Location: Hartford County, Connecticut   Parent Towns: Dorchester, Massachusetts   Daughter Towns: Windsor Locks; South Windsor; East Windsor; Ellington; Bloomfield