Person:Thomas Massey (17)

LDS Ancestral File has Christening Oct. 1, 1665 at Nantwich, Cheshire County, England and death Nov. 18, 1708 in Chester County, PA.

The following was taken from http://marple.net/township/massey.html

The Thomas Massey House is unique in that so much of the original has survived. The 1696 brick portion was built by Thomas Massey as an addition to an existing log house. About 1730 his son, Mordecai, replaced the log house with a stone house and kitchen. During the restoration, evidence of a walk-in-fireplace and beehive oven was discovered. These features have been reconstructed and are in use today.

                                 WHO WAS THOMAS MASSEY ?

Ninety-three years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, a small group of people fled England to come to the New World where they could live in freedom. This group of Friends, or Quakers, came on the Ketch "Endeavor", arriving in the Delaware River on September 29, 1683, and disembarked at Upland, which is now Chester.

Among those disembarking at Chester was Thomas Massey, age twenty and indentured to Francis Stanfield, who thusly provided transportation for eight people to the New World. Knowledge of Thomas' family is scant, but it is believed that he came from Nantwick, near Marpoole, in Cheshire. Thomas fulfilled his indenture and received the promised 50 acres of ground from his master and 50 acres from Willliam Penn.

With Thomas on the "Endeavor" was a thirteen year old girl, Phebe Taylor, who had come with her mother and seven brothers and sisters to join their father, Robert. In 1692 Thomas Massey married Phebe Taylor - he was twenty nine, she was twenty two.

By 1696 Thomas was able to buy three hundred acres of land from James Stanfield, the son of Francis. and established his "plantation" in Marple township. At this time he started his fine brick house for his wife, Phebe. Seven children were born to Thomas and Phebe before his death in 1707. In his will Thomas left his "plantation" to his eldest son, Mordecai, with the provision that Phebe should have "the lower room in the brick end of the house, a horse and a cow" as long as she remained a widow. Mordecai was thirteen when his father died, and his youngest sister was less than a year old. With seven small children to raise it was no wonder that in two years Phebe married Bartholomew Coppock, a widower with two children.

In a query placed in the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 36, No. 2 has Thomas Massey as the son of Henry Massey and Hannah Sidebotham of Cheshire, Englnad.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Gail McLain.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of Chester and Delaware Counties
   507.