Person talk:Henry Herrick (1)

William Herrick Line

Sources describing Henry's alleged connection to William Herrick and life in England:

History of the Town of Leeds, Androscoggin County, Maine: From Its Settlement June 10, 1780«/i»

(American Family.) Henerie Hireck--Hericke--Herrick, the Anglo-American ancestor of a numerous race in this country, son of Sir William and Joan May Herrick, of Leicester, Londonand Beaumauar Park, was born 1604; came over from Leicester, England, to Naumkeag, then first named Salem, June 24, 1629.He married Editha, daughter of Mr. Hugh Laskin, of Salem(who was born 1614 and living in 1674) and settled at Cape-Ann-Syde over against Massies. Died in 1671. Out of a very numerous family (our traditions say twelve sons and several daughters) seven sons and a daughter, whose names are given below, survived their father and are named in his will. Children of Henry and Editha Herrick who survived infancy: Thomas, Zacharie, Ephraim, Henry, Joseph, Elizabeth, John, Benjamin.

Henry Herrick settled on Cape-Ann-Syde of Bass River (now Beverly) on which his farm was bounded. He purchased several farms at Birch Plains and Cherry Hill, on which he settled his sons Zacharie, Ephraim, Joseph and John, Joseph resided on Cherry Hill, where he acquired a good estate. Zacharie, Ephraim and John, at Birch Plains. Henry inherited the homestead at Lower Beverly, Mass.

Henry Herrick was a husbandman, in easy circumstances, but undistinguished by wealth, or civil rank and influence in the colony. He was a very good and honest dissenter from the established church, and the friend of Higginson, who had been a dissenting minister in Leicester. Mr. Herrick and his wife Editha, were among the thirty, who founded the first church in Salem, in 1629 and on the organization of a new Parish, on Ryal-Syde 1667, they, with their sons and their sons' wives, were among the founders of the first church in Beverly, also. But there are reasons to suspect that neither Henry, nor his sons were, at all times, and in all things, quite as submissive to the spiritual powers of their day, as they should have been. On the Court records of Essex County is an entry like this: "Henerie Hericke, and Edith his wife, are fined 10s. and 11s. for cost of Coort, for aiding and comforting an excommunicated person, contrary to order."

Herrick Genealogy: A Genealogical Register of the Name and Family of Herrick from the Settlement of Henerie Hericke in Salem, Massachusetts, 1629, to 1846

HENRY OF SALEM.

117. 13. ON THE ENGLISH PEDIGREE.

I. 1. HENERIE HIRECK HERICKE HERRICK, the fifth son of Sir Williom Herrick, was b. at Beau Manor, County of Leicester, Eng., in 1604,and was named by command of the unfortunate Prince Henry, eldest son of James I. His sponsors were Sir David Murray, Sir John Spillman, and Lady Aston. He probably came first to Virginia, as it is well known that Sir William Herrick was interested in merchantile adventures to that colony.* < *The late William Perry-Herrick, Esq., in a letter dated Nov. II, 1874, communicated the following entry copied from Sir William Herrick's account book:

"Paid by Booker Hicks for my last Adventure to Virginia the 10th July, 1612." (This was Sir Baptist Hicks, afterwards Lord Campdem, from whom the present Earl of Gainsborough is descended). >

Salem witchcraft; with an account of Salem village, and a history of opinions on witchcraft and kindred subjects, Volume I. By Charles Wentworth Upham, Published 1867 by Wiggin and Lunt

Salem Village P.153-154

Henry Herrick, who, as has been stated, purchased the Cherry-Hill farm of Alford, was the fifth son of Sir William Herrick, of Beau Manor Park, in the parish of Loughborough, in the county of Leicester, England. He came first to Virginia, and then to Salem. He was accompanied to America by another emigrant from Loughborough, named Cleaveland. Herrick became a member of the First Church at Salem in 1629, and his wife Edith about the same time. Their fifth son, Joseph, baptized Aug. 6, 1645, owned and occupied Cherry Hill in 1692. He married Sarah, daughter of Richard Leach, Feb. 7, 1667. He was a man of great firmness and dignity of character, and, in addition to the care and management of his large farm, was engaged in foreign commerce. As he bore the title of Governor, he had probably been at some time in command of a military post or district, or perhaps of a West-India colony. His descendants are numerous, and have occupied distinguished stations, often exhibiting a transmitted military stamp. Joseph Herrick was in the Narragansett fight. It illustrates the state of things at that time, that this eminent citizen, a large landholder, engaged in prosperous mercantile affairs, and who had been abroad, was, in 1692, when forty years of age, a corporal in the village company. He was the acting constable of the place, and, as such, concerned in the early proceedings connected with the withcraft prosecutions. For a while he was under the influence of the delusion; but his strong and enlightened mind soon led him out of it. He was one of the petitioners in behalf of an accused person, when intercession, by any for any, was highly dangerous; and he was a leader in the party that rose against the fanaticism, and vindicated the characters of its victims. He inherited a repugnance to oppression, and sympathy for the persecuted. His father and mother appear, by a record of Court, to have been fined "for aiding and comforting an excommunicated person, contrary to order."

The Sources

(From, I think, the Herrick Genealogy)

The evidence of the identity of our Henry of Salem with the fifth son of Sir William Herrick, is, to be sure, rather circumstantial than direct, and some of it of a negative, rather than of a positive character. It is still quite as conclusive and satisfactory as evidence of this kind, and at this distance of time, can be hoped to be found. The principal points on which we rest the conclusion are these:

First. No other Henry is found on the English pedigrees of the time. Second. Henry of Beau Manor is not otherwise recognized among the sons of Sir William after infancy, than as residing abroad, in 1653, and then under circumstances indicating America as the place of his residence.

The following is a copy of a letter from Henry to his brother John, which was kindly furnished by the late William Perry-Herrick, the original of which is still preserved at Beau Manor:

• The late William Perry-Herrick, Esq., in a letter dated Nov. II, 1874, communicated the following entry copied from Sir William Herrick's account book:

"Paid by Booker Hicks for my last Adventure to Virginia the 10th July, 1612." (This was Sir Baptist Hicks, afterwards Lord Campdem, from whom the present Earl of Gainsborough is descended).

Third. The identity of the coat-of-arms of the family at Salem and Beverly with that of the Leicestershire family, and especially of the crest, withthat of which Sir William was one of the original Grantees.

Fourth. The secession of one branch of the Leicester family from the established church.* It is well known that all the other branches were devoted to their Church and King, and that Henry of Salem was a puritan, and cared little for the Church and less for the King. Desirable therefore, as it may be, to determine our English parentage with perfect certainty, and beyond all doubt, and it has been a chief inducement in all my researches; we must be content with the evidence as we find it, and recognize Henry of Beau Manor as an Anglo-American ancestor until some more fortunate explorer shall correct our errors.

• Letter from John Morris of Shrewsbury, Wales, to Gen. Jedediah Herrick.

P17 Fifth. Charles W. Upham, in his "Salem Witchcraft, (Vol. I. p, 153), has the following: "Henry Herrick, who, as has been stated, purchased the Cherry-Hill farm of Alford, was the fifth son of Sir William Herrick, of Beau Manor Park, in the parish of Loughborough, in the County of Leicester, England. He came first to Virginia, and then to Salem. He was accompanied to America by another emigrant from Loughborough, named Cleveland. Herrick became a member of the First Church at Salem in 1629, and his wife Edith about the same time."

The following appears in the "Historical Collection of the Essex Institute." Vol. IV. pp. 266\emdash 7:

SALEM, 13th Nov'r. 1862. "Dr. Henry Wheatland. Dr. Sir: As the following letter contains a valuable fact, which settles a doubtful point in the Herrick Genealogy, please give it an insertion in the Historical Collections of the Essex Institute. Resp'y Yours, G. R. C.

"BALTIMORE, Oct. 21, 1862. "Dear Mr. Curwen: Facts always prove their own utility, in one way or another. I send annexed, a fact which I happened to find in one of my record books, this evening; if there be yet any Herricks in Salem, it may be of interest to them. ' I beg to remain with sincere regard, Faithfully yours, " A. CLEVELAND COXE.* *Bishop of the Western Diocese of New York.

"To GEORGE R. CURWEN, Esq." " 'Henry Herrick, a younger son of Sir William Herrick went from Virginia to Salem, and was there June 28, 1653, as appears from a letter now at Beau Manor addressed to his brother. "'With this Herrick went to America, a Cleveland of Loughborough.'

The Rebuttal

From the Henry Herrick entry in GMB:

In 1937 Meredith Colket examined earlier claims that Henry Herrick of Salem was son of Sir William Herrick of Beau Manor, Leicestershire. Colket brushed aside four of the arguments in favor of this ancestry as "not merit[ing] the consideration of serious students of genealogy," and then proceeded to examine more closely a letter of 28 June 1653 sent from Henry Herrick to his brother in Leicestershire, demonstrating convincingly that this Henry Herrick must have been the settler of that name in Virginia, and was distinct from the New England settler [TAG 14:96-98].

  In 1993 Philip Howard Gray attempted to resurrect this identification, on the basis of the 1653 letter [Penobscot Pioneers (Volume Three): Billings, Gray, Herrick	 (Camden, Maine, 1993), pp. 93-98]. His arguments are tortured and ad hominem , and do not overturn the conclusions of Colket. In particular, the 1653 letter includes the lament that "We have not a Preacher in near twenty miles of us." Colket correctly noted that Henry Herrick of Salem and Beverly was only two or three miles from the ministers of Salem and Wenham. Gray engages in a long discussion of the necessity of walking up Bass River to a fording place and back down the other side to Salem when the weather was too bad for the ferry to run. Such a circumstance would not have produced the line in the letter of 1653. More significantly, the social status of the New England Henry Herrick is much below that of the claimed Henry Herrick of Leicestershire.