Elizabeth, daughter of Edward and Susan Wilcox, was born not long before her family probably left Lincolnshire, England for New England. She was baptized at Croft 5 March 1636/7.[i],[ii] Thirteen months later Edward Wilcox was included in a list of inhabitants admitted as of 20 May 1638 to a new settlement on the island of Aquidneck [now a part of Rhode Island state].[iii]
An account of the circumstances that Edward and his family encountered from March 1636/7 to May 1638 can be gleaned from records left by others from Lincolnshire, England who emigrated to New England at about the same time or a few years before. Among these individuals were Puritan reformist religious leaders John Cotton and John Wheelwright, along with Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson, who is referred to as a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.”[1] Cotton, Wheelwright, and the Hutchinsons all had their origin(s) in Lincolnshire.[iv]
Although no passenger list or ship name has been found, the most likely arrival date in New England at the Massachusetts Bay Colony for Edward Wilcox and his family was on 12 July 1637, the day on which Samuel Hutchinson, brother of Anne Hutchinson, along with other friends of John Wheelwright visited Governor John Winthrop.[v],[vi],[vii]
In 1637 “a boatload of Lincolnshire immigrants, including Anne Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, Samuel Hutchinson, did arrive in on July 12…”[2] Governor John Winthrop in his journal entry of 12 July 1637, wrote “Here came over a brother of Mrs. Hutchinson, and some other of Mr. Wheelwright’s friends…”[3] Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson was born in Alford, Lincolnshire, England and was a follower of John Cotton’s ministry in Boston, Lincolnshire. She and her family followed Cotton to New England in May 1634. John Wheelwright, Anne’s brother-in-law, was a clergyman in Lincolnshire who relocated to New England in 1636.[4],[5],[6]
Not long before the arrival of Samuel Hutchinson and the Lincolnshire immigrants, John Winthrop was elected governor and Henry Vane was out. Winthrop and his followers managed to create a new alien law. “It was generally recognized that this enactment [an “alien law”] had been designed to prevent the admission of friends of Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson whose arrival was shortly expected.”[7],[8] See Book 1 of The Descendants of Edward Wilcox of Portsmouth, Rhode Island and Lincolnshire, England to learn more about how the persecution of Anne Hutchison and her followers impacted the options that were available to Edward Wilcox after his arrival in New England. A preview of the book is here. Book 1 is scheduled to be available for free online viewing in early 2024.
[1] Inscription from a statue of Anne Hutchinson on the grounds of the Massachusetts State House in Boston, Mass.
[2] Michael Paul Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002), 141.
[3] John Winthrop, James Kendall Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal “History of New England” 1630-1649, vol. 1, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 226. Online at Archive.org.
[4] David D. Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638, A Documentary History. (Durham [NC] and London: Duke University Press, 1990 [2nd ed.]), 5. Online at Archive.org.
[5] Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volume 1-3, (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2010) 484. Online at AmericanAncestors.org.
[6] Sybil Noyes, Charles Thornton Libby and Walter Goodwin Davis, Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire (Portland, Maine, 1928-1939; rpt. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1972), 743,744. Online at Ancestry.com.
[7] Emery Battis, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962) 156,157. Online at Archive.org. The new law, made on 17 May 1637 was “intended to exclude from the colony all those whose opinions did not meet the approval of the magistrates.”
[8] Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of the governor and company of the Massachusetts bay in New England, (Boston: William White, 1853), 1:196. Online at Archive.org. Passage of a new law on 17 May 1637 required new arrivals who wished to remain more than three weeks to have the approval of “someone of the counsel, or of two other of the magistrates.”
[i] Stuart Basten, “Birth-Baptism Intervals for Family Historians,” FamilySearch.org/wiki,
(https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Birth-Baptism_Intervals_for_Family_Historians#mw-head, accessed 16 Oct. 2020). Evidence strongly suggests that during the sixteenth- and much of the seventeenth-centuries, parents did indeed baptize in haste. As such, family historians working on the early modern period can usually assume that any date they uncover either in a parish register or on the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which specifies baptism will normally be no more than a week after birth.
[ii] Parish record for Croft (Lincolnshire), 1548-1981, Church of England, Image 152. [FHL 1541971 item 2]. Baptizeings, “Elizabeth daughter of Edward Willcox and Susan his wife baptized Mar [?]5, [1636/7].”
[iii] Howard M. Chapin, Documentary history of Rhode Island volume 2, (Providence: Preston and Rounds Co., 1916), 117,118. Online at Archive.org.
[iv] Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1640, (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2015), Epub book. 90 of 301- John Cotton; 274 of 301- John Wheelwright; 155 of 301- William Hutchinson (husband of Anne Marbury Hutchinson).
[v] David D. Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638, A Documentary History. (Durham [NC] and London: Duke University Press, 1990 [2nd ed.]), 5. Online at Archive.org. Anne Hutchinson and her family arrived in 1634.
[vi] Sybil Noyes, Charles Thornton Libby and Walter Goodwin Davis, Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire (Portland, Maine, 1928-1939; rpt. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1972), 743,744. Online at Ancestry.com. John Wheelwright arrived in 1636.
[vii] Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1640, (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2015), Epub book. 274 of 301- John Wheelwright.