George PHELPS ¹

   Ancestral File Number: 9N2R-TC.

   General Notes:

BOOK
The Mary and John The Story of the Founding of Dorchester Massachusetts 1630, Maude Pinney Kuhns, Charles E Tuttle Co, Rutland VT, 1943, (CT Historical Society) p1:
"On the twentieth of March, 1630, a group of men and women, one hundred and forty in number, set sail from Plymouth, England, in the good ship, the 'Mary and John'. The company had been selected and assembled largely through the efforts of the Reverend John White, of Dorchester, England; with whom they spent the day before sailing, 'fasting, preaching, and praying.' These people had come from the western counties of England, mostly from Devonshire, Dorsetshire,and Somerset. They had chosen two ministers to accompany them: 'men who were interested in the idea of bringing the Indians to the knowledge of the gospel.' The Reverend John Maverick was an elderly man from Devon, a minister of the Established church. Reverend John Warham was also an ordained minister of the Church of England, in Exeter, eminent as a preacher. There is some evidence that both of these men were in some difficulties with the church on account of their sympathies withthe Puritans.
"Edward Rossiter and Roger Ludlow, two men who were members of the government in England, were also chosen; and several gentlemen, middleaged, with adult families were next joined to the association. Among these were Henry Wolcott, Thomas Ford, George Dyer, William Gaylord, William Rockwell, and William Phelps. But a large portion of the company were young men, eager for adventure, such as Israel Stoughton, Roger Clapp, George Minot, Richard Collicott, and Nathaniel Duncan.
"So we came, writes Roger Clapp in his Memoirs, by the good hand of the Lord, through the deep comfortably; having preaching or expounding of the word of God every day for ten weeks together by our ministers. When we came to Nantasket, Capt. Squeb, who was Captain of that great ship of four hundred tons, put us on shore and our goods on Nantasket Point, and left us to shift for ourselves in a forelorn place in this wilderness.
"It had been their original intent to land in the Charles River, but a dispute with Captain Squeb, the commander of the vessel, caused the whole company, on May 30, 1630, to be put ashore at Nantasket. The 'Mary and John' was the first of the Fleet of 1630 to arrive in the bay. At that time there could not have been pilots, or charts of the channel, and it does not seem unreasonable that the captain refused to undertake the passage, but Roger Clap has sent Captain Squeb down to posterity as a merciless man.
"According to tradition they landed upon the south side of Dorchester Neck, or South Boston, in Old Harbor. Ten of the men, under the command of Captain Southcote, found a small boat, and went up the river to Charlestown Neck, where they found an oldplanter, probably Thomas Walfourd, who fed them 'a dinner of fish without bread.' Later they continued their journey up the Charles River, as far as what is now Watertown, returning several days later to the company who had found pasture for their cattle at Mattapan. The settlement was later called Dorchester, in honor of the Reverend John White, of Dorchester, England.
"Roger Clap tells of the hardships that followed. They had little food, and were forced to live on clams andfish. The men built small boats, and the Indians came later with baskets of corn. 'The place was a wilderness,' writes Roger Clap. 'Fish was a good help to me and to others. Bread was so scarce that I thought the very crusts from my father's table would have been sweet; and when I could have meal and salt and water boiled together, I asked, 'who could ask for better?'
"Here they lived for five or six years. Other boats arrived and other towns were settled. But the life at Dorchester was not entirely congenial to the lovers of liberty of the 'Mary and John'. The group of settlements around Massachusetts Bay was dominated by clergymen and officials of aristocratic tendencies. Their Governor, John Winthrop, had little sympathy with the common people. 'The best part (of the people),' he declared, 'is always the least, and of that best part, the wiser is always is always the lesser.' And the Reverend John Cotton put it more bluntly when he said, 'Never did God ordain democracy for the government of the church or the people.'
"These principles were repugnant to the people of the 'Mary and John', who had come to America to escape such restraint. They had no wish to interfere with the methods of worship of others, and they did not wish others to interfere with them. Too, they were land-hungry, after centuries of vassalage to the lords of the manors, leading hopeless lives without chance of independence. Perhaps they were influenced also,by the fact that a great smallpox epidemic had raged among the Indians, killing off so many that they wre not the menace that they had been at first. The settlers turned their attention toward the fertile meadows of the Connecticut Valley. "A group under Roger Ludlow set out and reached the Plymouth Trading house that had been erected by William Holmes near the junction of the Connecticut and the Farmington Rivers, early in the summer of 1635. A little later sixty men, women andchildren, with their 'cows, heifers and swine', came overland from Dorchester. The winter was severe and the food scarce, and many returned to Massachusetts, but in the spring they came back to Connecticut with their friends, and by April, 1636, most of the members of the Dorchester Church were settled near the Farmington River, along the brow of the hill that overlooks the 'Great Meadow'. This in spite of the fact that the Plymouth people disputed their claim to the land. They built rude shelters, dug out of the rising ground along the edge of the river bank. The rear end and the two sides were simply the earth itself, with a front and a roof of beams. The town was later named Windsor.
"In the following year, 1637,danger from the Pequot Indians forced them to abandon their dugouts and to come together around the area known as the Palisado Green. Their new homes were at once enclosed with a strong palisado.
"In 1639 they began the construction of their first real meeting house. It stood in the center of the palisado, and was topped with a cupola and platform, where the sexton beat a drum to summon the people to attend services or public meetings. About the same time there was built and presented to the pastor, the Reverend John Warham, a corn mill, which is supposed to have been the first grist mill built in Connecticut. For many years it served all the settlements in the river valley, as far south as Middletown.
"All overAmerica today live the descendants of the fathers and mothers of the 'Mary and John.' Their sons and daughters have written their names on the pages of American History. They have filled the pulpits of famous churches; they have sat on judges'benches, and in the seats of Congress; they have occupied Governors' Mansions, and even the White House. Some fought at Lexington, and wintered with Washington at Valley Forge. They joined in the trek to the West, and one followed Brigham Younginto Utah. One marched with Sherman as he burned and pillaged his way through Georgia, and perhaps one fought on the other side with Lee. One is called the 'Hero of Manila Bay,' and one was hanged! They learned strange names like Saint-Mehiel,Chateau-Thierry, the Argonne Forest and Sedan. Perhaps one lies in Flanders Field...
"An effort has been made to show through the ancestry of people living today, or through famous men of history, how this little group lived together, married and intermarried, even beyond the third and fourth generations. The names of descendants of the men and women who came to America on the 'Mary and John' are found in every state of the Union."
p59: "...Frances married as her third husband George Phelps..."

INTERNET
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/h/e/Michael-D-Phelps/?Welcome=982955771
Phelps Family Research
M David Phelps
PHELPS / ABBE / GEER / PEASE / PELTON / PERKINS / THOMPSON I am researching the descendants of George Phelps (1606-1687) who is believed to have come to America on the "Recovery of London" in 1633/4.

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/h/e/Michael-D-Phelps/FILE/0001page.html
Identifying George P-?- of the Recovery, 1633/4
John Plummer wrote an article examining the March 31, 1633 voyage of the Recovery of London, with Gabriel Cornish as its master, sailing from Weymouth in Dorsetshire to New England. The names of twenty-six passengers are given; but for one of these, George P--?--, the script is not fully readable. Three possible candidates are examined, George Phelps, George Proctor, and George Parkhurst

George Phelps -- declared a freeman of Massachusetts Bay Colony on 6 May 1635.57 He was surely of Dorchester at this time, as shortly thereafter he joined the mass migration from there to Windsor, Connecticut, along with a significant number of Recovery passengers.58 He appears to have been a single man until 1637,59 which would explain the lack of a land grant for him in Dorchester. Charles Edward Banks concluded from his own study that George Phelps of Dorchester was from Somersetshire.60 If correct, Banks places Phelps solidly amid the pattern of migration noted for other Recovery passengers.

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File v4.19: George PHELPS (AFN: 9N2R-TC), Sex M, Born 1605/1606 Tewkesbury Gloucester England, Christened 5 Sep 1606> ?1566 Tewkesbury Gloucester England, Married.

   Events:

1. Immigration; 1633-1634, Weymouth, Dorsetshire, England. Ship "Recovery of London" To Dorchester Suffolk Massachusetts USA

2. Freeman; 6 May 1635, Dorchester, Suffolk, Massachusetts, USA.

   Marriage Information:

George married Phillury RANDALL, daughter of Phillip RANDALL, Sr and Joanna FUSH, in 1637 in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut, USA. (Phillury RANDALL was born on 29 Apr 1618 in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, christened in Westfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, USA and died on 29 Apr 1648 in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut, USA.)

   Marriage Information:

George also married Frances RANDALL, daughter of Phillip RANDALL, Sr and Joanna FUSH, on 16 Nov 1648 in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut, USA. (Frances RANDALL was born in 1610-1611 in , , England, died on 27 Sep 1690 in Westfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, USA and was buried on 27 Sep 1690 in Westfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, USA.)