Mary Bissell 1666-1740

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Simsbury, Ct.

In 1690 John married Mary Bissell, granddaughter of John Bissell, one of the earliest settlers of Windsor. John Bissell himself and his sons were widely known because in 1648 he had been granted the right to operate the only ferry across the Great River (later called the Connecticut River) and the family continued to run Bissell’s Ferry at Windsor for more than forty years.

Mary (Bissell) Pettibone inherited £20 from her father in 1700 and in 1711 was awarded a substantial amount of property from the estate of her deceased brother [Manwaring, A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records, 2:21]. Two years later John Pettibone and his four surviving brothers each inherited one-fifth of the land owned by their father, "in addition to that already given" to them [Manwaring, 2:271]

John and Mary Pettibone lived on a farm on the Farmington River near Weatogue on land probably given him by his father from one of the distributions of common lands. John was an active citizen of Simsbury; his name is mentioned often in court records of the day as one who had been appointed to administer or to take inventory of an estate, or perhaps to witness a will [Manwaring, 2:91, 146, 277, 331, 431, 441]. He was elected representative from Simsbury to the General Assembly of Connecticut for the years 1715-16.