John (Brown) Browne Jr. (1601 - 1662)

Born 11 Oct 1601 in Hawkedon, Suffolk, England

Ancestors

Died 5 May 1662 at age 60 in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts

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Biography

Immigration: 16 Sep 1632 Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts He arrived at Plymouth possibly on the LYON in 1632 with his wife Dorothy and their children, though SAVAGE writes that this was a different John BROWNE.

Nathaniel Morton in NEW ENGLAND MEMORIAL, pp. 163-64, wrote that Browne in his younger years traveled in the Low Countries and made friends with the minister John ROBINSON and others of the Separatist church; on arriving in New England, because of his former friendships, he decided to settle in Plymouth. He was then about fifty years old and his wife forty-nine. He was on the 1633 tax list, and he became a freeman not long after (PCR 1:4) In 1635/36 he became an Assistant (PCR 1:36), a position to which he was elected many times.

He could write to Governor Winthrop as "Loving Friend," and was on good terms with many of the leading men of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and also of England. He was a Commissioner of the United Colonies and was used by Plymouth in many inter-colony negotiations. In 1645 he joined Freeman, Hatherly, and Standish in their unsuccessful support of Vassall's petition. In 1652 Browne sued Rev. Samuel NEWMAN, minister of the Rehoboth Church, for defamation, and was awarded £100 plus costs which Browne later remitted. Browne was the resident of Rehoboth who in 1655 offered to make up the deficiency for seven years of residents who did not want to pay for maintenance of the church. In 1655 he left for England, staying there four years, during which he served as executor for the estate of the senior Sir. Henry Vane, father of the former governor of the same name of the Bay Colony, later one of the leading men in Commonwealth England. He returned to Plymouth in 1660.

Will

He dated his will 7 April 1662, and his inventory was taken 19 April 1662 (MD 18:18, gives the will and a very substantial inventory). He left his wife Dorothy, and named his sons James, his daughter Mary, wife of Thomas Willett, and his grandchildren John Brown, Joseph Browne, Nathaniel, Lydia Browne, and Hannah, and also his granddaughter Martha Saffin, wife of John Saffin. To daughter Mary Willett he left but twelvepence "to bee payed att the end of every yeare During her life for a memoriall unto her; and it shalbee in full of all filall portions which shee or any in her behalfe shall Claime," which would see to be such a pointed slight that the court felt compelled to write on the back of the will, "Least any thinge mencioned in this will in reference to mistris Mary Willett the wife of Capt: Thomas Willett might bee by any mis Construed to the prejudice of of [sic] the said mistris Willett; wee thinke it meet to Declare that out of the longe experience of her Dutifull and tender respect to her said father from time to time expresed there hath never appeered to us the least ground of any such thinge to this prsent." That Browne died a rich man can be seen in the fact that to one grandson alone he left over seven hundred acres of land.

Sources