John Dennis (1708 - 1773)

Born 3 Nov 1708 in Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts Bay

Ancestors

Husband of Martha (Wilcomb) Dennis — married 12 Dec 1736 in Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts,

Husband of Ruth Bacon — married 1756 in Eastham, Barnstable, Massachusetts Bay Colony

Descendants

Died 2 Sep 1773 at age 64 in Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts Bay

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Biography

Birth

3 Nov 1708 Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts^[1][2]

Death

2 Sep 1773 Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts^[3][4]

Marriage

12 Dec 1736 Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts^[5][6]

He was also Married to Ruth Bacon in 1756 according to records below.

Sources

1. ↑ #S38: Name: John Dennis Gender: Male Baptism/Christening Date: Baptism/Christening Place: Birth Date: 03 Nov 1708 Birthplace: IPSWICH, ESSEX, MASSACHUSETTS Death Date: Name Note: Race: Father's Name: John Dennis Father's Birthplace: Father's Age: Mother's Name: Lydia Mother's Birthplace: Mother's Age: Indexing Project (Batch) Number: C50210-1 System Origin: Massachusetts-ODM Source Film Number: 873749 Reference Number:
2. ↑ #S76 Page: Vol. 1, p 115: John. s. John and Lydia, Nov. 3, 1708.
3. ↑ Vital Records of Ipswich, MA to the end of the year 1849, Page: v 2, p 540
4. ↑ #S76 Page: Vol. 2, p 540: John, preacher, Sept. 2, 1773.
5. ↑ #S3: Groom's Name: John Dennis Groom's Birth Date: Groom's Birthplace: Groom's Age: Bride's Name: Martha Wilcomb Bride's Birth Date: Bride's Birthplace: Bride's Age: Marriage Date: 12 Dec 1736 Marriage Place: Ipswich,Essex,Massachusetts Groom's Father's Name: Groom's Mother's Name: Bride's Father's Name: Bride's Mother's Name: Groom's Race: Groom's Marital Status: Groom's Previous Wife's Name: Bride's Race: Bride's Marital Status: Bride's Previous Husband's Name: Indexing Project (Batch) Number: M50210-1 System Origin: Massachusetts-ODM Source Film Number: 547505 Reference Number:
6. ↑ #S76 Page: Vol 2, p 132: John, jr., and Martha Wilcomb, int. Dec. 12, 1736.

• Find A Grave: Memorial #209034541: Old Burying Ground, Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts
• "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L979-964B?cc=2061550&wc=Q4DW-7MS%3A353349701%2C353418401%2C353420601 : 30 October 2019), Barnstable > Eastham, Orleans > Births, marriages, deaths 1716-1777 > image 38 of 157; citing Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston.
• Shipton, Clifford Kenyon. Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University (Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1951) Vol. 8, Page 692.
  • CLASS OF 1730 JOHN DENNIS, army chaplain and first minister of Charlestown, New Hampshire, was born on November 3, 1708, the second son of Captain John and Lydia (White) Dennis of Ipswich. The Cap­tain was a joiner by profession, but John's conduct at college was as poor as if he had been a gentleman. He returned to Cambridge and rented a study in May, 1731, but, to judge by President Wads­worth's diary, he did not make the best of his year of graduate study: I punish'd Sir Dennis (April 21. 1732) 5s for not preparing as Respondent for the Bachelours disputation. . . . He was then order'd to prepare against the next Friday, when that day came I waited for his calling me, but he was out of Town So on April 29. 1732 I punish'd him 5s more for neglecting his duty in disputing.(1) Sir Dennis did not return again until Commencement, 1733, when he qualified for the M.A. by holding the negative of a curious Quaestio : "An Diabolus Hominum Cogitationes cognoscat?" On December 12, 1736, Dennis registered his intention of mar­rying Martha, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth (Hodgkins) Wilcomb of Ipswich. The bride, who was twenty, probably antici­pated the distinction of being the first lady of the town in which her husband might settle as minister, but she was fated to live a lonely life at Ipswich or suffer with him on the frontier. He enlisted on September 22, 1737, to serve as chaplain at Fort St. Georges, in modern Thomaston, on a salary of £100 a year. The General Court appropriated £30 to purchase "Furniture & necessary Uten­sils for the Chaplains room at said Fort, " but there being no money in the Province treasury, he had to pay for these things himself. This distressed him, as did the unkindness and disrespect of his commander, Captain John Giles, which drove him to the point of resignation.(2) Moreover, his health was poor, for on May 28, 1740, he petitioned the General Court for further compensation: Your Petitioner during his abode & being in the Service at St. Georges has contracted a very hazardous distemper which incapacitates him from being further serviceable there & obliges him to be at great Expence on physicians & having a considerable Family & being reduc'd to very low Circumstances humbly apprehends himself to deserve the Compassion of this honourable Court And prays your Excellency & Honours to take his said Case into your wise consideration & to make him a grant of a small Tract or Parcell of the unappropriated Lands.(3) The House of Representatives voted him £S0 and two hundred acres of his own choosing adjoining some former grant, and held to its vote despite the efforts of the Council to kill the land grant clause.(4) He was sick during the summer of 1740, but by the fol­lowing July was well enough to accept appointment as truckmaster at St. Georges. Apparently his wife and family joined him in Maine about this time. By the summer of 1744 Dennis was chaplain of Richmond Fort and Fort Frederick at Pemaquid, from which he repeatedly peti­tioned to have his salary increased to equal that of other chaplains. Beginning in 1747 he added to his regular petitions the statement that he had acted "in the Capacity of a Physician and Chirurgeon," for which he requested additional compensation. In 1750 Captain Samuel Moody (A.B. 1718) gave him this recommendation: Mr. John Dennis Chaplain of his Majesties Fort Frederick hath behaved Himself in His Office in a sober Circumspect Manner and in all other things within the Notice of My Observation in a Decent Prudent Man­ner and Particularly Hath Been very Helpfull in Assisting such sick and wounded Persons from time to time as I have Often Been Informed and can Evidence from such as I have seen Received from under His Care Who Must in all Probability Have Been Cripples During Life Had it Not Been for his Prudent Management.(5) About this time he left the Province service, but his petitions for veterans' benefits continued as long as he lived. In June, 1750, Dennis was preaching at Dracut, and for the next two years he hopefully tried the vacant pulpits in that part of the Province.(6) In March, 1753, he gave up the search and took the job, of keeping the Ipswich Grammar School. On May 13, 1754, the proprietors and settlers of Charlestown, New Hampshire, better known as Fort Number Four, gave him a call to settle in the min­istry, offering a salary of £50, which was to be calculated in silver at 6s 8d an ounce. In addition the settlement taxed itself £8 to pay the expense of bringing his family through the wilderness to the Connecticut. Perhaps the prospect was too much for Mrs. Dennis, who died on July 1, 1754. If the parish clerk was right, this was a second Mrs. Dennis, named Mary; but more likely it was Martha. On July 15 Dennis accepted the call, asking for a little more money on account of the size of his family.(7) He was dismissed from the First Church of Ipswich on July 28, and was ordained on December 4 at Northfield, where the council was held because of the Indian hostilities which had broken out along the Connecticut since his call in the spring. Within six months of his ordination Dennis was in difficulties, not because of the Indians, but because of his own conduct. By cut­ting off his pay the town forced him to give a written promise to "drop his addresses and suit to Eunice Farnsworth" which ap­parently he did not keep. There was a temporary reconciliation in which he promised that he would not in the future "give the town occasion to fault him for fallacy and prevarication," but he was finally dismissed by a council meeting at Deerfield on March 31, 1756.(8) Although at this time he signed a discharge for Charles­town's obligations to him, he later sued the town, and in 1764 recovered £74 in proclamation money and £17 in new tenor,(9) which would suggest that he had received little or no salary. Perhaps the whole trouble at Charlestown was that he was hungry and Eunice Farnsworth was a good cook. Soon after leaving New Hampshire, Dennis began to supply the Harwich pulpit, and there, on May 1, 1756, he registered his in­tention of marrying Mrs. Ruth Bacon of Eastham. Evidently he was plagued with debts, for in 1757 he conveyed all of his extensive real estate claims to his brother.(10) His ministry at Harwich was a failure, for he was never installed there, and he added only one member to the church during his several years of service. His sal­ary was not paid, and after leaving Harwich he brought suit against it in December, 1760. In vain he besieged the General Court for further compensation for his military service, anticipating the de­mands of a later generation of veterans by asking for adjusted com­pensation for the depreciation of the currency while he was in the service."(11) Dennis settled again in Ipswich, where his family had risen considerably in the social and economic scale during his years of absence. As a poor relative he was, in February, 1771, given a job which as a young graduate he would have scorned, that of keeping the reading and writing school of the First Parish at a salary of a month. He died on September 2, 1773. His widow remained in Ipswich and died there on October 2, 1804. Apparently he had ten children, all by his first wife : (1) John, bap. July 31, 1737 (2) Martha, bap. Oct. 8, 1738 ; m. Abraham Safford. (3) Lucy, bap. Mar. 27, 1740; m. William Robbins of Ipswich, Mar. 26, 1772. (4) William, bap. Oct. 12, 1741; m. Abigail Smith and Priscilla Burnham. (5) Samuel. (6) Arthur, m. Mary Goodhue, Dec. 11, 1766. (7) Elizabeth, bap. Feb. 28, 1747. (8) Nathan. (9) Moses, bap. May 27, 1750; m. Sarah Frye, June 11, 1782. (10) Mary, bap. Aug. 23, 1752; m. Samuel Hyde. 1 Publ. Colonial Soc. Mass. xxxi, 485. 2 Jonathan Belcher to John Dennis, Belcher Letter-Books (Mass. Hist. SOc.), Dec. 31, 1739. 3 2 Coll. Maine Hist. Soc. xi, 209-10. 4 Mass. Archives, xii, 161. 5 Ibid., p. 631­ 6 Ebenezer Bridge, Diary (Harvard College Library), 1750-51, passim. 7 The letter is printed in Henry H. Saunderson, History o f Charlestown, N. H., Claremont, [1876], p. 213. 8 New Hampshire Hist. Soc. Coll. iv, 122-4. 9 Winifred Lovering Holman, The Dennis Line (Am. Antiq. Soc.), p. 41 10 Winifred Lovering Holman to C. K. Shipton, Apr. 28, 1942. 11 Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, Boston, 1767, p. 357.
• S38: Massachusetts Births and Christenings, 1639-1915
• S76: Vital records of Ipswich, Massachusetts, to the end of the year 1849 Author: Essex institute, Salem, Mass Publication: 1910