John Robinson (1580 - 1627)

Born 1580 in Meppershall, Bedfordshire, England

Husband of Katherine (Eaden Eden) Thornton — married 1602 (to Nov 1627) in Flitton with Silsoe, Bedfordshire, England

Descendants

Died Nov 1627 at about age 47 in Meppershall, Bedfordshire, England

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Biography

This John was imported as son of Henry Robinson & Elizabeth Orvice from multiple unsourced Ancestry Trees. Henry and Elizabeth were married at Terling in Essex, England and in 1782 were definitely at Fairsted in Essex. This John born and died in Bedfordshire, England, would not be their son.

Sources

• The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1847-. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-2018.) "The English Ancestry of John Robinson (1612-1675) of Newbury and Hverhill, Massachusetts and Exeter, New Hampshire, with An Identification of his Wife Elizabeth Pemberton" by Douglas Richardson. p. 147ff.subscription site

• The American Genealogist. New Haven, CT: D. L. Jacobus, 1937-. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009 - .) TAG Vol. 55, p. 17.subscription site

• French, Miss Elizabeth. Genealogical Research in England, The New England Historical & Genealogical Register (NEHGS, Boston, Mass., 1909) Vol. 63, Page 34-5. The will of John Robinson, dated 1 Nov 1627.

Find-a-grave.com John Robinson was a blacksmith living in Meppershall Parish and married Katherine Eaden (Eden) abt. 1602.

From pottery evidence, the centre of Meppershall has been in continuous occupation since the Iron Age and the recently excavated site in the centre of the village [now completely buried under the new development] was stated to be a Romano-British ‘farmstead’. Further excavation indicated that at one time in this period the spring on the site had a religious purpose and high quality pottery was recovered from there. At this time Meppershall would have been known for its skilled craftsmen as very delicate bone working and evidence for a kiln was found on the site. These people did not have the parish boundary we now know and the Roman villa and cemetery nearer Campton would have been part of their everyday life. Records show that it was a virtually crime free place, the workers being well looked after by their employers. Some prospered well and were able to have their own flocks of sheep in their employer’s fields.

Life went on well until John Leventhorpe inherited the manor in the sixteenth century. On a quiet Sunday after the church service, the parishioners and the Rector left the church and found nine men, led by John Leventhorpe, in Church Lane with swords and hooks “arrayed as men of war” who attacked them. The villagers fought and fled protecting the Rector from John and for weeks they were not allowed near the church and the fields around the manor were not tended. Even the men with leases from the manor dared not enter their land.

The only craftsman known from this time, because he had to pay tax, was a carpenter and it wasn’t until 1603 that the village had a forge that was independent of the farms.

This blacksmith’s son, John Robinson, went to America as a teenager and became one of the founders of Exeter, New Hampshire. He prospered until he was shot by Indians.

Buried: Meppershall Parish, Bedford, England