John Pettibone 1665-1741

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

John Pettibone, Jr. was four years old when his parents moved with him and his younger sister and infant brother to the small log dwelling built by their father at Massaco, the first site of Simsbury, Connecticut. After the birth of four more children and much planting and work on their land over the next seven years, the family and all other inhabitants of Simsbury were twice forced to abandon their farms and flee to Windsor, under threat of an Indian at- tack during King Philip’s War. In the second alarm the Simsbury people barely escaped with their lives when the Indians did attack and destroyed virtually every trace of Simsbury The next year, 1679, the Pettibones returned to Simsbury to rebuild their home and reclaim their fields. John, Jr., was then thirteen years old. In 1690 John married Mary Bissell, granddaughter of John Bissell, one of- the earliest set- tlers 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 [Manwan'ng, 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.

Train-bands, the forerunners of the colonial militia, were groups of men who trained with their own arms, if they had any, and provided security for their own settlements. They were also subject to a call sent out by a Colonel or Major appointed by the Crown or by the General Assembly when other communities in Connecticut were in danger. In 1676 Simsbury was too spread out and had too few residents to support its own train-band, which accounted for the fact that Simsbury's citizens were ordered to come to Windsor when King Philip’s In- dian allies threatened their town. It was not until 1698 that Simsbury had enough men to form a full company of soldiers under a captain (an office of great dignity), a lieutenant, and an ensign.

The destruction of Simsbury left lasting scars, and the fear of Indian raids lasted into the 1720s. ln May, 1702, Queen Anne of Great Britain joined the Emperor of Germany and the States-General in a declaration of war against France and Spain, and from that year until even after the war finally ended in 1713 the Connecticut train-bands were held in readiness for active service. Many companies did participate from time to time in campaigns against the French in Canada. In 1716 the Simsbury company was divided into two separate bands, one for the north section of the town and one for the south. John Pettibone, was made lieutenant of the new south company [Society of Colonial Wars, Index of Ancestors and Honor Roll]. In 1724, parties of unknown Indians were seen passing by fields and through forest, and the people of Hartford County became apprehensive. Ten scouts, some of them cousins in the Pettibone line, were sent out to establish a line curving from Litchfield on the west around the northerly settlements to Turkey Hills on the east--Jonathan Holcomb, John Hill, Nathaniel Hol- comb, Joseph Mills, William Buell, Samuel Pettibone, Joseph Wilcoxson, Benajah Humphrey, Nathaniel Westover, and Charles Humphrey. They continued in service until early in October, having been joined by additional troops after a special alarm at Turkey Hills in July. Their preventive action was a success, and it marked the end of the Indian threat. John Pettibone, Jr., was one of a committee of three which was directly involved in resolving one of the hottest conflicts in early Simsbury, the so-called "outlands controversy." When Simsbury was first settled, the land not purchased was called the common lands and was jointly administered by the proprietors. Some of the proprietors never resided in the town but they exercised the right to join in deciding who would get new allotments of the common lands whenever a division occurred. In 1672 the inhabitants of the town (including the resi- dent proprietors and non-descendants of proprietors who had bought land from proprietors over the years) divided a portion of the common lands among themselves, giving each land- owner an equal share. Afterwards, so many complaints were made about what should be considered "an equal share" that the vote was rescinded, and all subsequent divisions of the common lands were decided upon at proprietors’ meetings. The idea that the inhabitants should all be able to vote on land use would not die, though. By 1719 many, but not all, of the original proprietors were dead, but their children had inherited the proprietors’ rights. There were other landowners in the town who wanted a voice in the town decisions about land use without having to prove their descent from a proprietor, and even among the hereditary proprietors there were many who complained that by faulty surveys or false boundaries some people claimed much more land than had been granted to them. It speaks well of John Pettibone, the son of an original proprietor, that he was chosen by a town meeting of the inhabitants of Simsbury as one of a committee of three to settle the con- troversy. He was joined in the committee by two other respected freemen of the town, Rev. Timothy Woodbridge and Captain Thomas Holcomb, the latter also a proprietors son (and John’s brother-in-law). The committee’s report was a victory for democracy. It stated:

(1) that all parcels of land be compared with the original surveys;

(2) that the right of disposal of the undivided land should be vested only in (a) those who derived their power to do so from an act of the General Assembly (the proprietors] and their heirs and assigns or (b) by those who had been admitted into inhabitance in the town and their heirs and assigns, or those who would be hereafter admitted as inhabitants, with that right and power of disposal expressly inserted in the Town’s vote for admission;

(3) that land suitable for common use of each section of the town be sequestered for said use, and chosen by a committee from each such section;

(4) that the remaining land should be sequestered to the Town to be allotted by an affirmative vote of the major part, not by the number of persons but by a true list of their ratable estate.

At a town meeting which began 31 December 1722 it was voted that the town would dispose of the undivided town lands according to the committee’s recommendation, and the town meeting was extended over the next three days while those present proceeded to vote on the allotments. About 16,500 acres were divided between 172 people in proportion to their tax lists, in quantities varying from 20 to 300 acres, and it was voted that the remaining com- mon land should be divided in the same proportion. During the following summer these grants were measured, transferred to the grantees, and placed on record.

Most of the original proprietors and some of their descendants complained bitterly about the actions of the Town of Simsbury, and they appealed the action to the General Assembly. The next year the Assembly passed a law to deal with any similar problems in the future. Without upsetting the Simsbury division, the new law stated that in the future all undivided lands would be considered as belonging to the original proprietors and their heirs; and that those becoming inhabitants in the future had no right to the common lands. The partial solu- tion based on the decision of the Woodbridge, Holcomb, and Pettibone committee remained intact, however, and a relatively small amount of land remained in the common lands. The last allotment was not made until the early 1800s [Barber, A Record and Documentary History of Simsbury, 219-222].

John Pettibone, Jr., died at the age of seventy-six in 1741. His wife and five of his children survived him, and all received generous bequests in his will [Manwaring, 2:321]. The value of his estate was almost four times greater than that left by his father in 1713.

1 Names and vital records of the children, J1 John, J2 Mary, and J5 Catherine are found in Barbour Index, Simsbury Land Records 1A:5.