| Notes |
- From "The Genealogy of and Descendants of Samuel Penfield"
In Bond's "History of Watertown, Mass." will be found Abraham Browne'sPedigree back to 1330, and is an accurate and reliable compilation. Seebelow.
From "The Great Migration Begins"
ORIGIN: Unknown
MIGRATION: 1631
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP: Membership in Watertown church prior to 6 March 1631/2implied by freemanship.
FREEMAN: 6 March 1631/2 [MBCR 1:367]
EDUCATION: Frequent employment as a surveyor implies a solid basiceducation.
OFFICES: Watertown selectman, 1635 through 1641, annually [WaTR 2, 3, 5,6, 7]. Appointed to several committees to lay out land and highways, andto regulate timber cutting [WaTR 1-7, 9].
ESTATE: Abraham Brown was granted twelve parcels of land in Watertown,greater both in number and in acreage than the average: ten acrehomestall; three acres of marsh; twenty-eight acre of homestall; tenacres of plowland adjoining the previous lot; six acres of uplandadjoining the preceding plot; one acre in Patch Meadow; half an acre ofmeadow with a piece of swamp; four acres of upland; a pond of one acre; afifty acre Great Dividend; ten acres in the Remote Meadows; and a farm ofone hundred and thirty acres [WaBOP 8, 11, 43, 76]. (A dispute over oneof these parcels of land arose in 1660, in which his children wereinvolved [WaTR 65-66].
By the time of the Composite Inventory he had acquired a few moreparcels, and disposed of at least one [WaBOP 21, 117]. He had obtainedtwo parcels from John Browne - six acres of upland and a Great Dividendof thirty acres [WaBOP 21, 77]. He had exchanged land with JohnCollidge, parting with his fifty acre Great Dividend and acquiring inreturn five acres of plowland and one acre of upland [WaBOP 21, 36, 92].And he purchased from Abraham Shaw one acre of marsh adjoining the threeacres that he already possessed [WaBOP 21].
The will and inventory of Abraham Browne were presented at MiddlesexCounty Court on 1 October 1650 [MPR Misc 79].
On 6 October 1691 the county court ordered that "the parties concerned inthe estate of Abraham Brown of Watertown deceased in the year 50 be sentto attend the adjournment of this court in order to a settlementthereof." On 7 October 1691 it was ordered that "Lydia Lakin of Grotonand Abraham Luist of Rumney Marsh and Mary the relict widow of JonathanBrown of Watertown and her son Abraham Brown and Georg(e) Woodard ofmuddy River and John Parkist of Watertown and all other persons concernedwith the estate of Abraham Brown of said Watertown deceased do make theirappearance ... on the first Tuesday in November next in order to a legalsettlement of the said estate." On 3 November 1691 the court appointedLt. Remington, John Ward and Thomas Greenwood "to make proposals for afull and final settlement" of "the estate of Abraham Brown Senr. ofWatertown deceased" [MPR Misc 82-83].
BIRTH: About 1600 based on approximated dob of 1st child.
DEATH: Watertown in 1650, bef 1 October [MPR Misc 79, 82].
MARRIAGE: By 1631 (and by about 1627 if she was the mother of all hischildren] Lydia ____; she married 2nd Ipswich 27 November 1659 AndrewHodges; "Lydia Hoges (a widow)" died at Watertown 27 September 1686 [WaVR58].
ASSOCIATIONS: Bond published a pedigree which stated that Abraham,Richard, and John Brown of Watertown were all from Hawkedon in Suffolk,that Abraham and Richard were brothers, and that John was their nephew[Bond 116]. The pedigree was researched by Horatio Gates Somerby,arranged by William P. Browne and annotated by Bond himself. In hiscomments, Bond notes that Abraham might well be a nephew of Richardrather than a brother [Bond !122].
The claimed identification rests on only two records: the 1590 will ofThomas Brown of Hawkedon, naming five sons, including John, Richard andAbraham [Archdeaconry of Sudbury Probate Register 428 Goddard]; and the11 October 1601 baptism at Hawkedon of John Brown, son of John. Thislatter record connects tenuously with John Brown of Watertown, who was 36at his death in 1636 [WaVR 4].
Beyond this, there is no evidence in favor of the proposed connection,and some against. Nothing in the English records suggests that any ofthese people were in New England, and nothing in the New England recordspoints to Hawkesdon. In fact, there is nothing in the New Englandrecords to suggest that Richard and Abraham were brothers, and only somevery slender evidence of a connection between Abraham and John; in theWatertown land inventories, the record of John Brown's land immediatelyfollows Abraham's [which may or may not be probative], and after John'sdeath Abraham acquired two parcels of his land.
Richard was a member of an independent church in London in 1616, andbefore that was a ferryman at Gravesend, which would place his birth nolater than about 1590 (and perhaps earlier], and thus on chronologicalgrounds at least he could have been the son of Thomas of Hawkedon.Abraham, on the other hand, seems to have been a decade or more younger.His eldest daughter was born about 1627 [or perhaps a year or twoearlier], and so Abraham need not have been born before about 1600, whichwould make him very close in age to John Browne of Watertown. If he was,as claimed, a son of Thomas of Hawkedon, he must have been at leatsthirty-seven years old at the birth of this first child, and perhaps eveninto his forties.
Bond sets forth, and then dismisses, some strong evidence which may pointto the correct ancestry of Abraham Brown. On 1 January 1672/3 JonathanBrown of Watertown "cousin and next heir of Edmond Brown formerly ofBoston ... deceased" relinquished to Richard Taylor of Boston thereversion of two parcels of land owned by Edmond Brown, who is alsoreferred to as "uncle" by Jonathan Brown [Bond !122;SLR 8:43]. EdmondBrowne of Boston [not to be confused with Reverend Edmund Browne ofSudbury] would seem to be a brother of Abraham Browne, and this is notreflected in the Hawkedon pedigree.
Much more research is necessary before anything certain can be said ofthe origins of Abraham Brown.
COMMENTS: In the grant of the Remote Meadows Abraham Browne received tenacres. We can identify seven persons in the household at this time:Abraham, his wife, and five children. Under the terms of the grant, theother three acres might be granted for servants in the household, or forAbraham's holdings of livestock; in either case, he again appears asabove the norm in wealth and social standing.
In Volume III of The Great Migration Begins is this passage which has notbeen widely accepted as fact:
ABRAHAM BROWN, pages 244-46: Building on the conclusions in this sketch,Dean Crawford Smith has discovered the English origin of Abraham Brown.He was baptized on 22 October 1588 at Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, sonof Edmund and Mary (Cramphorne) Browne [The Ancestry of Eva BelleKempton, 1878-1908, Part I: The Ancestry of Warren Francis Kempton,1817-1879 (Boston 1996), 168-86). Abraham Brown married (1) South Weald,Essex, 21 September 1619 Joan Shelton, who was buried at South Weald on27 September 1628. Their two daughters were baptized at Childerditch,Essex, Sarah on 30 July 1620 and Hannah on 25 August 1622. AbrahamBrown did have a brother Richard, who was certainly not the Richard whocame to Watertown. Two brothers of Abraham, John, baptized atSawbridgeworth on 23 April 1598, and Edmund, baptized there on 4 May1660, did come to New England. Smith also suggests, with somereservations, that another Brown sibling, Hannah, baptized in the sameparish on 13 January 1604/5, became the wife of MATTHEW INES.
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Abt 1600 - 1650 (50 years)
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