By Arlan Willard, President
We told you that there would be Witches, Gables, Wharves, and Museums along with our Reunion and Annual Meeting. We can now report that we had all that plus, for the first time in years, very good weather. With so much to see and do in Danvers, Salem, Essex, Cape Ann, Marblehead and the whole North Shore of Massachusetts, what a blessing that the good weather lasted all weekend.
The King's Grant Inn in Danvers was our headquarters, a grand place to stay and meet. Many of our Willard Family arrived Friday afternoon and fifty-four of us met in the evening to register, socialize and enjoy a full course dinner. After dinner Alison D'Amario, Director of Education at the Salem Witch Museum, spoke to us about the history of the Salem Witch trials and poor John Willard who was about thirty years old when he was convicted of witchcraft and hanged at Salem on August 19, 1692. After the talk, my wife told me I was lucky not to have lived in Salem at that time. What did she mean? Do those that know me agree with her? Alison gave each of us two books, both relating to the Salem Witch trials, and a discount pass to the Salem Witch Museum. We all enjoyed her presentation and thanked her for a job very well done.
Saturday morning, again at King's Grant Inn, we met at 9:00 AM. After a continental breakfast we held our 92nd Annual Meeting. The high point of the meeting was provided by our own member, William L. Willard, Sr., Second Vice President and Assistant Historian. During this past year he had learned of new and very interesting Willard information, and he chose this appropriate time to share it with us. Bill, thanks for your continuous support and excellent presentation. (Editor's note: See article "Were Simon and George Alone?" below.) And to Sarah Hendy Triplett — thanks for being with us. Eight year old Sarah was the youngest member attending our 92nd Reunion, and she was with her grandmother and her mother.
Immediately
after our meeting we were served an excellent buffet lunch at the Inn.
Following lunch everyone had time to travel throughout the North Shore.
Some chose to drive up the coast to enjoy the beautiful shoreline, while
others visited such places as the Salem Witch Museum, the Witch House,
House of Seven Gables, the Peabody Essex Museum and many other places of
interest. Saturday evening twenty three of us had dinner together at the
Danversport Yacht Club. We did have to wait awhile for our dinner, but
it was worth it when you compared the wait to the beautiful view, sunset
on the water, and all the large yachts to watch. .
What WFA Learned at Danvers in 2000
Included
in her remarks was a discussion of John Willard who was hung in Salem Village
(present Danvers). In response to a question by our WFA historian Ruth
Willard about the ancestry of John Willard, Alison D’Amario said that it
has been very difficult to collect information from the local families.
This is because when the episodes were over, a curtain seemed to drop about
the events. The clergy elsewhere in Massachusetts Bay Colony disapproved
of the allowance by the judges in the court to allow testimony concerning
apparitions seen only by the presumed victims of the alleged witches, and
many of the ordinary citizens of the colony were more embarrassed by the
events than frightened. 18th century families didn’t include those relatives
who’d been accused witches in their genealogies. She said that many researchers
today experience great difficulty in actually connecting the accused positively
to their family lines because of this. Interestingly, this reticence continues
to be encountered. Up until the 1980s, present-day families of Danvers
with connections going back to the events of Salem Village, remained ill-at-ease
discussing both accusers and accused who may have been their ancestors,
even with professional historians and historical sociologists. With everyone
in the 1700s deliberately keeping quiet about what they knew concerning
the participants in the tragedy and therefore not creating the kinds of
records that have proved so helpful in genealogical research, we may be
as close as we’ll ever get to solving our puzzle as to John’s lineage.
Were Simon and George Alone?
by William L. Willard, Sr.
When the Willard Family Association was first formed, the intent was to build a family association made up of the descendants of Major Simon Willard, and his half brother George. Their sister Marjory, who came with them from England, married Dolar Davis, and (under the code of genealogists at the time), was now a Davis.
At this year’s annual reunion we heard about Witchcraft and Witches and found out that one of the men hanged for Witchcraft was a John Willard. Family members began asking from which of Simon’s or George’s sons did this John come from, and where did he fit into the family tree? Investigation by this writer could not turn up any member of the family named John who could have been the same John hanged at Salem. In researching genealogy in the Colonies, there are certain publications that a genealogist relies on when beginning any search. One is the Genealogical Dictionary of New England by James Savage. Others are the various publications containing passenger lists to America during the Colonial Period. Reading the pages on Willards in Savage is of no real help. Although he does refer to the John Willard who was hanged in Salem, he cannot ascertain parentage. In searching the ship’s passenger lists, a clue does emerge. It seems that a Jonathan Willard, then 16, came to America as an indentured servant on the William and John in 1635. His “master” was a Thomas Price to whom Jonathan Willard apprenticed to learn the trade of a Harness maker. Who was this John Willard? More later.
In 1647 a Richard Willard arrived in New Amsterdam, (New York) having been one of 16 survivors from the wreck of the English ship Rachel which “hit a bar and was wrecked from the incoming tide in August of 1647.” The Rachel, according to the Registry in London, was bound for New England. Who was this Richard Willard? More later.
Richard Willard, the father of Major Simon Willard, married three times. His first wife was Catherine *and there are four children from this marriage, as recorded in the Willard Memoir: a daughter Mary named in Richard’s will; Thomas baptized May 6, 1593 and buried 1608; Elizabeth baptized January 5, 1594; and Richard born 1596 or 97 named in the will. He married second, Margery (Humphries), (spelled Humferie in the Willard Genealogy) Willard and by her had Simon, Mary, Thomas, Elizabeth and Richard Jr. His third wife was Joane (Morehead) Willard, “a widow” and with her he had Edward, John, and George. The Willard Memoir records that Edward and John died in infancy. George, halfbrother of Major Simon, had at least three children: Deborah, Daniel and Joshua. Of these children, both Daniel and Joshua (baptized at Scituate November 2, 1645) married in Massachusetts. Other than the name of Joshua’s wife, Elizabeth ______, further reliable information has not been found to date. Daniel married Hester Matthews. Based solely on ship’s passenger records, a John and Richard Willard were in America during the first half of the 17th century. Further research does show a Harness maker in Boston in 1665 by the name of Jonathan. Based only on profession, it is likely that this Jonathan and the Jonathan that came to America with Thomas Price are one and the same. At this point there are no direct ties to Simon, George or their father Richard from this Jonathan, or Richard Willard from the wreck of the Rachel. However, this does open the possibility that there were two other families of Willards in New England at the same time as Major Simon and George.
Since I became active in the WFA, I have had numerous requests for genealogical information from families named, or descended from Willards. Several of these requests have contained verifiable records showing ancestors by the surname Willard in Massachusetts and other New England states in the 18th century. Many of these ancestors do not fit anywhere in the current Willard Genealogies. (Consideration should be given that all of the published genealogies have gaps in them where tracking a male member of the family has wound up a dead end.)
Quoting Stephen Terry, the youngest son of the famous clockmaker Eli, and author of the Terry Family Genealogy: “The number of a man’s ancestors doubles in every generation as his ascent is traced upward. In the first generation he reckons only two ancestors, his father and mother. In the second generation the two are converted into four, since he had two grandfathers and two grandmothers. To ascend no higher than the twenty fourth generation we reach a sum of 16,777,261, which is a great deal more than the total population of Great Britain when that generation was in existence. For if we reckon a generation at thirty-three years, twenty-four of such will carry us back 792 years, or to AD 1093 when the son of William the Conqueror, William the II, was reigning over the land.”
This equation does not take into consideration children that die young, males that never married, or other ways in which a person may not have added to the population or natural disasters or disease. It does make one sit back and think about the future generations of the world and the possibility of everyone being physically related to each other somewhere on the family tree which grows daily with fertilization.
It
now appears that a good probability exists that the surname Willard in
the 17th century was not limited to descendants of Major Simon
and his brother George. Could the Willards of this period have a branch
on the family tree derived from another branch of the same bloodline, 1,
2, 3 or even 15 generations past? Were Major Simon and George Willard alone
in the “production” of the Willard family name in Colonial America?
Stay
Tuned!
visiting one of the stones dedicated in 1992 by
the town of Salem
to the victims of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
This is John Willard’s memorial stone.
It reads: John Willard / hanged / August 19, 1692
More on John Willard and his witch trial