Rev. John Cotton was born English and died English ending a life that spanned Tudor & Stuart Eras, the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Protectorate and the establishment of the Commonwealth.
With this said, Rev. John Cotton is claimed as a one of America’s Founding Fathers because he was the preeminent Puritan and Congregational leader of New England. The majority of what has been written about Rev. John Cotton focuses primarily on his contribution to American religious life. The following article discusses the life and legacy of John Cotton in the broader context of history using anecdotal sources to discover the man behind the Puritan.
Family Origins: Rev. John Cotton has been linked to both the line of Henry III and the Cottons of Landswade, Cambridgeshire. Although evidence exists making both lines possible, neither has been conclusively proven and the specific origins of John Cotton’s family remain somewhat of a mystery.
The Cotton name came into common use after the Norman invasion of 1066 and directly relates to the Norman penchant for building fortified castles. As Norman fortresses dotted the British landscape, towns sprang up to support these castles and became known as cottage towns or cot towns. The vernacular of the time more commonly used cot than cottage and cot town was soon contracted to cotton or coton. In Norman parlance, a person from the cottage town became known as de’cotton or de’coton. Thus, Jean de’coton was “John of the cottage town”.
As the use of surnames became widespread, a large number of English families took Coton, Cotton, Cotten or Coten for their family name because over 30 place names in Britain contain some form of coton, cotton, cotten or coten. For example, the village of Coton just west of Cambridge near the American Cemetery dedicated to volunteer American airmen who died serving the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain in World War II.
John Cotton’s Father: Roland Cotton, Esq. of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London was an Inner Temple lawyer born circa 1550. In the words of Cotton Mather, “His immediate progenitors being, by some injustice, deprived of great revenues, his father, Mr. Roland Cotton, had the education of a lawyer bestowed by his friends upon him, in hopes of his being the better capacitated thereby to recover the estate, whereof his family had been wronged; and so the profession of a lawyer was that unto which this gentleman applied himself all his days.”
Tales of lost wealth and injustice obviously made a lasting impression for this story to have been passed down through the family to John Cotton’s grandson, Cotton Mather. Yet, John’s father seems to have abandoned his quest for legal restitution in the London courts when he moved north to Derby and married Mary Hulbert (or Hurlbert) at St. Alkmund’s Church on 16 August 1585.
Roland fathered four children with Mary and all were baptized in St. Alkmund’s as follows: Mary on 1 Sept. 1583, John on 15 Dec. 1584, Roland on 17 March 1588, and Thomas on 19 May 1594. Roland died on or before 21 April 1604 as his burial was recorded in the St Alkmund’s register.
Sepult est Rolandus Cotton, legis peritus erat vir pius honestus. Aprilus 21.
[Roland Cotton, legal expert, was buried; he was a pious and honest man. April 21]
Derbyshire Beginnings: On 4 December 1584, in Derby, England, the wife of Rowland Cotton gave birth to a son, John. It is known that Rowland Cotton and his family were orthodox members of St. Alkmund’s Church in Derby; but it is not known whether Roland Cotton and his family had Puritan leanings even though Roland’s son, John, would later become an eminent Puritan minister.
Being a lawyer, Roland Cotton must have wanted John to follow him into law, as he spared nothing in obtaining the best education possible for his son. From 1593 to 1597, John Cotton attended the Derby Grammar School headed by Richard Johnson who had earned two degrees from Trinity College, Cambridge University. Trinity College was renowned for training the brightest legal minds in the realm and it seems likely that Roland Cotton and School Master Richard Johnson were preparing young John for entry into Trinity College to study law.
Trinity College, Cambridge: In 1598, John Cotton matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge University as a sizar, the lowest of all the classes of paying students. As a result, he was expected to share a bed and do menial tasks such as waiting on tables and running errands. At the time John was only thirteen years old but his father had no other choice because he was a struggling lawyer. For his first four years at Cambridge, John pursued the quadrennium of undergraduateship: 1st year- Rhetoric, 2nd & 3rd years- Logic, and 4th year- Philosophy. These studies were carried out primarily in Latin by means of conferences and readings with his college tutor and by attending university lectures. His proficiency was measured through four disputations in Latin: two of which he would be the respondent and two of which he would be the opponent. The successful conclusion of this program was a Bachelor of Arts degree. Students wanting to continue their studies entered the triennium of bachelorship by obtaining mastery of Greek, Astronomy and Perspective.
Outside the classroom, John Cotton was exposed to some of the most radical political and religious thought of the era, as Cambridge University had long been a hotbed of Puritanism verging on rebellious separatism. As a result, Cambridge walked a thin line to avoid being declared seditious while it also enjoyed an atmosphere of intellectual freedom existent nowhere else in the realm.
Exposure to this environment taught John Cotton an important political lesson that he carried with him his entire life: “how to disagree and yet conform; how to oppose and yet be with; how to practice what one believed and yet maintain favor”.
While an undergraduate, John Cotton also learned important religious lessons outside of the classroom. In contrast to Cambridge, Derby sermons were relatively orthodox and John’s religious upbringing was more a matter of rote memorization than critical thinking. At Cambridge, John Cotton was exposed to the greatest religious minds of the time. The teachings of John Calvin were popular at Cambridge and young John was steeped in principles of Puritanism that would last him a lifetime. Calvin’s doctrines as preached from the pulpit of William Perkins challenged John by planting seeds of doubt regarding his own personal salvation that he would wrestle with for years to come.
In the year 1602, John Cotton was 16 years old when he completed his Bachelor of Arts and looked forward to a fellowship at Trinity College to continue his studies. However, Thomas Neville, Master of Trinity, had engaged in an extensive building campaign that required him to draw on his own financial resources after having depleted college funds available for fellowships. Fortunately, Roland Cotton’s law practice was flourishing and he could better provide for his son. But rather than continue at Trinity and depend on his father, John Cotton decided to accept a fellowship at Emmanuel College knowing full well that a commitment to Puritanism was required.
Emmanuel College, Cambridge: In retrospect, it is no small coincidence that John Cotton was born in 1584, the very same year that Emmanuel College was established at Cambridge University by Sir Walter Mildmay. For as will be seen Emmanuel College played as profound a role in the life of John Cotton as it did in the course of Anglo-American history.
Queen Elizabeth challenged her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay, over the formation of Emmanuel College by saying, “Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a puritan foundation.”
Sir Walter replied, “No, madam, far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws, but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof.”
John Cotton’s years at Emmanuel College (1603-1612) brought him increasing recognition as a scholar. In 1606, he successfully defended his Masters Thesis on Calvinism before the President of Cambridge University and faced William Chappell, a fellow of Christ’s College and the most out spoken opponent of Calvin at Cambridge. As his reputation grew, John Cotton was entrusted with tutoring younger students and he viewed himself primarily as a scholar and teacher.
Laurence Chaderton said of John Cotton: “by his School-stratagems he won the hearts and minds of his Pupils both to himself, and to a desire of Learning: they were to each the prophets, and the sons of the prophets: his Pupils were honourers, and lovers of him: and he was a Tutor, a friend, and a Father unto them”.
From 1608 to 1612, John Cotton assumed various duties as catechist, head lecturer, and dean and was ordained in the established church in 1610. Thus, John started his pastoral career and developed an elaborate style of preaching that attracted a wide audience in Cambridge. In another part of town, Richard Sibbes preached in a plain style to far smaller audiences. Though John Cotton had declared himself a Puritan upon entering Emmanuel College, privately he wrestled with doubts. Finally in 1612 at age 27, while attending a sermon preached by Sibbes, Cotton experienced a full conversion to Puritanism after having been fifteen years at Cambridge University.
Reborn in the Calvinist theology of Sibbes, Rev. John Cotton also assumed a plain style of preaching. Sibbes was not only a powerful theologian; he was what his colleagues called a “physician of the soul”. John first used his plain style in a sermon at St. Mary’s Church. In attendance was John Preston, an Aristotelian scholar and fellow of Queen’s College who despised ministerial work as being beneath him. Amazingly, Cotton’s sermon converted Preston such that Preston became known for his remarkable Christian piety and later became a celebrated Puritan preacher and Master of Emmanuel College. Upon learning of the marvelous effects his sermon had on Preston, John Cotton’s doubts vanished and he was fully confirmed in his Puritanism.
A Marriage of Significance: On 3 July 1613, John Cotton married Elizabeth Horrocks at Balsham in Cambridgeshire and his life was forever changed. As related by his grandson, Cotton Mather, “Settled now in Boston, his dear friend, Mr. Bayns, recommended unto him a pious gentlewoman, one Mrs. Elizabeth Horrocks, the sister of James Horrocks, a famous minister in Lancashire, to become his consort in a married estate. And it was remarkable that on the very day of his wedding to that eminently virtuous gentlewoman, he first received the assurance of God’s love unto his own soul, by the spirit of God, effectually applying his promise of eternal grace and life unto him, which happily kept with him all the rest of his days: for which cause he would afterwards say, ‘God made that day, a day of double marriage to me!’ The wife, which by the favour of God he had now found, was a very great help unto him, in the service of God; but especially upon this, among many other accounts, that the people of her own sex, observing her more than ordinary discretion, gravity and holiness, would still improve the freedom of their address unto her, to acquaint her with the exercises of their own spirits; who, acquainting her husband with convenient intimations thereof, occasioned him in his publick ministry more particularly and profitably to discourse those things that were everlasting benefit.”
This development in the life of John Cotton is of profound and intimate consequence. For the first time in his life a fear of God was replaced by the love of God in the institution of holy matrimony. After 28 years of life, John Cotton finally knew the love of a woman and this love was to stay with him throughout his life and eventually found expression in his work. Perhaps the best known of works is a catechism entitled, “Milk for Babes Drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments. Chiefly for the spiritual nourishment of Boston Babes in either England (new or old): but may be of like use for any Children.”
St. Botolph’s Church, Boston, Lincolnshire: In July of 1612 a delegation of five from Boston, Lincolnshire visited Cambridge University looking for a prospective vicar for St. Botolph’s church. They chose John Cotton after learning that he was the best preacher at Cambridge University. At the outset of his ministry, John was little concerned with forms but concentrated his efforts at preaching the word of God. It was said that at St. Botolph’s there was a “feast of preaching.” The demand was so great to hear the new vicar that he began a Tuesday lecture to augment his Sunday sermons.
By 1615, John was drawing a salary of one hundred pounds a year and was well respected as a teacher and scholar in his parish. During this year he first practiced nonconformity but did so in a somewhat covert way. His method was identifying the elect, forming them into a tight group in order to participate in ceremonies that were not offensive to Puritans. This group, consisting of the well-to-do portion of the parish and became a congregation within a congregation that entered a covenant with the Lord and each other “to follow after the Lord in the purity of his Worship.”
This congregation soon drew protests from those outside the elect and these protests soon reached the bishop’s court in Lincoln and led to Cotton’s suspension as vicar of St. Botolph’s. However, Rev. Cotton had friends in the magistrate that used their “charms and pious subtlety” to advocate their vicar a conforming minister and got him reinstated to the pulpit at St. Botolph’s.
Meanwhile, John Preston’s career was rising rapidly at Cambridge’s Queens College. Preston continued to highly regard John Cotton and began sending the vicar of St. Botolph’s some of his best and brightest Cambridge students to join the Cotton household for seasoning under John’s private tutelage. Several of these students were destined to become influential during Oliver Cromwell’s protectorate.
Francis J. Bremer says, “John Cotton fully incorporated his pupils into the life of his household. Every morning and evening they gathered with his family and servants for Scripture readings and prayer. Sabbath observance began on Saturday evening and ended with a psalm and prayers after Sunday supper.”
John Cotton soon opened his home tutorials to the public and started lecturing Sunday afternoon and on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. In the 1620s some noblemen were involved in a fen-draining project near Boston. Though Royalist Protestants, they admired the now famous Boston preacher, John Cotton, and attended his lectures. Among these well-wishers were Edward Sackville (the Earl of Dorset), Dudley Carleton (the Viscount of Dorchester) and Robert Bertie (the Earl of Lindsey).
Rumblings of Non-conformity: On a night in April of 1621 the noted Anglican minister, Robert Sanderson, was scheduled to preach the Bishop’s Visitation Sermon. Shortly before he was to arrive, St. Botolph’s Church was vandalized with stained glass windows broken, ornaments torn down, and statues demolished. Moreover a cross was severed from the town mace, that the mayor carried every Thursday and Sunday to church. The royal authorities were notified and the uproar came to the attention of the Bishop of Lincoln, George Montaigne, who promptly suspended Rev. John Cotton for nonconformity. The vandals were never discovered.
Meanwhile, John Preston had become Master of Emmanuel College and had a friend, John Davenant, Master of Queens College, who was conformist enough to obtain an appointment for John Cotton with Bishop Montaigne. During the interview the Bishop, known for being lenient, was impressed with John Cotton’s mild manners and learning and so determined that Cotton had nothing to do with vandalizing St. Botolph’s and the vicar’s suspension was removed.
In the late 1620s, most Puritan ministers were not as fortunate as Rev. Cotton and came under attack from Bishop Laud’s campaign to oust Puritans from the Anglican Church. John Cotton was a respected name in Puritan circles. From conservative Archbishop Ussher to liberal Roger Williams, Puritans sought out Cotton’s advice, while in Lincolnshire, the 3rd Earl of Lincoln held Rev. Cotton in high esteem.
Many of these Puritans considered establishing a plantation in New England. During two conferences in Lincolnshire (one at Tattersall, the home of the 3rd Earl of Lincoln; the other at Sempringham, the home of the earl’s son), John got the impression that a number of Puritans (including Samuel Skelton, the chaplain of the Earl of Lincoln) favored non-conforming in the new colony without separating from the Anglican Church. Later in 1629, Cotton was upset to hear news that members of the Naumkeag (Salem) Church would not commune with members of the Church of England and appeared to be following the ways of Plymouth separatism. Rev. Samuel Skelton was the first minister of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Naumkeag (Salem) and Rev. Cotton wrote him a letter admonishing him for going the way of Plymouth and refusing to commune with his Anglican brethren.
Farewell Sermon to Winthrop’s Fleet: In 1630 John Cotton was invited to deliver a farewell sermon at Southampton to the largest number of English yet to migrate to the colonies in America. Heading the list of those to whom John addressed his sermon were John Winthrop governor-to-be of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Lady Arbella Johnson, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Lincoln.
The flagship of Winthrop’s fleet had been christened Arbella in honor of Lady Johnson. John Cotton’s sermon was entitled, ‘God’s Promise to His Plantation’, and was based on II Samuel 7:10 of the Geneva Bible. In his sermon John provided a scriptural basis for Puritans establishing a new home in America. “Also I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant it, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more.”
Rev. Cotton ended his sermon with an admonishment not to follow in the path of Naumkeag (Salem, Massachusetts) and cautioned Winthrop’s fleet as follows: “Forget not the wombe that bare you and the brest that gave you sucke. Even ducklings hatch under a henne, though they take the water, yet will still have recusre to the wing theat hatched them: how much more should chikens of he same feather, and yolke?”
Following the fleet’s departure, word came to Lincolnshire that Bishop William Laud succeeded in having been elected Chancellor of Oxford University in spite of opposition from the Bishop of Lincoln who controlled the votes of a number of Oxford Colleges including Lincoln, Balliol, Brasenose and Oriel. In contrast to Cambridge University’s being Puritan and Separatist, Oxford University was a pillar of conformity and Anglican orthodoxy. In Puritan circles, it was becoming obvious that William Laud coveted the position of Archbishop of Canterbury and was now well positioned to secure the post. As a result, it was unclear as to how long Puritanism could continue in Lincolnshire under the protection of the Bishop Lincoln and Boston’s Puritan aldermen.
Illness, Death & Renewal: In 1630, the same year the Winthrop fleet sailed for America, both John Cotton and his dear wife, Elizabeth, became gravely ill with tertian ague (malaria) caused by the mosquito-infested fens of Lincolnshire. Sir Theophilus Clinton, the 4th Earl of Lincoln, opened his manor as a hospital to John and Elizabeth while also providing sanctuary from the continued onslaught against Puritanism by Bishop Laud. Sir Theophilus Clinton was a staunch Puritan and one of the few British aristocrats who sat in Cromwell’s Parliament. The Cottons remained under the Earl’s care for nearly a year; while John slowly recovered, his beloved Elizabeth did not and she died in 1631.
The loss of Elizabeth weighed heavy on John Cotton who was now 46 years of age and childless after eighteen years of marriage. Being alone in the world, John resolved to travel and improve his health by visiting Puritan friends throughout the land. In John Cotton’s absence, his late wife’s cousin, Anthony Tuckney, presided over St. Botolph’s in relative safety because Tuckney still conformed though later he would convert to Puritanism and become Master of St. John’s College at Cambridge University.
During his travels, John Cotton grew to appreciate the fortunate position he and his congregation enjoyed under the protection of both the Bishop and the Earl of Lincoln. Elsewhere, William Laud openly hunted Puritans, summoned them to the High Court and imprisoned them where they were often subjected to mutilation by cropping their ears or branding their faces to serve as an example to other Puritans.
A year after the death of his beloved wife, Elizabeth, John Cotton again experienced the love of a good woman when his St. Botolph parishioners matched their Vicar with the daughter of the mayor of Boston, Sarah Hawkredd. Sarah had been widowed four years earlier at the age 30 when William Story, her husband of eight years, died leaving her with a daughter, Elizabeth, then age 6.
Sarah had been a dear friend of John’s first wife, Elizabeth, and was fourteen years younger than John when the two of them wed in St. Botolph’s Church on 6 April 1632. By all accounts, Sarah Hawkredd was an amazing woman who would soon abandon her childhood home to flee England with her new husband. Sarah bore seven children for John Cotton and outlived all three of her husbands to die in 1676 at Dorchester, Massachusetts at the age of 76.
A Summons to the High Court: Soon after remarrying, John learned from Puritan friends in London that he was to be summoned to the High Court for nonconformist Puritan practices and would surely end up being imprisoned.
From the time Crown Prince Charles ascended to the throne in 1624, Bishop Laud had ingratiated himself to the monarch through preaching the divine right of the king. Two days after the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, the king, Charles I, greeted William Laud in the following manner: “My Lord’s Grace of Canterbury, you are very welcome.”
Now that Laud had become too powerful for John Cotton’s friends in high places to be of any assistance, John went into hiding and sought advice from the venerable Puritan, John Dodd, who convinced him to leave England. John Cotton ruled out Holland as a destination after talking with an old Emmanuel College colleague , Thomas Hooker, who had just returned from the Lowlands. Hooker was considering sailing to New England in response to pleas from former parishioners that had settled there. When John Winthrop received word John Cotton had gone into hiding, he urged Rev. Cotton to join him as a large Lincolnshire contingent had already settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
On 7 May 1633, John resigned his ministry to the Bishop of Lincoln as follows: “The Lord, who began a year or two ago to suspend, after a sort, my ministry from that place (St. Botolph’s) by a long and sore sickness, the dregs whereof still hang about me, doth now put a further necessity upon me wholly to lay down my ministry there, and freely to resign my place into your Lordship’s hands.”
_________________________________________________
Bibliography
1 Everett H. Emerson, John Cotton, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1965
2 Larzer Ziff, The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American Experience, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1962
3 Samuel Whiting, “Concerning the Life of the Famous Mr. Cotton, Teacher of the Church of Christ at Boston, in New-England”, Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, Ed. Alexander Young, C. C. Little and J. Brown, Boston, 1846
4 John Norton, Memoir of John Cotton, Ed. Enoch Pond, Perkins & Marvin, Boston, 1834
5 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Boston, 1702
6 Benjamin Brook, “John Cotton, B. D.: The Lives of the Puritans, Vol.3, Soli Deo Gloria Publications, Morgan, PA, 1996 Reprint
7 Elizabeth Leeham-Green, A Concise History of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1996
8 Kenneth W. Kirkpatrick and John A. Brayton, “Cottoniana, or ‘That Cotton-Pickin’ Somerby”, The New Hampshire Genealogical Record, Vol. 16, No. 4, October 1999
9 Francis J. Bremer, Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the Anglo-American Puritan Community, 1660-1692, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1994
10 A.W. M’Clure, The Life of John Cotton, Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, Boston, 1846
11 David D. Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1968
12 James K. Hosmer, The Life of Young Sir Henry Vane: Governor of Massachusetts, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston & New York, 1889
13 Luciu R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts 1630-1877, H.O. Houghton & Company, Boston, 1877
14 Paul L. Ford, The New-England Primer: A History of Its Origin and Development, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1897
15 H.R. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud 1575-1645, Archon Books, Hamden, CT, 1963
16 John B. Threlfall, FASG, “Thomas Bradbury’s Cotton Ancestry”, The American Genealogist, Vol. 57
17 Justin Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston, Volume I of IV, James R. Osgood & Company, Boston, 1881
18 Mary C. Crawford, St. Botolph’s Town, An Account of Old Boston in Colonial Days, L.C. Page & Company, Boston, 1901
19 Samuel Drake Adams, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, 1st Edition by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1872; reprinted by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc. Rutland, Vermont, 1975
20 Fredrick L. Weis, The Colonial Clergy and The Colonial Churches of New England, Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1977
21 Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, Little, Brown and Co., Boston & Toronto, 1958
22 John Winthrop, The Journal of John Winthrop 1630-1649, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1996
23 Augustine Jones, The Life and Work of Thomas Dudley, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1899
Sources
1. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I.
2. John Wingate Thornton, Esq., LL.B., “Genealogies: The Cotton Family,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume I; Issue No. 2, April 1847, page 164.
3. Meredith B. Colket, Founders of Early American Families: Emigrants from Europe 1607 – 1657, The Order of Founders and Patriots of America, (Revised Edition), page 82.
4. Savage, James, Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Genealogical Publising Co. Inc., Baltimore 1965, Vol. III of IV, page 49.
5. “St. Alkmund’s Church Register,” 1550 -1650, Derby, Derbyshire, England, Parish Record Book, Derby, England, page for 1584.
6. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 19.
7. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 14.
8. “St. Botolph’s Church Records,” 1500-1600, Boston, Lincolnshire, England, Parish Record Book, Boston, Lincolnshire, England, page showing; Jan., Feb., March and April 1632.
9. The Geneologist, “Additions to the Ancestry of Sarah (Hawkredd) (Story)(Cotton) Mather of Boston, Lincolnshire,” John Anderson Brayton, Volume 21, No. 2, Fall 2007.
10. John Wingate Thornton, Esq., LL.B., “Genealogies: The Cotton Family,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume I; Issue No. 2, April 1847.
11. John Wingate Thornton, Esq., LL.B., “Genealogies: The Cotton Family,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume I; Issue No. 2, April 1847, page 174.
12. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 3.
13. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 5.
14. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 94.
15. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 53.
16. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 24.
17. Savage, James, Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Genealogical Publising Co. Inc., Baltimore 1965, Vol. III of IV, page 49, page 462.
18. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 7.
19. Dr. James Thacher, History of the Town of Plymouth, Original Published 1835, Boston, Parnassus Imprints, Yarmouthport, MA 1972, published through a grant from the Plymouth-Provincetown 350th Anniversary Commission, page 275.
20. Lee D. van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Ruth Wilder Sherman, Picton Press, page 2.
21. Barbour Collection, Connecticut Vital Records: Guilford- Births, Marriages, Deaths 1639-1850, Connecticut State Library 1924, Vol. A, page62.
22. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, pages 24 & 25.
23. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 11.
24. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 17.
25. Peter E. Vose, “Cotton-Vane Estate, Boston (Copied from the Original Documents),” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 36; Number 4, October 1882.
26. Robert Charles Anderson, F.A.S.G., The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), Vol. I-III (CD-ROM).
27. St. Botolph’s Church, Boston, Lincolnshire, England, 1596 to 1613, Baptism Records for children of Anthony Hawkred, Parish of St. Botolph’s Church, Leslie Mahler, Genealogical Researcher, per research notes of Mr. Leslie Mahler.
28. A Report of the Boston Records Commissioners, Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths 1630-1699, Whitmore, William H. and Appleton, Willam S., Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston 1883, Document 130 – 1883, page 21.