Notes |
- Source: The Great Migration Begins 1620-1633, Vol. I, NEHGS, pub. 1995, pages 203-206.
Origin: Sudbury, Suffolk, England Migration: 1632 First Residence: Boston Removes: Braintree 1641
Return Trips: Travelled to England in 1633 for his marriage, and then returned to New England in 1634.
Occupation: Husbandman. Boston jailkeeper (1637-1640).
Church Membership: Admitted to Boston church as member #144 which would be shortly before 11 November 1632. Richard and Alice were dismissed from the Boston church to the Braintree church on 8 May 1642.
Freeman: 25 May 1636
Education: Sufficient to be Braintree clerk of writs. Signed will with shaky hand.
Offices: Deputy for Braintree to General Court (as "Capt. Richard Brackett"), May of 1655, 1665, 1667, 1671, 1672, 1674 (and October 1674), 1680 and January 1680/1. Commisioner to meet with men of Plymouth "to lay out that marsh lying at Connahassett", 29 May 1655. Commissioner to lay out land, December 1683. Appointed by General Court "to join persons in marriage in the town of Braintry...also to administer oaths in civil cased," October 1679. Braintree selectman in 1652, 1653, 1670, 1672, 1683. Braintree clerk of writs, 1646 to 1654. Admitted to Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1639 and was granted his request to lay down his arms as chief military commander in Braintry on October 15 1684...due to infirmaties of age being above 73 years of age.
Estate: named the following- wife, Alice Brackett of Braintree; to the children of son John "by his wife Hannah Brackett", to son Peter Brackett, son-in-law Simon Crosbey and son-in-law Joseph Thompson; to "the two daughters of my son Josiah deceased Elizabeth and Sarah; to my son James Brackett; to my son-in-law Joseph Crosby; to "my daughter Hannah Blancher", to "my daughter Rachell Crosby; "to my grandchild Abigall Tompson"; to Hannah Brackett the daughter of my son John; "to Anna Crosby daughter of my son Joseph Crosby."
Associations: Through his mother and his wife Richard Brackett became a member of, and the first immigrant from, the largest kinship network as yet uncovered among the participants in the Great Migration, a network worked out mostly by Mary Lovering Holman, John Brooks Trelfall and Douglas Richardson. (See John Brooks Trelfall, Fifty Great Migration Colonists to New England & Their Origins (Madison, Wisconsin, 1990).
Richard Brackett was son of Peter Brackett and his wife Rachell; another son of this couple was Peter Brackett who came to Braintree about 1636 (TAG 52:65-75m 92). About 1618 Rachel, the mother of the two Brackett immigrants, married secondly Martin Sanders, and in 1635 Sanders, his wife, and their Sander children, along with Rachel (Brackett) Newcomb (sister of Richard and Peter Brackett), her husband, Francis Newcomb, and their children sailed for New England on the "Planter" (Hotten 48-49, TAG 55:215-217).
Alice Blower was daughter of Thomas and Alice (Frost) Blower; she may have had two brothers who came to New England, and her father certainly came to New England in 1635, but apparently died soon (TAG 52:73-75; see also NEHGR 139:148-49), Her mother, Alice Frost, was sister of Thomasine Frost, who married Edmund Rice, imigrant to Sudbury, and also of Elizabeth Frost, who married first Henry Rice and then Philemon Whale, the latter also an immigrant to Sudbury (TAG 15:227,26:10-11; TG 6:131-41; Stevens-Miller Anc 143-44).
Taking into accounts all these persons and their children, then, there were more than forty future immigrants to New England who were related to Richard Brackett by blood or marriage before their departure from England."
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