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History and Genealogy of "Elder" John Whipple of Ipswich, Massachusetts His English Ancestors and American Descendants

by Blaine Whipple

667 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0039; ISBN 1-55395-676-1; US$49.95, C$62.00, EUR40.30, £27.93

The subject is "Elder" John Whipple of Ipswich, Massachusetts and 6.880 of his American Descendants. The book is divided into two sections- historical and genealogical

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About the Book Four men with the surname Whipple were in the American colonies by the early 1630s. This book is about one of those men: "Elder" John Whipple of Ipswich, Massachusetts and his 6,880 American descendants, covering 15 generations. In addition to these lineages, the book offers a social history of various family members beginning with John's father, Matthew, Sr., a successful Clothier of Bocking, Essex Co., England who was born about 1560. Many of the most prominent families of early colonial America married into the Whipple family. Included in the pages of this book are members of the Dea. Simon Stone family of Great Bromley, England and Watertown, Mass.; Samuel Appleton of Little Waldingfield, England and Ipswich; William Goddard of London and Watertown; Thomas Hinckley, last govenor of Plymouth colony; Humphrey Reynor of England and Rowley; Daniel Denison , major general of the Massachusetts colony; Dr. Comfort Starr of Canbrook, Kent Co., England and Suffolk Co., Mass.; Dea. William Goodhue of England and Ipswich; Job Lane of England and Malden Mass.; etc. A full biography of general William Whipple, New Hampshire singer of the Declaration of Independence, is presented. Other biographies include president Calvin Coolidge; Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross; James Russell Lowell, author and diplomat; Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; professor Albert Enoch Pillsburry who taught consitutional law at Boston university; and many other. REVIEWS   "Rarely does one come across a family history text of this depth.  Ambitious and rich in detail, it is a genealogical compilation and also a historical accounting that will appeal to students of colonial American history.  Extensive historical backdrop has been intertwined with Whipple family story, expanding its time span and subject."   "Chapter endnotes-some of them massive in numbe-include valuable narrative information in addition to source citations."   ". . . this  book represents a unique text that will appeal to those interested in Whipple family history and in American colonial history.  It is unsurpassed in detail, a captivating read, and a massive fait accompli." Diane Ptak, CLS The full review can be seen in Vol. 93, No. 1, March 2005 of National Genealogical Society Quarterly

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About the Author Blaine Whipple has been a commercial real estate broker in Portland, Oreg. since 1963 and authored a 202 page genealogy on his maternal family, Scott, in 1981. He is president of the Roots Users Group of Portland, a self-help group of amateur genealogists; former editor of the Gena Log, a quarterly newsletter of the Washington Country (Oreg.) famly History Society; a contributor to Heritage Quest The Genealogy Magazine; and a memeber of a number of genealogical societies in various parts of the U.S. He began his genealogical work on brothers Matthew and John Whipple of Bocking and Ipswich in the early 1950s doing original research in Bocking and in the various communities in the U.S. settled by his Whipple ancestors. He has served as an Oregon State Senator, School Board Chairman, Water District Chairmen, Fire District Treasurer, and Emergency Medical Service District Board member. He has degrees from the U. Of Minnesota and the U. Of Oregon and is married with three children and five grandchildren.

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Sample Excerpts

Chapter 1.

THE WHIPPLES OF BOCKING, ESSEX COUNTY, ENGLAND

Parish records from Bocking's St. Mary's church, Matthew's will dated 19 December 1616, Abstracts of English Records for the Ancestry of Matthew Whipple c 1560-1618, and original research in adjacent parish records are some of the sources for information on the family.

Matthew's 1616 will was written in English and the probate in Latin leading us to believe he was educated. School for boys began at age 7 and Matthew probably had a new satchel to carry books and papers, a sharp penknife, and some candles when he arrived for his first day of school. The boys sat on hard benches, two sharing each of the slanted oak desks set in rows in a heavy-beamed, high-ceiling room. The school, always cold in wintertime, brought on an endless runny nose and fingers stiff as twigs. In summer afternoons the room was as sweaty as a chimney corner. There Matthew would have labored every day except Sunday under the unblinking gaze of the tall, thin, weary master perched on a stool in front of the class with a supple birch rod ready for use. Behind, unseen but always felt, was the usher watching everything. It was a long heavy-lidded day from first light until first stars.

The curriculum included mathematics, English, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Students learned to write, in prose and verse in the slowly dying tongue of Caesar and Cicero. Their memory was enhanced by a ferule laid smartly across an open palm or swollen knuckles and/or by the master's birch rod as it struck the flinching bare flesh of their backside. William Lily's A Short Introduction of Grammar and Nicholas Udall's Flowers of Latin Speaking were the Latin texts and it was learned by heart through ceaseless exercises of recitation. The Hebrew grammar was also by Udall. The Greek text was William Camden's 1597 grammar. Reading assignments includes authors Aesop, Cato, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Theognis, and Virgil.

As he headed toward manhood, he would have listened and occasionally participated in the endless debates on religion. His fellow citizens talked freely and openly and passionately on delicate subjects such as transubstantiation, predestination, the true and proper nature and number of the holy sacraments; the virtues and faults and strengths and weaknesses of the Book of Common Prayer, the best ways and means to translate the scriptures into the common tongue; the thorny questions of whether good works count with God or whether man could be justified by faith alone; whether the Pope in Rome is the anti-Christ; the place and purpose if any, for altars and images and vestments and candles and incense, whether these were morally neutral or merely tolerable and foolish things or whether there was any place for these things in a reformed and purified service of worship; it there should be by name and title, bishops; if priests should marry; if married people may ever lawfully divorce; should private conscience or civil and public ordinances prevail.

He was probably about 16 when he made his first trip to London. He had listened many times to travelers speak of the city and had undoubtedly formed an impression - probably Jerusalem and Babylon with bits and pieces of Sodom and Gomorrah. Traveling there he would have been amazed by the numbers of birds in the countryside and the sounds of bells tolling and ringing to each other in the towns and villages he passed through on the 45 mile journey. There were bells of every tone of voice from cockcrow day bell at first light until evening curfew and finally ending with the solemn tolling of midnight. Many towns and villages had their own language of bells - bells to announce birth, death, baptisms, burial, the marriage feast, and the call to prayer and communion.

Eventually the city appeared straight ahead of him, across fields with scattered houses, buildings, and churches rising to fill the wide horizon. There stood the battlement wall, like a vast painted cloth, with its gates and gate houses and towers. The spires and the steeples of the churches must have seemed like a wild forest stretching from the White Tower to the town of London to St. Paul's church atop its hill. Weathervanes sparkled from the four corners of each. The towers and long roof of St. Peter's church at Westminister Abbey, the Old Palace, Whitehall Palace, and the great houses lining the banks of the Thames must have been beyond his imagination. This ancient city, built between and among low hills and marshy ground by a river, would have seemed newly baptized to the eyes of this sixteen-year old.

As any first time visitor would, he explored it all. He would have gone to the Smithfield market, easy to identify by its odors of hay and manure and the warm scents of cows, horses, sheep. and swine. On to St. Nicholas Shambles (next to Newgate) where the smell of the butcher and poulterer mingle. He followed his nose around London and found the dry fatty stink of the skinners tanning their furs in an area known at the Peltry. The musty odors of all kinds of grain were on Lombard street near its intersection with Bridge street. Fresh fruits and vegetables mixing with the odors of bake house and brew house meant he was just south of St. Paul's churchyard in Carter lane. Just west of Knightrider on Thames street was the garlic market.

As he explored the wonders of this city, a new essence suddenly exploded upon him. His sense of smell would have been flooded with a paradise of spices - mace and cinnamon, almonds and anise, ginger and clove and nutmeg. The essence of all these were happily confused with black English peppermint, rosemary, wild thyme, sweet violet, chamomile, lemon scented sweet flag, sweet cicely, and sweet woodruff, as licorice as any anise seed.

And for a penny he could climb the tower of St. Paul's, see the Tower of London and the wondrous zoo there, get a guided tour of Westminister Abbey and touch the graves of kings. At the King's Head tavern he would have been introduced to oysters in bastard gravy - cooked with ale and bread crumbs and seasoned with ginger and pepper and sugar and saffron. On to the Mermaid for a salad of boiled turnips and beets and carrots followed by sturgeon cooked in claret, some chicken and fruit in a pie, and ending with a sweet pie of apples and oranges. He must have believed it was a meal even the Queen couldn't top.

Chapter 2

SEA VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND

The ships were not built for passengers so the colonists had to adjust to the inconveniences of a freight-carrying vessel. The more important passengers booked tiny cabins in the poop deck containing an upper and lower bunk no larger than coffins. Though unbelievably cramped, these cabins were luxurious compared to the rest of the passengers who slept on hammocks and pallets in the hold. Cabin passengers had a tiny square porthole and a bucket dangling on a rope for the disposal of bodily waste. The common folk had no privacy at all and were kept under the hatches during prolonged storms. It is left to the reader's imagination how sanitary needs were met. Livestock were carried on the same ships and suffered more than the passengers as they were housed on the storm-swept decks.

On their initial tour of what would be their home for up to 12 weeks, Matthew and John probably began by descending through the hatch by ladder to the 'tween decks,' an area six feet high, where many of the passenger's hammocks were slung. Even though the stench was strong and the light poor, it was the preferred space since it had portholes. Down another hatch was the dark, smoky hold where a small hearth had been built of fire bricks. Here the ship's cook made a stew of salt beef and dried peas in an enormous iron pot, dinner for the common folk and the sailors. Officers and cabin passengers had a separate galley under the poop.

About the seventh week many of the ships were still battered by contrary winds and suffered fog so heavy they lost sight of vessels traveling with them. Sudden gales and fierce rainstorms kept passengers below deck and the usual accidents happened: the flying jib tore off in a heavy sea, some of the shrouds on the mizzen parted, and a sailor fell from the rigging of the mainmast, breaking a leg.

When they sighted a ship with an unfamiliar rig, they probably thought it was an enemy privateer and manned the guns. But usually it turned out to be a harmless Danish trader bound for home with cod from the Grand Banks. Pods of whales, each almost as big as the ship, frolicked too close for comfort. When goats or cattle died they were quickly eaten since several casks of provisions spoiled on every voyage.

Chapter 3

THE "ELDER" JOHN WHIPPLE FAMILY

John Whipple became a freeman in 1640, served eight terms in the general court, was a feoffee of the grammar school, clerk of writs, deacon of the church beginning in 1642, church elder beginning in 1658, and a farmer and businessman.

To be elected, both deacons and elders had to demonstrate they were "tried and proved, honest, and of good report." Scripture determined qualifications. "Elders must be blameless, sober, apt to teach, and imbued with such as other qualifications as are laid down in 1 Timothy 3 and 2 and Titus: 1, 6 to 9."

Deacons, sometimes called "Helps," were responsible for the temporal, not the spiritual, needs of the church. They were to have "the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, endured with the Holy Ghost," to be "grave, not double tongued, not given too much to wine, not given to filthy lucre." They received offering and gifts, kept the treasury, and served the Tables of the church: "the Lord's Table, the table of the ministers, and of such as are in necessity, to whom they are to distribute in simplicity." When contributions waned, they spurred greater giving. They were to keep dogs out of the meeting house on Sabbath or Lecture days between noon and 3:00 and keep the meeting house water tight.

Elders joined pastors and teachers in acts of spiritual rule but did not participate in teaching and preaching. They were expected to have attained "wisdom and judgment endued with the Spirit of God, able to discern between cause and cause, between plea and plea, and accordingly to prevent and redress evils, always vigilant and intending to see the statutes, ordinances, and laws of God kept in the church, and that not only by the people in obedience, but to see the officers do their duties." They "must be of life likewise unreprovable, governing their own families orderly...of manners sober, gentle, modest, loving, temperate."

Ruling meant they were to call the church together upon any weighty occasion. Members were obliged to attend, could not leave until dismissed, could not speak until recognized by the elders, could be silenced in mid sentence, and could not contradict the judgment or sentence of elders without "sufficient and weighty cause."

Chapter 4

CAPTAIN JOHN WHIPPLE FAMILY

It is hard to imagine John Whipple, Jr. acquiring an estate of £3,000 and matching his accomplishments had he remained in Bocking, England. He had to be a man of energy and drive to accomplish so much. A man in similar circumstances in Bocking would have spent as much labor and cost for an acre or two of land. John saw opportunity in the new land and took advantage of it.

He died of an unknown sickness August 10, 1683. His will, written eight days before his death, included language that he was "not like (sic) to escape this sickness." Elizabeth, his "beloved wife, was to enjoy one half of my dwelling house so long as she shall see cause to live therein." His daughters Sarah, 12, and Susanna, 22, wife of maj. John Lane, were each to receive £150. If she was willing, Sarah was to be brought up by her stepmother with her maintenance to come from the estate. She was to receive the £150 at "the time of her marriage or when she comes to one and twenty years of age." He made specific bequests to sons John, Matthew, and Joseph.

Chapter 5

SARAH WHIPPLE AND DEACON JOSEPH GOODHUE

Sarah was the only child born to John and Susannah in Massachusetts, making her the first generation American of this branch of the Whipple family tree. She was exposed to the many facets of her father's life and unlike most girls of that time learned to read and write.

In July 1681, pregnant with twins and the mother of three sons and four daughters born in her first 20 years of marriage, Sarah had a strong premonition she would die in childbirth and wrote a letter to her husband found after death - she died six days after the date of the letter. She wrote of her profoundly religious life, "her joy in the Lord and her delight in sermons and all religious exercises" and of her tender affection for her husband and children.

The letter, addressed to her "dear and loving husband" included messages to her children, siblings, and in-laws. She wrote that she believed that the Lord had "fit me for himself" and that she would die "either at my travail, or soon after it. I am very willing to enjoy thy company and my children longer [but] if it be the will of the Lord that I must not, I hope I can say cheerfully the will of the Lord be done."

Sarah's "Valedictory and Monitory Writing," reproduced in full here, is a classic in the annals of the olden times. It reveals the depths of spiritual experience that underlay the severe legalism of the old Puritan religion. The literary style is chaste and beautiful and suggests a cultured and luminous atmosphere in her early home.

Chapter 6

GENERAL WILLIAM WHIPPLE, NEW HAMPSHIRE SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Previous biographers have emphasized William Whipple's lack of participation in public affairs prior to the revolution. It is obvious they failed to do their research. His participation in public life began in 1760, 16 years before he signed the Declaration of Independence. In the 1770s when problems with England escalated, his Portsmouth neighbors consistently elected him to committees to deal with these problems and to the legislature where he immediately became a leader. In 1775 he was on the provincial committee of correspondence and was chairman pro tem of the committee of safety, the executive body running the providence. In 1776 he was selected third of the 12 councilors to run the colony.

He served in the continental congress from February 29, 1776 to September 25, 1779, longer than any other New Hampshire delegate. Between sessions, as brigadier general of the New Hampshire militia, he was one of the negotiators of gen. John Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga in October 1777 - considered the turning point of the war -- and commanded a militia brigade in the 1778 Rhode Island campaign. After leaving congress, he represented Portsmouth in the state legislature and was judge of the superior court. He declined federal appointment as commissioner of admiralty in 1779 but served the federal government as New Hampshire receiver of the United States and as presiding judge of the federal court hearing the 1782 dispute between Pennsylvania and Connecticut. He as ahead of his time in medical science, advocating inoculation for small pox and authorized an autopsy on his body,

Whipple quickly became one of the work horses of congress. His colleagues recognized both his people skills and broad knowledge of marine and foreign affairs, money and taxation, and commerce and military affairs. He was named to the most important committees, chaired the naval, foreign affairs, and tax committees, and was a ranking member on military and quartermaster committees. He served on scores of sub committees, chairing many of them.

Whipple's crowning virtue was hopefulness, something badly needed in the dark and discouraging days of 1777. His persistent and contagious hopefulness was always there to inspire his colleague Josiah Bartlett who had previously served as a New Hampshire delegate and was often the victim of doubt, despair, and gloom. In a February letter Whipple wrote "I am sorry you want any thing to keep up your spirits. I should think the glorious cause in which we are engaged is sufficient for that purpose. The prospect of laying a foundation of liberty and happiness for posterity and securing an asylum for all who wish to enjoy those blessings is an object in my opinion sufficient to raise the mind above every misfortune."

Bartlett wrote Whipple in September 1777 how important it was for him to accept reelection because peace negotiations were to begin and Whipple's abilities were needed. "I hope...you will have as great a hand in making peace and confirming our independence as you had in carrying on the war and declaring total separation from Britain."

French insistence in January 1779 that congress enter into peace negotiations with England occupied a great deal of Whipple's time as chairman of the foreign affairs committee. The French minister plenipotentiary Conrad-Alexandre Gérard told Whipple's committee on February 15 it had to decide on issues critical to a peace conference. Whipple surveyed his committee and the consensus was the negotiations could only begin after Great Britain acknowledged "the absolute and unlimited liberty, sovereignty, and independence" of the United States in matters of government and commerce. Whipple wrote Bartlett that he anticipated that congress would receive British peace proposals in the spring but didn't expect them to include independence. He said his bottom line for an acceptable peace was independence, Britain "quitting all pretensions to Canada and Nova Scotia, and dividing Florida with Spain."

Despairing of victory, Bartlett wrote back advocating peace. In a strong letter dated February 18, Whipple, in an attempt to strengthen Bartlett's resolve, wrote the country could and would eventually win. "Peace...is desirable but...a secondary object. War with all its horrors is preferable to an inglorious peace. I hope we never consent to a peace [that leaves our] posterity greater evils that we have suffered. I [believe] there is virtue enough in the army to undergo the fatigues of one more campaign. By the last accounts from Europe, American affairs have a much better aspect there than here. [I cannot share] the particulars but...I shall e'er long have it in my power to...dispel those gloomy forebodings that pervade your mind.

GENEALOGY

The genealogical section includes 6,910 individuals, 1,570 surnames, and 2,544 marriages. The period covered is from about 1560 in England to October 2001 in the United States and includes 15 generations. The individuals have been identified by hundreds of family historians who claim descent from the earliest known Whipple ancestors from Bocking. Some lineages are explored more extensively than other.

Sources are cited in endnotes which are as diverse as vital statistics, town and county histories, cemetery and church records, Bible, probate, and guardianship records, deed records, personal knowledge of the provider of the information, etc. Documentation is from primary and secondary sources.

The genealogical format follows the modified Register style where all children receive an Arabic number in birth order beginning with the next number after the last number used in the previous generation. Children whose line continue have a plus (+) in front of their number. Names of main persons are printed in bold upper/lower case letters.

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Catalogue Information