Individual Details

Lived in Rehoboth, RI, 1643; Moved to New Haven CT 1647; Moved to Guilford, New Haven County CT in 1654; Moved to Killingworth, Middlesex County CT in 1662.

Meigs was admitted a member of the court in New Haven, 24 Feb 1644 and admitted as a freeman the same year.

Records reveal he bought a lot at Hammonassett [Guilford] in March 1653/54.
John Meigs of East Guilford, CT, son of Vincent of the same place, was allotted land on 3 Mar 1653.
He was admitted a freeman in East Guilford, 1657.

From the Connecticut Colonial Records
http://www.colonialct.uconn.edu/
Vol. 2, p.525
Names of the freemen of the Towne of Kennelworth. Listed with lists from other town which were dated in the fall of 1669 although there was no date on the Kennelworth list. Of the nineteen names, four were my direct ancestors: Mr. Edward Griswold, Sam: Buel [married to Griswold's daughter Deborah], John Meigs Senr, Andrew Warde [married to Meigs' daughter Tryall] John Meigs Junr was also on the list.


The bequests in his will indicate they were a wealthy and educated family. He left substantial amounts of money and land to all his children. He left his books and writings to his son, John.

Their children were
Mary Meigs Stevens (1633),
John Meigs (1641),
Tryal Meigs Ward, (also named her sons Andrew & John)
Concurrence Meigs Crane, and
Elizabeth Meigs Hubbel.

I, John Meiggs, Senr., being of perfict Memory, though Sick of bodie, Do here Set down my last Will and Testament for the more quiett Settling of that Estate God hath given me, after I am dead.
Impt: I Give unto My Son John, besids my farme Houses, Barne, upland and meadow with all yt to me blongs at Hamonastit now called East and in Guilford plantation which I have formerly made over to him by waie of Deed and past as my last lagacye, all my wrightings, Books and manuscripts. also my book of Marters Rolls, History of ye World, Bacons, Thomas Bacons, also Simpson's English Greek Lexicon, and Thams Dixonarye.
Also to my Daughter Mary Stevens, I give fivety pounds in one Mare and part in Cattle and other part in Houshold Stuff all at ye prizes I have vallued them as will appear in a Schedule hereunto anexed this fivety pounds, it is my will to be made Sure to my Daughteer Mary, & after her Decease, to her Son Nathaniel or if he dye, to the next Brother, Suckseesively; if her Hssband Take This Estate into his hands, my will is that he Secure so much Lands to-wit: fifty pounds worth for The end aforesd.
Also to my Daughter Concurance Crane, I Give my new Dwelling House or houses, Barn, home lott with ye pasture thereunto adjoining as also my planting field lott, four acres and half more or less, as also my Last Divition, not laid out though agreed to be on ye Long hill; as also my meadow at the Bridge at Hammonaset River, both The Lott I had from The Town and ye Lott That was Goodman Walmen adjoining. As also my Lott of meadow next my Neck Lott, the pomt of Meadow. Also I Give her my Land on ye the great Hamak, lymg next to Andrew Wards, all which I and and Houses I So give to my Daughter Crane, as to Remaine to her during her naturall Life, and after her Death to her Son John and his Children, not to be allienated, if he die Childless, to Returne to his sister Elizabeth, or if She dye Childless, then to Concurance his Sister and not to be Sold or alienated from them.
To my daughter Tryall Ward, I Give my House and orchard and my grass plott at Guilford as also my Meadow at the Salt Roles, Eight acres more or less, lying next adjoining William Sewards, as also yt island of meadow, lying at the harbour or Mill Creek Mouth. That island of Meadow, lying at the Harbours or Mill Creeks mouth, yt formerly Serjent Jones's and the half of ytmeadowing adjoining to it, her husband having bought The other half allready of Son John. As also I give unto her That five acres of upland more or less That lyes on ye South Side of ye sd meadow butting upon it, as also I give her my last Division of meadow, lying next Richard Hubbels and ye North Side of the Creek against part of that meadow, her Husband bought of Jonathan Dunin, alias Singeltarye. Lastly I give her also my Neck Lott upland & Meadow as it is bounded and Recorded, and all this to Remaine to her During her natural Life and not to be altered or changed and after her Death to be her Sun Andrews, or if he die and have no Children then to Returne to his next Brother John and his seed.
Memorandum. To my Nephew Mary Hubble, as her Mother's portion, She being dead, I give Thirty pounds to be paid out of my movabells Estate, part in Cattle and part in House-holdsstuff with this provisoo, She being obedient to her Grand-Mother, and hving with her to the day of her, to-wit: her Grandmother's Death.
Lastly none of these Legacys are to be Demanded as due during the Life of my wife unto whom I give all my aforesd Estate Except my foresd farme at Hamonasitt aforemention to her ye with all ye Rest of my Estate not here mentioned, whom I make my Sole Executrixs of all my Estate for her owne use as aforesd : but not to give, Sell or alter the property of the Estate
John Meiggs.
Witness,
Josoah Hull, Jonas Westover,
Joseph Willcokson
June ye 4th, 1672, proved


John Meigs married in Weymouth, England, in 1632, Tamazin Fry.
CHILDREN [Tryall omitted in this account but plainly included in John Meigs' Will.}
MARY, b. Weymouth, Eng., 1633 ; m. March 3, 1653, William Stevens; d. April 30, 1703.
JOHN, b. Weymouth, Mass., Feb. 29, 1640; d. Nov. 9, 1713.
CONCURRENCE, b. Weymouth, Mass., 1643; m. Henry Crane of Killingworth ; d. Oct. 9, 1708.
ELIZABETH, b. _____; m. Richard Hubbell, Guilford, Conn. TRYAL, b. _____; m. 1668, Andrew Ward, Killingworth, Conn.
Primary Source: Fifty Puritan Ancestors: 1628 - 1660, Genealogical Notes - 1650 - 1900. By Elizabeth Todd Nash. New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor (1902) [Transcribed by Coralynn Brown].
*His main claim to fame is that during the English Civil War he helped hide William Goffe and Edward Whalley (Major Generals under Cromwell), fugitive members of the English High Court of Justice which condemned and executed King Charles I, when they fled to North America after the restoration of the monarchy. Meigs rode from Guilford to New Haven to warn the regicides that the Royal Commissioners were on their way to apprehend them, and that it was time for them to escape. This was considered treason against the Crown a century before our Revolution.


Resources from FamilySearch entry:
N O T E S 1. George Walter Chamberlain, History of Weymouth, Massachusetts, 4 vols. (Weymouth, 1923), 3:244 (Frye), 255-6 (Harris), 416 (Meigs), 4:562 (Rawlens). 2. Charles Henry Pope, The Pioneers of Massachusetts; a descriptive list, drawn from records of the Colonies, Towns, and Churches, and other contemporaneous documents (Boston, 1900), 177; Chamberlain’s Weymouth, 3:243-4; Donald Lines Jacobus, The Granberry Family (Hartford, Connecticut, 1945), 220. 3. Gale Ion Harris, “Walter and Mary (Fry) Harris of New London, Connecticut,” NEHGR 156 (2002), 145-58, 262-79, 357-72, 392 (correction), at p. 146, citing Burton W. Spear, Search for the Passengers of the Mary and John, 1630, v. 16 (199_): 39. 4. Henry Benjamin Meigs, Record of the descendants of Vincent Meigs who came from Dorsetshire, England, to America about 1635 (Baltimore, 1901), pp. 8, 166, 174, citing the Genealogical Department of the Boston Transcript, 22 Aug. 1900, and information from a “Miss C.L. Sands” and “Fayette M. Meigs, of California.” 5. Notably in H. Minot Pitman & Donald Lines Jacobus, Comstock-Thomas Ancestry of Richard Wilmot Comstock (1964), 182. The claim that Thomasine Fry(e) was from Weymouth (but without any statement concerning her parentage) is repeated in the obituary of John Meigs, NEHGR 84 (1930): 318, and in many other secondary works. 6. As pointed out in Frances Manwaring Caulkins, History of New London, Connecticut (New London, 1852), p. 269 n. 2. 7. Charles Harris, Walter Harris and some of his descendants (Cleveland, Ohio, 1922), 4. 8. Her identity is considered in Frederick J. Nicholson, “The Family of Jonas1 Humfrey of Dorchester, Massachusetts…,” The American Genealogist 68 (1993): 14-22, especially 17-18. 9. Since it implies that his sister Hannah (Fry) Rawlins’ youngest child was her son Thomas, and on 2 Dec. 1642 she gave birth to a younger son, Joshua, who certainly survived. 10. This will is printed in NEHGR 2(1848):385. 11. Evidence for the marriages of both daughters comes from William B. Trask, “Thomas Pierce, of Dorchester, and wife Mary,” NEHGR 39 (1885): 230-31. 12. Trask, op. cit., refutes earlier statements that this man m. Mary, daughter of George Proctor. 13. A large number of entries for Thomasine Fry in the IGI and in the LDS Pedigree Resource File claim without citation of record evidence that she was baptized (some say “born”) 29 Feb. 1612 at Weymouth. Another entry for Thomasine Fry in the LDS Pedigree Resource File seems to claim that she was bapt. 9 Feb 1613/4 at Axminster, Devon. 14. Henry Benjamin Meigs, Record of the descendants of Vincent Meigs who came from Dorsetshire, England, to America about 1635 (Baltimore, 1901), 8, 11, 172-76; there is also a second edition of this work, revised by Return Jonathan Meigs IX (Westfield, N.J., 1935). 15. Information from Rockne Johnson. 16. Charles William Manwaring, A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records, 3 (?) vols. (Hartford, 1904–), 1:330. 17. The Hon. R.D. Smith, “John Stephens of Guilford (Conn.) and his Descendants,” NEHGR 56 (1902): 356-61, at pp. 358 ff.; Clarence Etienne Leonard, The Fulton-Hayden-Warner Ancestry in America (New York, 1923), 66; Obituary of Mrs. Sarah Frances (Stevens) Dearborn, NEHGR 84 (1930): 222; Ruth Lee Griswold, A Narrative of the Griswold Family [descended] from Thomas Griwold, Esq.re, of Weathersfield and Guilford, 1695 (Rutland, Vermont, 1931), 16, 17. 18. Rebecca Donaldson Beach & Rebecca Donaldson Gibbons, The Reverend John Beach and his Descendants (New Haven, 1898), 185-6; Walter Hubbell, History of the Hubbell family; containing genealogical records of the ancestors and descendants of Richard Hubbell from A.D. 1086 to A.D. 1915, 2nd ed. (New York, 1915), 195; various lines of descent are treated briefly in An American Family: Botsford-Marble Ancestral Lines, compiled for Otis Marble Botsford by Donald Lines Jacobus (New Haven, Conn., 1933), and in the obituary of James Floyd Hubbell, NEHGR 103 (1949): 226. 19. The Rev. Jonathan Crane, “The Crane Family,” NEHGR 27 (1873): 76-78, at p. 77; Ruth Lee Griswold, A Narrative of the Griswold Family, 101, 102-3. 20. Cemetery Transcriptions from the NEHGS Manuscript Collections. 21. In addition to the Meigs genealogy, see Ruth Lee Griswold, A Narrative of the Griswold Family, 42. 22. Obituary of Col. James Ward, NEHGR 11 (1857): 94-5; George K. Ward, Andrew Warde and his descendants, 1597-1910 (New York, 1910), 30 ff.; Clarence Etienne Leonard, The Fulton-Hayden-Warner Ancestry in America, 552. 23. Josephine C. Frost, Ancestors of Henry Ward Beecher and his wife Eunice White Bullard (1927), 70-72; Notable Kin: an anthology of columns first published in the NEHGS NEXUS, comp. Gary Boyd Roberts, 2 vols. (Santa Clarita, California: Carl Boyer, 1998, 1999), 1:175. 24. This line is shown in the LDS Ancestral file (albeit with false ancestry for the mother of Trial Meigs). This descent, and the Meigs family in general, is treated in Mary Audentia Smith Anderson, Ancestry and Posterity of Joseph Smith and Emma Hale (Independence, Missouri, 1929), but we have not had access to a copy of that work. 25. As he did not survive his wife Anna, he could not have married secondly the widow Sarah (____) Murdock, as claimed in the sketchy account of this family in Samuel Deane, History of Scituate, Massachusetts (1831), 330. 26. John R. Rollins,

Christen	29 Jan 1612/13	Chardstock, Dorsetshire, England
Marriage	Abt 1632	England - TAMASIN FRY
Death	4 Jan 1671/72	Killingworth, New London County, Connecticut

Spouse	TAMASIN FRY (1615 - )
Child	Mary Meigs (1633 - 1703)
Child	Elizabeth Meigs (1635 - 1664)
Child	John Meigs (1641 - 1713)
Child	Concurrence Meigs (1643 - 1708)
Child	TRYALL MEIGS (1647 - 1690)

Father	VINCENT MEIGS (1580 - 1658)
Mother	Emma Stronge ( - )
Sibling	Vincent MEIGS ( - )
Sibling	Mary MEIGS ( - )
Sibling	Mark MEIGS ( - )