Introduction
For the user of this set of volumes to understand what is being presented, we must define carefully the scope of the Great Migration Study Project. Who were the participants in the Great Migration? What information is being collected on these people?
Criteria for Inclusion in The Great Migration Begins
The first phase of the Great Migration Study Project attempts to identify and describe all those Europeans who settled in New England prior to the end of 1633. The date was chosen because of the steep increase in migration beginning in 1634 and continuing for the rest of that decade (see Robert Charles Anderson, "A Note on the Pace of the Great Migration," The New England Quarterly 59 [1986]:406-07). As a rough estimate, about 15 percent of the immigrants to New England arrived in the fourteen years from 1620 to 1633, with the remaining 85 percent coming over in half as many years, from 1634 to 1640.
The volumes contained in this database may be viewed at the NEHGS Research Library in Boston, call number REF F7/G74.
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Citation Information:
The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Volumes I-III (Online database: NewEnglandAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2002), (Orig. Pub. New England Historic Genealogical Society. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Volumes I-III, 3 vols., 1995).
ORIGIN: Soldier in Low Countries MIGRATION: 1630 FIRST RESIDENCE: Charlestown REMOVES: York 1632 RETURN TRIPS: In England 1631, returned to New England 1632 OCCUPATION: Soldier. In a petition of 26 February 1628/9 to the Council of War, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Norton outlined his service in the Low Countries from 1625 to 1627 under the commission of the Duke of Buckingham, and asked for back pay for himself and his officers; he related that he was "taken prisoner in the Isle of Rees [Rhe] on the day of the retreat with 63 pieces about him, and having then also his only son being his ensign, together with his lieutenant slain in that service" [ PRO SP16/136]. FREEMAN: Requested 19 October 1630 and admitted 18 May 1631 (both times as "Capt. Walter Norton") [ MBCR 1:80, 366]. ESTATE: In the list of those admitted as inhabitants of Charlestown in 1630, "Captain Norton" is included as one of the four who "went & built in the main on the northeast side of the northwest creek of this town" [ ChTR 5]. "Walter Norton," Lieutenant Colonel, of New England, was one of the patentees of Agamenticus [York] in the original grant of 2 December 1631 and in the revised patent of 2 March 1631/2 [ York Hist 86-88]. On 16 June 1688 "Jane Simpson alias Bond" of York as "the sole and only heir of my father Captain Walter Norton deceased" sold to "my only son Henry Simpson with whom I do now dwell and reside" "all my lands, cattle, goods, chattels and whatsoever other interests belonged to my abovesaid father Capt. Norton deceased and afterward enjoyed by my former husband Henry Simpson deceased" [ YLR 6:74]. BIRTH: About 1580, son of Thomas and Alice (Cranmer) Norton [ TAG 16:107-09]. DEATH: Murdered by Pequots at mouth of Connecticut River in the summer of 1633. (On 21 January 1633/4 Winthrop reported that "News came from Plimouth, that Capt. Stone, who this last summer went out of the bay or lake, and so to Aquamenticus, where he took in Capt. Norton, putting in at the mouth of Connecticut, in his way to Virginia, where the Pequins inhabit, was there cut off by them, with all his company, being eight" [ WJ 1:146], and then goes on to provide details of the manner in which the Pequots carried out the massacre [see also WJ 1:176-77]. In his account of this incident Bradford tells us that "Captain Norton defended himself a long time against them all in the cook room, till by accident the gunpowder took fire which for readiness he had set in an open thing before him, which did so burn and scald him and blind his eyes as he could make no longer resistance but was slain also by them, though they much commended his valor" [ Bradford 269-70; see also York Hist 90-91].) MARRIAGE: (1) By about 1605 Jane (Reeve) Reynolds; d. before about 1618. (2) By about 1618 Eleanor _____; she m. (2) by about 1638 William Hooke [ YLR 8:261-62]. CHILDREN:
With second wife
ASSOCIATIONS: Walter Norton's eldest brother was Henry Norton, whose son Henry came to New England in 1634 [ TAG 16:113; GDMNH 514]. One of Walter Norton's sisters married Sir George Coppyn, and they had a son, THOMAS COPPYN , who was a co-patentee with Walter Norton in the grant of Agamenticus; in the patent Thomas Coppyn is said to be of New England, but there is no other record of him on this side of the Atlantic. Other patentees were "Robert Norton, Esq., Richard Norton, gent., [and] George Norton of Sharpenhow in the County of Bedford" [ York Hist 86-87; see TAG 16:101-15 for the connections between these men and Walter Norton]. COMMENTS: All secondary sources refer to the first wife of Walter Norton as "Jane (Reeve) Reynolds" [e.g., GDMNH 514, TAG 16:114], but none provides the evidence for this marriage. These sources are also unanimous in stating that Jane, the only daughter of Walter Norton, was by the second wife Eleanor. This implies, however, that Eleanor had a child in about 1618 and then, after a gap of about twenty years, had three or four more children by William Hooke. This may be an indication that daughter Jane was actually a child of the first wife, or that there was a third wife, between Jane (Reeve) Reynolds and Eleanor _____. Pope incorrectly assigns the 1630 Charlestown residence to Capt. Francis Norton, who did not arrive in New England until late in the 1630s. |
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