Humphrey Atherton

Humphrey Atherton of Dorchester rose to "the highest military rank in colonial New England" (source). He first appears in the Dorchester records in March 1637 and was made a freeman in May 1638. He organized the town's first train band, with Hopestill Foster as his ensign from 1644, and as a lieutenant in 1645 he led the relief of Uncas at Mohegan (Soldiers in King Philip's War, p. 21). He belonged to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and was the town's deputy, an assistant of the colony, and in 1653 Speaker of the House. In 1656 he was made Major-General, the chief officer of the colony's militia, and from 1658 he was superintendent of the praying Indians; the Commissioners of the United Colonies paid him "for keeping courts amongst the Indians in diuers places and Instructing them in theire ciuell conversation" (Plymouth Colony Records 10:205). As a magistrate he married many Dorchester couples, "by Major Atherton," in 1658-60 (source).

He was hard on those the colony feared. Sent with twenty armed men to collect the fine laid on the Narragansett sachem Pessicus, "Atherton forced his way, pistol in hand, into the wigwam, and, seizing the Sachem by the hair, dragged him out, threatening instant death if any resistance was offered" (Arnold's history, as quoted). He helped bring about the execution of Ann Hibbins for witchcraft in 1656, and at Mary Dyer's hanging in 1660 he is said to have remarked, "She hangs there like a flag." With John Winthrop Jr. and others he bought Narragansett lands as the Atherton Company (source).

He died on 17 Sept 1661. Riding home across Boston Common after drilling his troops, his horse collided with a cow and threw him. The Quakers saw a judgment in it: Joseph Besse wrote that "his horse, suddenly affrighted, threw him with such violence, that he instantly died," and Longfellow put the scene into his play John Endicott: "His horse took fright, and threw him to the ground, so that his brains were dashed about the street." His stone in the Dorchester North Burying Ground reads:

Here lies our Captain & Major of Suffolk was withall; A godly magistrate was he, and Major General; Two troop horse with him here comes, such worth his love did crave Two companies of foot also mourning march to his grave, Let all that read be sure to keep the faith as he has done With Christ he lives now crowned, his name was Humphrey Atherton.

Administration of his estate went to his eldest son Jonathan and three sons-in-law, Timothy Mather, James Trowbridge and Obadiah Swift (source). His children with his wife Mary included Jonathan, Increase, Rev. Hope Atherton of Hadley, Consider and Watching, and daughters married to Timothy Mather, James Trowbridge, Obadiah Swift, Thomas Bird and Isaac Humphrey. The Mather genealogy calls him the ancestor, "on the maternal side ... of all of the New England Mathers that settled in Connecticut" (source).

The Narragansett purchases and the war. In 1659 Atherton and his partners bought Quidnesett and Namcook from Coginaquand (Potter, Early History of Narragansett, pp. 58, 235); Roger Williams had refused his offers of land to interpret for him (p. 59). After the Commissioners of the United Colonies fined the Narragansett sachems, a force sent by Connecticut "compelled the Sachems, Sept. 29, 1660, to mortgage the whole Narragansett country to the Commissioners of the colonies, for a fine of 595 fathoms wampum" (Potter p. 61); the mortgage of "all our whole Countrey," by "Quissoquus," Ninigret and Scuttup, is in the Commissioners' records (PCR 10:449). On 30 Oct 1660 the sachems mortgaged "all the unsold lands in Narragansett to Atherthon & Co." on condition that the company pay the fine. Atherton paid it, and in the spring of 1662, after his death, Scuttup and Ninigret delivered possession (Potter p. 61), "by turf and twig," to Hutchinson, Hudson and Smith on behalf of "Major Atherton and partners" (p. 235). On 20 Mar 1664/5 the King's commissioners declared the purchases of "Major Atherton, Capt. Hudson and others" void (pp. 179-181), but a commission of 1683 upheld the proprietors (pp. 233-236). The quarrel, as Potter put it, turned "wholly on the question of jurisdiction" (p. 61), and it ran on into the war. In February 1675/6 John Easton, deputy governor of Rhode Island, wrote that the English "have had much contention against those indians to invaled the kings determenation for naroganset to be in our colony, and we have Case to think it was the greatest Case of the war against them" (Lincoln, Narratives of the Indian Wars, pp. 16-17).

Three of his sons were in King Philip's War (see Elizabeth Atherton): Rev. Hope Atherton was chaplain at the Falls Fight, Jonathan was credited under Capts. Henchman and Brattle, and Consider was drafted for Capt. John Holbrook's company in April 1676 and did not appear. His partner Capt. William Hudson was very probably the Hudson at whose house on Wading River his old ensign Hopestill Foster met Philip in 1670.

Research: Notable connections of Patricia Hatten (1940-2009): the paternal Hatten line.

Open questions

• His origin and birth: Anderson's Great Migration sketch.
• Did a royal commission rule against the Atherton claim in 1688, as Wikipedia says?