Job Tyler

He was perhaps the "Job Tyler" admitted an inhabitant at Newport in 1638 (RI Col. Rec. 1:92). By about 1640 he was at Andover. "A lit infant also a twinn of Job Tilers dyed" at Roxbury in 1646 (Roxbury church records, via Brigham). On 5 Mar 1650 he mortgaged property to John Godfrey, and the two became enemies.

John Godfrey. In 1658/9 Job signed a petition against Godfrey: "Jobe tyller of Andever for a bird coming in to suck his wife" (EQC 2:157-158). On 27 June 1659 Job, his wife Mary, Moses "aged between 17 and 18 yeares" and Mary "about 15 yeares old" deposed "that they saw a thing like a bird to come in at the door of their house, with John Godfrey, in the night, about the bigness of a blackbird, or rather bigger, to wit, as big as a pigeon and did fly about, John Godfrey laboring to catch it and the bird vanished as they conceived through the chinck of a joynted bord." Seven years later he brought Godfrey to trial. At the County Court at Boston, 30 Jan 1665/6, "Jno Godfrey being Complained against by Job Tyler & Jno Rimington for severall acts which they conceave to be acts of witchcraft"; Tyler and Rimington each gave a bond of £20 to prosecute, and Godfrey's security of £200 came from Capt. William Davis and Capt. Thomas Lake (Clements Library, Jonathan Godfrey document, GS Box 1). On 6 March 1665/6 the Court of Assistants tried Godfrey "on the Complaint & accusation of Job Tyler & John Rimington on suspition of witchcraft," and the jury found him "suspitiously Guilty of witchcraft, but not legally guilty." The two prosecutors were allowed "for eleuen dayes a peece two shillings per each day a peece," and Godfrey was to "discharge the Costs of the trjall" (Records of the Court of Assistants 3:151-152).

Hope's apprenticeship (1662). 1662 was a hard year at Andover. About the beginning of May Job's house burned, and Ballard took in his wife and family while Job was away. On 23 June a warrant went out for "Hope Tiler a youth of about 13 yeares of age, who is run away from his M[r] Thomas Chandler of Andouer." Godfrey testified that Moses burned the indenture "in the sight of his father" and said "now father you may take away hop when you will from Chandler" (EQC 2:403-405). That year Job sold his Andover lands, by deeds of 10 June 1662 to Thomas and George Abbott and of 18 April and 28 Aug 1662 to Godfrey; Robert and Mary Lord witnessed the April conveyance.

Thomas Chandler (1665/6). The quarrel with Chandler ended in a public retraction: "I, Job Tiler, have shamefully reproached Thomas Chandler of Andover by saying he is a base, lying cozening, cheating knave ..." (Brigham p. 7). The arbitrators set the costs "considering Job's poverty and necessities" (EQC 3:443).

Mendon. By 1665 the family was at Roxbury. On 11 Sept 1665 Owannamaug, "Indian Chiefe, neere Marlborough," complained "of Job Tyler, of Roxbury, for cutting and carrying off hay from his meadows," and Job was fined 2s. 6d. and 10s. costs. By 1669 he was at Mendon, and as prickly as ever. On 16 July 1669, summoned by the selectmen, "his answer was he could not nor would come, but if the Selectmen had more to say to him than he to them they might come to him"; a later entry says "he has given satisfaction for that ofence" (Annals of Mendon pp. 43-44, 60). On 1 Dec 1669 he signed the agreement settling Rev. Joseph Emerson as Mendon's minister. He drew lots there in 1671 and 1673.

King Philip's War. On 14 July 1675 Nipmuc men fell on Mendon's settlers "as they were at their Labour in the Field, killing five or six of them," the first blood of the war in Massachusetts Bay (Hubbard, 1:86). Their leader was Matoonas, who bore "an old Grudge" for a son executed in 1671, "whose Head ever since stands upon a Pole near the Gibbet"; in July 1676 the Nipmuc sachem Sagamore John, coming in to Boston with 180 of his people, handed him over (1:260-261). Among the dead, probably, was Richard Post, the husband of Job's daughter Mary, who had been chosen Mendon's constable in 1674 with "Mathyas Puffer and Job Tiler, Survayors of hy ways" (Annals of Mendon p. 57). The townspeople "forsook the Place, abandoning their Houses to the Fury of the Enemy, which by them were soon after turned into Ashes" (Hubbard 1:86). The Tylers scattered. A grandchild's birth was recorded at Roxbury in 1676, and Job may have gone back there himself (The Tyler Genealogy, pp. 12-13); his son Hope took his family to Roxbury, and his son Samuel was at Rowley by late November, impressed there among men "latly come to town," and marched with Maj. Samuel Appleton's company on the Narragansett campaign. The minister he had helped settle, Rev. Joseph Emerson, "soon after the Indian attack upon Mendon, ... removed to Concord" (Annals of Mendon p. 46).

Job was at Rowley Village by 1680, and back at Mendon by 1688, paying the minister's rates there in 1688, 1689, 1691 and 1695. On 27 Nov 1700 he deeded his Mendon house lot to his son Moses (Suffolk Deeds 20:127).

His children (Brigham) were Moses (1641/2), Mary (about 1644), Hopestill (about 1645/6), a twin who died in 1646, Hannah, John (died 1652), John (1653) and Samuel (24 May 1655). Several of Hopestill's family were accused in the Andover witchcraft cases of 1692, and Edith Kermit (Carow) Roosevelt descends from him through Hopestill (Brigham).

Mollie's typescript made him a son of "Capt. Thomas Tyler" of Budleigh, Devon, but that sea captain was Thomas Tyler of Boston, two generations later, "tak. by a Barbary corsair" in 1703 (Savage 4:355).

Open questions

• His parents; perhaps the widow Joan Tyler of Providence was his mother.
• Was he the Job Tyler admitted at Newport in 1638?
• When he died; he was living on 27 Nov 1700.