Joseph Bartlett

Son of Robert Bartlett, the wine cooper of Plymouth; brother of Rebecca (Bartlett) Harlow and Sarah (Bartlett) Rider. On 14 July 1673 his father, "Robert Bartlett, of the Towne of Plymouth ... wine Cooper," made him a deed of gift (Plymouth Colony Deeds 3:301, per WikiTree).

King Philip's War. On 7 Jan 1675/6 Plymouth's town meeting chose a committee "to make and provide Clothing in the behalfe of the Towne for the souldiers now to Goe forth ... Mr Gray Joseph Warren Jabez howland Willam Clarke Joseph Bartlett" (Records of the Town of Plymouth 1:146); Joseph Warren was probably his uncle. He is on the unheaded list of some eighty Plymouth men entered in the town book between 4 May and 13 June 1676 (1:148). In November 1676 "Libertie of adminnestration is graunted vnto Joseph Bartlett" on the estate of Jonathan Fallowell, deceased (Records of the Colony of New Plymouth 5:213).

At the court of 6 Mar 1676/7 he sat on the jury that tried three Native men for the killing of three English soldiers. "Three Indians, named Timothy Jacked, allies Canjuncke, and Nassamaquat, and Pompacanshe, were indited for murdering John Knowles, John Tisdall, Senir, and Samuell Attkins," killed at Taunton in 1675 (Knowles and Atkins were Eastham men under Capt. John Freeman: Freeman, History of Cape Cod 2:366). The jury was "Mr Thomas Huckens, John Wadsworth, John Howland, Abraham Jackson, Benajah Pratt, John Blacke, Marke Snow, Joseph Bartlett, Samuell Jenings, Arther Howland, Samuell West, Seth Pope." It found the first two "very suspisious of the murder" and nothing against Pompacanshe, and the court sentenced "the two former ... to be sent out of the country speedily, and the other likewise, as hee is prisoner taken in warr" (PCR 5:224). They were probably sold abroad, the fate Church gave the Dartmouth surrenderers of 1675: "there sold, and transported out of the Country" (Entertaining Passages, Dexter's ed. pp. 45-46). Mark Snow was a son of Nicholas Snow of Eastham. At the same court a jury that included him and John Howland acquitted Mary Ingham of bewitching Mehitable Woodworth (see Walter Woodworth), and administration was granted "vnto Mary Bartlett & Joseph Bartlett to adminnester on the estate of Robert Bartlett, deceased" (PCR 5:220).

The war left orphans to see to. In March 1677/8 "Experience Michell, Edward Michell, and Joseph Bartlett are allowed and appointed ... to be gaurdians to the children of Jacob Michell, deceased" (PCR 5:252). Jacob Mitchell had moved from Plymouth to Dartmouth, and he and his wife were killed by Indians there in 1675 (Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth): John Num, examined in 1676, "owned also that he was of that Company that murdered Jacob Mitchell and his Wife, and John Pope, at Dartmouth" (Drake's note to Hubbard, 1865 ed., 1:254, citing PCR 5:204-205).

The "Joseph Bartlet" who with Sgt. Harlow "did somwhat decline" to act in the whale dispute of 1690/1 was perhaps he.

Open questions

• His birth, marriage and death.
• His mother: likely Mary (Warren), his father's widow and co-administrator in 1676/7.
• His tie to Jonathan Fallowell, whose estate he administered in 1676: perhaps through his wife.