Nicholas White

From England, perhaps from Kent; at Dorchester, where he was made freeman 10 May 1643 (Lothrop).

Uncaty. In Aug 1647 he bought 20 acres at Uncaty (Milton) from Henry Woolcot. Mr. Hutchinson ousted him, and he was "forced to hire his own again," which "occasioned his sudden poverty"; he had to "forsake his own with his wife and five small children, to seek subsistence far remote; and in his absence the house burned, fence razed," as he told the General Court in 1656 (Mass. Archives 38:196-197, printed by Lothrop). The court's committee found that he "hath had much wrong and damage in being ousted of his land by Mr. Hutchinson," to which he "had just title," but left him to seek redress at law. He probably got it back in the end: in 1659 the Dorchester selectmen asked "how long Thomas Trott hath lived at Uncaty in Nicholas White's house."

Taunton. He was at Taunton by 1655, his first home there near Scaddings Pond: John Dean's will of 1660 mentions "a parcel of land between Nicholas White's house and Mistress Gilbert's farm at Scaddings." In 1657 he was listed among the Taunton inhabitants who had taken the oath of fidelity (Lothrop p. 9). In April 1661 a shallop from Braintree stopped at Taunton to take on fifteen of the sixteen purchasers of Block Island, Nicholas White among them; he probably sold his right very soon.

He was an early owner in the Taunton Iron Works. Its books have iron "delivered to Nicholas White, Sr., to carry through the wilderness, 32 miles to Major E. Tyng, 7c. of iron; also to Madame Leverett, of Boston, 7c. of iron, and for Samuel Capen 3c. 2 qr. for Dorchester Church, due for 1683-4." In October 1666 neighbours sued him and the other owners of the saw mill on Mill River for £100, for "hindering the fish for having a convenient passage up and down Mill River"; the jury ordered "that a sufficient passage be made," perhaps the first of the many lawsuits over the Taunton herring. With his son Nicholas and son-in-law Samuel Hall he was a partner in the Taunton North Purchase of 1668 (now Easton, most of Mansfield and part of Norton) and the South Purchase of 1672 (Dighton and part of Berkley).

King Philip's War. His son Joseph probably served in the war, and perhaps, as Lothrop has it, "was wounded in the 'Swamp Fight'" (p. 31). In 1733 "Joseph White ... Joseph, son" was among Taunton's grantees of Narragansett Township No. 4 (Soldiers in King Philip's War, p. 427). In the summer of 1677 "Nicholas White, of Taunton, for selling liquor to the Indians seuerall times contrary to the law of this gou[ern]ment, was fined the sume of thirty pounds" (Records of the Colony of New Plymouth 5:239), a heavy fine, laid either on him or on his son Nicholas.

His personal estate was appraised on 13 July 1697 at £62.2.6, by Thomas Harvey (who signed by mark) and Ezra Dean. His lands were appraised on 10 June 1699, including "One share in the old iron works" and "One-fourth part of the old saw mill" (Lothrop pp. 11-12, printing the probate).

Open questions

• Which Nicholas White of Taunton was fined £30 in 1677 for selling liquor to the Indians: he or his son?
• Whether the Joseph White among the Narragansett grantees was his son, and wounded in the Swamp Fight.