Thomas Rowlandson

Thomas was probably a son of Thomas Rowlandson of Ipswich, and he was "Thomas Rolinson, jr." at Ipswich in 1651, when Daniel Rolfe won a slander suit against him (record). That September the court heard that "Thomas Rolinson, proven impotent, on complaint of his wife, was to take counsel of physicians forthwith"; the marriage was annulled, and years later his first wife Martha, by then the wife of William Beale of Marblehead, was still answering neighbours who called her an adulteress with "another husband aliue." In 1670 the Beales petitioned the court: "Whereas by Reson of a nullitie of Marriage betwixt Thomas Rowlandson ye guilty & Martha Bradstrete ye innocent, Som persons Take ockacion To abuse us." His daughter Martha's husband, Ralph Ellinwood Jr., would have his own first marriage annulled on the same ground in 1682.

He moved to Salisbury about 1652 and on 17 May 1654 married Dorothy Portland (record). He was taxed there in 1652 and 1659, signed the petitions of 1658 and 1680, and joined the Salisbury church in 1677 (source). He was quarrelsome: in 1674 he was "presented at Hampton court ... for charging the pastor of the church at Salisbury with inhumanity and speaking other unseemly speeches," and "was in open court admonished upon a lecture day and reproved for his sin in charging his pastor ... with inhuman actions." The pastor was the Rev. John Wheelwright, banished from the Bay in the Antinomian crisis of 1637; John Eaton, the husband of Thomas's sister Martha, was bound with him.

King Philip's War. On 10 Feb 1675/6 his eldest son Thomas, nineteen, was killed in the attack on the Lancaster garrison house of his brother, the Rev. Joseph Rowlandson, the attack in which Mary Rowlandson was taken captive (source). Among those "Killed in the Assault" was "Thomas Rowlandson, aged 19" (Soldiers in King Philip's War, p. 353), "killed by Indians in the attack upon his uncle's house in Lancaster" (Hoyt 1:307). Of the thirty-seven people in the house, Mary Rowlandson wrote, none escaped "either present death or a bitter captivity, save only one." A "Thomas Rowlinson" was credited £2 2s. under Maj. Waldron on 29 Feb 1675/6 (Bodge p. 310), nineteen days later, perhaps the boy's wages paid to his estate. After Mary's ransom Joseph, searching for their children, "would go over to Salisbury, to hear further, and come again in the morning, which he did, and preached there that day" (source).

His children were born at Salisbury: Elizabeth (June 1655, died that July); Thomas (5 July 1656, killed at Lancaster); Sarah (5 Aug 1658, m. Nicholas Bond); Elizabeth (26 Feb 1660/1, m. John Ellinwood); Joseph (18 Feb 1663/4, a cordwainer, dead by 1694); the twins Mary (m. Jonathan Blodgett) and Martha (m. Ralph Ellinwood Jr.), 24 Aug 1666; John (20 Mar 1667/8) and Ann (16 Mar 1668/9), who probably died young.

He died on 7 July 1682; his will of that day names his wife Dorothy, "son Joseph and four daus., without giving names." An agreement about his estate, signed on 8 Apr 1706, names "John Elenwood and Ralph Elenwood and Martha his wife" among his children.

Open questions

• His will (Essex probate, 1682) and the 1706 agreement, read at first hand.
• The "Thomas Rowlinson" credited under Maj. Waldron on 29 Feb 1675/6: his son, or another man?

Research: Ellingwood line: notable kin, in-laws and new material (research report).