Kneeland and Hawkins

1616–1740

The line in brief

In April 1629, at St Ives in Huntingdonshire, Jane Hawkins fell “into a rapture or ecstacy” and spoke in verse for “three days and three nights in an auditory of very near 200 people,” while the vicar and his curate took down “some thousands” of lines. The Bishop of Lincoln, who seized them, called her “a witty, crafty baggage.” She had married Richard Hawkins, a tanner, at Bluntisham in 1602, and about 1635 they came to Boston, where she was the midwife of Anne Hutchinson’s circle. Winthrop called her “a rank familist” who “grew into great suspicion to be a witch.” On 12 Mar 1637/8 the court forbade her to “meddle in surgery, or phisick, drinks, plaisters, or oyles,” and she was banished then and again in 1641, when her sons were bound to carry her away. She and Richard went to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where he died by 1656, and her sons James, Job and Thomas kept asking for her return; in 1651 the court would not give way, “not knowinge how to satisfy themselues about this woman.”

James stayed in Boston, a bricklayer. In 1641/2 he was sentenced to be whipped for profaning the Sabbath and bound with his brother Thomas to answer “for venting his corrupt Opinions.” He married Mary Mills, who had probably come over as a girl in the Winthrop Fleet of 1630 with her father, John Mills: his daughters Joy and Recompence, baptized that year, were “the first on our record” of Boston’s First Church. John Mills went on to Braintree, where he was town clerk, and in his will of 1677/8 he recalled that “his predecessors unto the third, if not the fourth generation” had been ministers. James died in March 1669/70 and left “a Bible for each of ten grandchildren at the age of twelve.” His daughter Mary married John Kneeland, a Scot, by 1659.

On 6 Jan 1657 John Kneeland had been one of the founders of the Scots’ Charitable Society of Boston, whose members agreed to give “for the relief of ourselves, being Scottish men, or for any of the Scottish nation.” He and Mary had six children recorded at Boston between 1659 and 1673, and he died on 11 Aug 1691, “Aged 59 years & 9 days,” as his stone in the old burying ground at Roxbury has it. Their son John, born at Boston in 1668, learned the bricklayer’s trade from his uncle James Hawkins and was called in some deeds a bricklayer and in others, “under the more pretentious title,” a builder. He married Mary Green, perhaps of the family of Samuel Green, the printer at Cambridge, and their son Samuel Kneeland became printer to the governor and council, whose firm, Isaiah Thomas wrote, printed “the first Bible printed, in America, in the English language.” Their daughter Rachel, born on 11 Aug 1705, married Samuel Foster, a periwig-maker, at Boston on 5 Apr 1722, at sixteen; his mother’s family is the Briscoe line. Rachel was perhaps the mother of John Foster of Roxbury, and she married again, Timothy Parmerly (Parmelee), and had eight children by him.

Where it went

  1. 1602Bluntisham, HuntingdonshireRichard Hawkins
  2. 1615/6Sudbury, SuffolkJohn Mills
  3. In the Winthrop Fleet1629St Ives, HuntingdonshireJane Hawkins
  4. 1630Boston, MassachusettsJohn Mills

Five generations

The Kneeland name, three generations

  1. 2John Kneeland c. 1632–1691A founder of the Scots' Charitable Society of Boston in 1657, whose subscribers gave "for the relief of ourselves, being Scottish men"; he was almost certainly born in Scotland, but his parents are unknown.
  2. 1John Kneeland 1668–1740Builder, of Boston, where he was born in 1668, son of John Kneeland and his wife Mary, probably Mary Hawkins.
  3. 0Rachel Kneeland b. 1705Wife of Samuel Foster, married at Boston on 5 Apr 1722, and possibly the mother of John Foster, who married Jane Lindsey; she probably also married Timothy Parmerly (Parmelee), with whom she had eight children.

The line down the left is drawn as the tree draws it: solid where a record shows the link to the parent above, dashed where it rests on compiled accounts, dotted where it is reasoned from the evidence, grey where it is only possible. A bar fades where a birth or death year isn't known.

Everyone in the line, 11 people

Notable ancestors and small world

1 notable ancestor in the line

  • Jane Hawkins

    Prophetess of St Ives and midwife of Anne Hutchinson's circle; banished from Massachusetts

With the famous kin, on Notable connections →

Still being worked on

Research threads

Open questions

  • Rachel’s death: 10 July 1776, aged 71 (Kneeland, 1897), or 10 June 1780, at New Haven?
  • Her marriage to Timothy Parmerly, “of Bradford” (perhaps Branford, Connecticut).
  • John Kneeland’s administration of 1740 (Suffolk no. 7389), which may name Rachel.
  • Mary (Green) Kneeland’s parents: Torrey and a Green genealogy.
  • John Kneeland’s origin and parents in Scotland; whether he came as a prisoner of Dunbar or Worcester.
  • James Hawkins’s birth: the Bluntisham baptism of 1609/10, or about 1603/4?
  • Jane Hawkins’s parents and baptism (TAG 89, NEHGR 114), and her death, after June 1658?
  • When Richard Hawkins died: Jane was called a widow in 1646, but he was at Portsmouth in 1648-1650.
For the record: the line at a glance and how sure it is

The line at a glance

The Kneelands: John Kneeland (c. 1632-1691), a Scot of Boston = Mary Hawkins (b. bef. 1638) > John Kneeland (1668-1740), builder = Mary Green > Rachel Kneeland (b. 1705) = Samuel Foster (b. 1701), periwig-maker > John Foster (d. by 1760), of Roxbury, perhaps their son.

The Hawkinses and Millses: Richard Hawkins (d. by 1656), tanner, of Bluntisham, St Ives, Boston and Portsmouth = Jane Angell (m. 1602), the midwife > James Hawkins (d. 1669/70), bricklayer, of Boston = Mary Mills (c. 1616/7-1692/3), daughter of John Mills (d. 1678), of the Winthrop Fleet and Braintree, and Catheryn Scotson > Mary Hawkins = John Kneeland, above.

The scope walks every ancestor of Rachel Kneeland. Her husband’s side is the Thompson and Foster line, which stops at her; his mother, Rebecca Briscoe, heads the Briscoe line.

How sure it is

Rachel’s marriage is documented: “Samuel Foster & Rachel Kneeland / Int. reads [Samll.] / Mr. Joseph Sewall Presn. / Apr. 5, 1722” (Boston RC 28:106, image checked). Her birth, 11 Aug 1705, is from S. F. Kneeland’s Seven Centuries in the Kneeland Family (1897, p. 52, “mostly from Bible records”); it is not in the printed Boston births. Her place as John Kneeland’s daughter rests on the same book (compiled, probable), and her mother is John’s wife Mary, who bore his children from 1692 (inferred, probable); his administration of 1740 (Suffolk no. 7389), unread, may name her. Her second marriage and her eight Parmelee children are from the Kneeland genealogy alone (probable). That she and Samuel Foster were the parents of John Foster of Roxbury rests on Pierce’s Foster Genealogy (1899) alone (compiled, possible); the link is followed in the Thompson and Foster line.

The younger John Kneeland’s birth record names his parents, “John of John & Mary Kneeland born Nov. 29” [1668] (documented, proven); that his mother was Mary Hawkins is from Torrey, who has “Mary [HAWKINS], dau James; by 1659” as John Kneeland’s wife (compiled, probable). His marriage to Mary is in the Boston births of their children, 1692-1698 (documented, proven), and her surname Green is from the Kneeland genealogy. Her parents are open, and both readings are possible: a daughter of Samuel Green Jr. (Kneeland, 1897), though Savage has him marrying Elizabeth Sill only in Nov 1685, too late for a daughter married by 1692, and most accounts credit him with no children; or the Mary born on 6 Nov 1669 to the printer Samuel Green Sr. and Sarah Clark (Savage), who fits the dates better. The elder John Kneeland’s dates are from his gravestone (NEHGR 14:52; documented), and he is in the founders’ list of the Scots’ Charitable Society, printed in 1840; that he was born in Scotland is inferred from it. His parents are unknown.

Mary Hawkins’s father is James Hawkins in Torrey, the Great Migration’s household entry (as WikiTree gives it) and Sumner’s Ancestry of Edward Wales Blake and Clarissa Matilda Glidden (1948): compiled, probable. Her mother is James’s wife Mary, Mary Mills, as Savage (“had w. Mary”) and Sumner have it (compiled, probable). James is proved Jane Hawkins’s son by the petition of May 1651 of “James, Jobe & Thomas Hawkins for the returne for theire mother” (documented, proven). Richard as his father is inferred, probable: the records call Jane “wife of Richard,” and Richard’s deed of 1644 calls Richard and Jane their son Job’s “owne ffather and Mother,” but none names Richard as James’s father. Richard and Jane’s marriage at Bluntisham in July 1602, to “Jaine ANGELL,” is in the parish register (documented, proven). Mary Mills is John Mills’s daughter by his will of 12 Jan 1677/8, which names “ds. Mary Hawkins and Susanna Dawes” (Savage’s abstract; documented, probable), and probably Catheryn Scotson’s (inferred): John married Catheryn at All Saints, Sudbury, on 5 Feb 1615/6 (Ullmann, NEHGR 175, as WikiTree cites it) and had married Susanna, widow Whitlocke, by 1628/9, and Mary was born about 1616/7. James’s birth is left out: a Bluntisham baptism of 1 Jan 1609/10 (TAG 89, via WikiTree) disagrees with his age at death, 67, and a deposition of 1660, which put it about 1603/4. The research is in research/low/Low_Line_Research.md (Part Two, “Kneeland in America” and “Hawkins,” and the addendum of 2 Oct 2026).

Mollie Pfeiffer’s typescript has the Kneelands and Hawkinses, with Rachel’s marriage in 1721 or on 1 Apr 1722, but much of what it builds on them does not hold. John Kneeland of Boston was a Scot, not born in New England. No record has Kneelands coming about 1630, John and Edward with their mother Mary Dunbar, or ties the Boston Kneelands to the Clelands of that Ilk, Wallace, the Somervilles, the Hepburns, Lord Blantyre or James V: the pedigree comes from Burke’s Landed Gentry (1847) by way of the Kneeland genealogy, whose author wrote, “I do not stand sponsor for the truth of all this ancestry.” Nor did his son build the Old South Meeting House, the work of the mason Joshua Blanchard to a design by Robert Twelves. Mary Green’s parentage is unproven; Samuel Green printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, not in England, and the Timothy Green who was Samuel Kneeland’s partner was the second of that name, perhaps her nephew, not her brother. James Hawkins was a bricklayer, not a colonel; Jane Hawkins was banished as Anne Hutchinson’s associate, not for Quakerism; and that John Mills was the first town clerk of Braintree is unproven (research/holbrook/Mollie_Typescript_Review.md, F4, F10-F15 and section 6.4; books/mollie/checked.yaml).

Their families and the files

+ 10 husbands, wives and children

Research filesresearch/low/Low_Line_Research.mdresearch/holbrook/Mollie_Typescript_Review.md

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