Benjamin Nye

Came in 1635, probably on the Abigail: he, Thomas Tupper, Thomas Landers and Thomas Greenfield were legatees of Dennis Geere, who died on arrival and whose will (10 Dec 1635) Edmund Freeman witnessed; it left Benjamin Nye 30 shillings (Kardell). He is not on the surviving 1635 passenger lists. Married Katherine Tupper at Sandwich on 19 Oct 1640.

On 2 Oct 1650 he sued Thomas Dexter Jr. for trespass, claiming £10; the jury gave him 15s and costs (PCR 7:51-52). He built the frame of the Sandwich meetinghouse with Thomas Tobey: “Pd. Benj. Nye and Thos. Tobey, for the frame, £12 … Pd. Benj. Nye for 3 bu. corn, 9 s.” (town account, c. 1655-59, in Freeman, History of Cape Cod 2). He built mills at Sandwich: on 18 Mar 1669 the town voted him 12 acres “because he built the mill at the little pond” (Nye 1907). His homestead at 85 Old County Road, East Sandwich, is dated 1678 by dendrochronology. Constable of Sandwich in 1661 (PCR 3:215) and again in 1673, as “Benjamine Nye, Senir” (PCR 5).

On 13 June 1660 William Newland testified that a message had come to him “from Elizabeth Freeman, that affeirmed that Jacob Burgis was drawne to testify that which hee did conserning Barlow, by Beniamine Nye, by feare, as threatened that incase hee would not attend Barlow in his occations against the Quakers, and soe to giue the present euidence, hee should not haue his daughter to wife” (PCR 3:191). The daughter appears to be Mary, who married Jacob Burge. Nye sued Newland for defamation, claiming £50: “The jury found for the plaintife fifty shillings, or that the defendant bringe forth the enformer” (PCR 7:100).

On 25 Aug 1664 he and both Thomas Tuppers sat on the inquest into Thomas Fish’s death at the mill dam, caused by “the vnderminding and falling of the bankes vpon him, the wheelbarrow being between him and the ground”; the father testified he “was not willing his son should goe to worke about the dam that day” (PCR 4:85). His son Benjamin is said to have been killed at Pierce’s Fight, Rehoboth, on 26 Mar 1676 (Nye 1907, the only source). On 2 Feb 1676/7 the colony gave its receipt: “Receiued of Benjamine Nye and Steuen Skiffe, agents for the towne of Sandwich … fifty pounds,” settling Sandwich’s King Philip’s War account (PCR 5).

On 9 June 1704 he deeded all his lands to his son Jonathan, reportedly “in exchange for keeping himself, his wife Katherine and daughter Mercy in their infirmity” (WikiTree summary; deed not seen).

He is an ancestor only if Mercy, wife of Lt. Matthias Ellis, was his daughter (probable, not proven). A son Ebenezer, said to have married Sarah Gibbs, rests on an unsourced compiled claim and has no dates; no file has been made for him.

Open questions

• His parents are unknown. The Biddenden, Kent, pedigree in the 1907 Nye genealogy is “almost certainly spurious”; Hilder, Nye and Shaw (NEHGR 158, 2004) point to Sussex.
• The wording of the 1704 deed: “daughter Mercy” or “daughter Mercy Ellis”?