Humphrey Atherton

Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton of Dorchester, who held “the highest military rank in colonial New England” (source). He first appears in the Dorchester records in March 1637 and was made a freeman in May 1638. He organized the town’s first train band, with Hopestill Foster as his ensign from 1644; belonged to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company; and was the town’s deputy, an assistant of the colony, and in 1653 Speaker of the House. In 1656 he was made Major-General, the chief officer of the colony’s militia, and from 1658 he was superintendent of the praying Indians. As a magistrate he married many Dorchester couples, “by Major Atherton,” in 1658-60 (source).

He was hard on those the colony feared. Sent with twenty armed men to collect the fine laid on the Narragansett sachem Pessicus, “Atherton forced his way, pistol in hand, into the wigwam, and, seizing the Sachem by the hair, dragged him out, threatening instant death if any resistance was offered” (Arnold’s history, as quoted). He helped bring about the execution of Ann Hibbins for witchcraft in 1656, and at Mary Dyer’s hanging in 1660 he was said to have remarked, “She hangs there like a flag.” With John Winthrop Jr. and others he bought Narragansett lands as the Atherton Company, a claim a royal commission held illegal in 1688 (source).

He died on 17 Sept 1661. Riding home across Boston Common after drilling his troops, his horse collided with a cow and threw him. The Quakers saw a judgment in it: Joseph Besse wrote that “his horse, suddenly affrighted, threw him with such violence, that he instantly died,” and Longfellow put the scene into his play John Endicott: “His horse took fright, and threw him to the ground, so that his brains were dashed about the street.” His stone in the Dorchester North Burying Ground reads:

Here lies our Captain & Major of Suffolk was withall; A godly magistrate was he, and Major General; Two troop horse with him here comes, such worth his love did crave Two companies of foot also mourning march to his grave, Let all that read be sure to keep the faith as he has done With Christ he lives now crowned, his name was Humphrey Atherton.

Administration of his estate went to his eldest son Jonathan and three sons-in-law, Timothy Mather, James Trowbridge and Obadiah Swift (source). His children with his wife Mary included Jonathan, Increase, Rev. Hope Atherton of Hadley, Consider and Watching, and daughters married to Timothy Mather, James Trowbridge, Obadiah Swift, Thomas Bird and Isaac Humphrey. The Mather genealogy calls him the ancestor, “on the maternal side … of all of the New England Mathers that settled in Connecticut” (source).

Research: research/hatten/Hatten_Philbrick_Marvin.md.

Open questions

• His origin and birth. Anderson’s Great Migration sketch has not been read here.