Isaac Chittenden

Came over in 1635, aged 10, on a London list with his father “Lynnen wever THO: CHITTINGDEN 51,” his mother Rebecca (40) and his brother Henry (6), with a certificate from the minister of Wapping (Hotten, Original Lists, p. 61). The Chittenden family history names the ship as the Increase (compiled).

Of Scituate. “Often a deputy to Court” (Deane, History of Scituate, p. 232). In 1666 the Court allowed him “to draw and sell wine and liquors and to keep an ordinary in the towne of Scittuate” (PCR 4:117). In 1673 he complained that twelve men, among them Joseph, Thomas and Daniel Turner and three Hatches, had on 14 May “in a roietus way” thrown down “a great psell of fence” he had set up on land laid out to him; the Court called it a riot but judged they meant only “to bring the case to a tryall,” and fined them 5s apiece (PCR 5:128).

He sat on the colony’s council of war in 1671 (PCR 5:64). On 4 Oct 1675 he was named to a committee to account for the charges of King Philip’s War, and that autumn the council appointed “Major Cudworth, Cornett Robert Studson, and Isacke Chettenden presse masters, for the pressing of able and fitt men att Scittuate to goe forth on the present expedition against the Indians” (PCR 5:183). His son Benjamin was killed with Capt. Michael Pierce in the ambush of 26 Mar 1676 (Rev. Noah Newman’s letter, printed in Deane, pp. 122-123).

On 1 Nov 1676 the Court granted administration of his estate to Martha Chittenden and Israel Chittenden, with Major Cudworth and Cornet Studson to help settle it (PCR 5:211).

How he died is not settled. Deane (p. 128) wrote that “authentic records,” which he does not name, show he “was slain at Scituate on the memorable 20th May, 1676,” the day of the great raid on the town, and elsewhere that he “fell in repulsing the Indians from the Town 1676” (p. 232). But the Colony Records print a Scituate coroner’s jury of “the 29th of July, 1676,” on a man drowned in the harbour, with “ISACKE CHETTENDEN” signing first (PCR 5:225-226). His son Isaac was then about 13, so either the jury’s date or Deane’s is wrong (inferred). The Chittenden family history is cautious: “It is possible that he lost his life (or that of his son Isaac) in an Indian assault on the town May 20, 1676” (The Chittenden Family in Massachusetts, p. 4). He is missing from Scituate’s deputies at the June 1676 court, after sitting at most courts since the 1660s (PCR 5), which fits a death that spring but does not prove it (inferred).

Open questions

• Was he killed in the raid on Scituate of 20 May 1676, as Deane says, or alive to sit on the coroner’s jury of 29 July 1676? Read the jury’s original record and Deane’s “authentic records.”
• The ship of 1635: the London list gives none; the Increase is the family history’s.