James Noyes
Rev. James Noyes, a founder and for some twenty years the teacher of the church at Newbury, Massachusetts. Born at Cholderton, Wiltshire, in 1608, probably a son of William Noyes, the rector there, he studied at Oxford and in 1634 came over in the Mary and John with his wife, Sarah Brown, and his cousin Thomas Parker. He died at Newbury in 1656. Father of Rev. Moses Noyes, the first minister of Lyme.
Life
- 1608BornCholderton, Wiltshire, England
"b. Choulderton, Wilts, Eng., 1608" (from his gravestone, as noted in the Newbury records).
compiledprobableSources
- Henry E. and Harriette E. Noyes, Genealogical Record of Some of the Noyes Descendants of James, Nicholas and Peter Noyes (1904)
- Horatio N. Noyes, Noyes' Genealogy: Record of a Branch of the Descendants of Rev. James Noyes, Newbury, 1634-1656 (1889)
- Vital Records of Newbury, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (1911)
- 1633Married Sarah BrownEngland
"not long before he came to New England"; Noyes (1889) has 1634, the year they sailed.
- 1656Died22 Oct 1656, Newbury, Massachusetts
"Oct. 22, 1656. [a. 48 y. G. R. 2.]" (Newbury VR 2:674).
Family
- Father
- Mother
- Anne Parker
Her will of 1655 gives "one shilling to each of my sons, James and Nicholas, now in New England."
- Spouse
1 child
Pedigree
Notes
Rev. James Noyes, teacher of the church at Newbury, Massachusetts, and one of its founders. Born at Cholderton in Wiltshire, where his father was rector, he matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1627, but left without a degree when his cousin Thomas Parker “called [him] from Brazen Nose College in Oxford, to help him in teaching the Free School at Newbury,” in Berkshire. Unable to “comply with the ceremonies of the Church of England,” he married Sarah Brown of Southampton and early in 1634 sailed in the Mary and John with her, his younger brother Nicholas and Thomas Parker: “on the sea Mr. Parker and Mr. Noyes preached or expounded, one in the forenoon, and the other in the afternoon, every day during the voyage” (source).
He preached first at Mystic (Medford), where he was made a freeman on 3 Sept 1634, and in 1635 went with Parker to found the church at Newbury, where he was its teacher “something above twenty years.” His nephew Rev. Nicholas Noyes wrote of him for Cotton Mather’s Magnalia: “He was very learned in the Tongues, and in the Greek, excelled most. He was much read in the Fathers and the Schoolmen … He was as religious at home as abroad, in his family and in secret, as he was publickly.” His catechism was still used at Newbury a generation later. “He had a long and tedious sickness, which he bore patiently and cheerfully; and he died joyfully, in the forty-eighth year of his age, Oct. 22, 1656” (source). The family homestead at Newbury, built in 1646, was still owned and lived in by Noyeses in 1889 (source).
Their children, born at Newbury: Joseph (1637), James (1640), for over fifty years the minister of Stonington and a founder of Yale; Sarah (1641); Moses (1643), the first minister of Lyme; John (1645); Thomas (1648); Rebecca (1651); William (1653); and Sarah (1656), who married Rev. John Hale of Beverly and was herself accused of witchcraft in 1692. His nephew Rev. Nicholas Noyes, minister at Salem, took part in the witch trials of that year.
Research: research/hatten/Hatten_Philbrick_Marvin.md.
Connections
- Famous kin
- Nathan Hale
Continental Army captain hanged by the British as a spy in September 1776, remembered for "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country"
Nathan Hale is the third cousin, seven times removed, of Patricia Hatten.
- Nathan Hale
- In his ancestry
- 1 notable connection →
Every notable ancestor and famous relative that James's own ancestors lead to, with the lines drawn down to him.