Nicholas White

From England, perhaps from Kent; at Dorchester, where he was made freeman 10 May 1643 (Lothrop).

Uncaty. In Aug 1647 he bought 20 acres at Uncaty (Milton) from Henry Woolcot. In 1656 he petitioned the General Court: after Mr. Hutchinson ousted him he was “forced to hire his own again,” which “occasioned his sudden poverty,” and he had to “forsake his own with his wife and five small children, to seek subsistence far remote; and in his absence the house burned, fence razed” (Mass. Archives 38:196-197, printed by Lothrop). The court’s committee found that he “hath had much wrong and damage in being ousted of his land by Mr. Hutchinson,” to which he “had just title,” but left him to seek redress at law. Lothrop thinks it “probable that the property was in some way restored to White”: in 1659 the Dorchester selectmen asked “how long Thomas Trott hath lived at Uncaty in Nicholas White’s house.”

Taunton. At Taunton by 1655. John Dean’s will of 1660 mentions “a parcel of land between Nicholas White’s house and Mistress Gilbert’s farm at Scaddings,” which places his first Taunton home near Scaddings Pond. In 1657 he was listed among the Taunton inhabitants who had taken the oath of fidelity (Lothrop p. 9). In April 1661 a shallop from Braintree stopped at Taunton to take on fifteen of the sixteen purchasers of Block Island, Nicholas White among them; Lothrop says he “probably sold his right very soon.”

He was an early owner in the Taunton Iron Works. Lothrop prints an entry from its books: “delivered to Nicholas White, Sr., to carry through the wilderness, 32 miles to Major E. Tyng, 7c. of iron; also to Madame Leverett, of Boston, 7c. of iron, and for Samuel Capen 3c. 2 qr. for Dorchester Church, due for 1683-4.” In October 1666 neighbours sued him and the other owners of the saw mill on Mill River for £100, for “hindering the fish for having a convenient passage up and down Mill River”; the jury ordered “that a sufficient passage be made.” Lothrop calls it perhaps the first of the many lawsuits over the Taunton herring. With his son Nicholas and son-in-law Samuel Hall he was a partner in the Taunton North Purchase of 1668 (now Easton, most of Mansfield and part of Norton) and the South Purchase of 1672 (Dighton and part of Berkley).

His personal estate was appraised on 13 July 1697 at £62.2.6, by Thomas Harvey (who signed by mark) and Ezra Dean. His lands were appraised on 10 June 1699, including “One share in the old iron works” and “One-fourth part of the old saw mill” (Lothrop pp. 11-12, printing the probate).