Philip Delano

His parents, Jean de Lannoy of Tourcoing and Marie Mahieu of Lille, were French-speaking Protestants from Flanders who “fled religious persecution by the Spanish around 1579” (Wikipedia). He came to Plymouth in November 1621 on the Fortune, the next ship after the Mayflower, a single man of about eighteen, and may first have lived with his uncle, the Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke. Of Duxbury.

He was a freeman by 1633. He volunteered for the Pequot War in 1637 and was granted 40 acres at Duxbury on 2 Oct 1637; he was “appointed surveyor, but was deposed in 1641” (Wikipedia). In 1638 he sat on a Plymouth trial jury with John Faunce and Richard Higgens (PCR 7). The court often used him to settle boundaries: about 1647-48 it named him, with John Alden, Henry Sampson and others, to settle boundary quarrels between Samuel Eaton and two of his neighbours, Capt. Myles Standish and Love Brewster (PCR 2; the Brewster order is dated 4 Oct 1648).

By his first wife Hester Dewsbury (married 19 Dec 1634) he had Mary (m. 1655 Jonathan Dunham), Philip, Thomas, Hester, John and Jonathan; by his second, Mary (Pontus) Glass (married 17 Jan 1653/4), he had Jane, Rebecca and Samuel. Only Mary, Hester and Rebecca have dated records in the research; the others have no files. Franklin D. Roosevelt descends from his son Jonathan, of the first marriage (Wikipedia); Rebecca was of the second, so this family shares Philip Delano with Roosevelt but not Hester Dewsbury.

In December 1659, “with the Consent of Mary his wife,” he sold William Earle half of his purchase lands at “Coaksett or Cushena” (in the Dartmouth purchase) for £20. Earle paid partly with “a young mare att eight pounds” and was to deliver twelve ewe sheep “att his house att Duxburrow” in 1660 (Plym. Col. Deeds 2:2:41, in MD 11:249-250). On 19 Mar 1678/9 “Phillip Delano, Senir,” was foreman of a twelve-man jury, which included his sons Philip and Thomas, that laid out a highway for George Soule across Joseph Howland’s land, “twenty foot att the narrowest place on the greensword, bounded with diuers great stones sett in the ground” (PCR 6, court of 3 June 1679).

He died at Duxbury between August 1681 and March 1681/2. His inventory, taken 4 Mar 1681/2, came to £50 13s in personal estate only. A family agreement of 5 July 1682 says he had “verbally” stated his wishes, but that the written memorandum of 22 Aug 1681 seemed to vary from his intent “through some forgetfullnes of his Memory or humaine Infeirmitie or the witnesses unaquaintednes” (Plym. Col. Wills 4:2:120; MD 11:250). Under the agreement his house and land went to his three eldest sons, and John got 25 more acres at Namassakett. Samuel got “a horse Cow & 2 steers and chaine and Cart” and “the saw and wedges,” Jane “one Cow & heifer,” Rebecca “a yeerling heiffer,” and his widow a cow and the use of a third of “the orchyard” and land for life. “The yoake of old oxen” was to be worked in common by his sons Philip, Thomas and Samuel (MD 11:250-251). His son Samuel, “onely son to the Relict,” was given administration on 7 July 1682, with Thomas Delano bound with him for £150 (PCR 6:91).