William Cogswell

William, probably the son of John and Elizabeth Cogswell, was baptized at Westbury, Wiltshire, in March 1619/20, and made his home at Chebacco in Ipswich. When his brother John Jr. died in 1653, William and his wife brought up the orphaned nephew: witnesses said the boy “lived with his uncle William” and that “Said William and his wife had a fatherly” care of him.

King Philip’s War. William’s war years went to a quarrel at home. The nephew John sued him over his father’s estate, and the case was heard at Ipswich in 1675, at Salem in January 1676, at Boston in September 1676 and by the General Court on 29 May 1677. William answered that the young man “doubtless forgets that he has been brought up from the cradle” in his care (Essex Quarterly Courts 6:152-162); one of his witnesses was Thomas Varney, whose son later married William’s granddaughter Abigail Cogswell (6:152, 155). William won. In September 1676 the court in Boston reversed John’s judgment against him and laid £13 4s. costs on the nephew, and in October John “delivered his person to the marshal” rather than pay (Jameson p. 10). That month the General Court answered “the petition of Margaret Cogswell, atturney to John Cogswell, her husband, now a prisoner,” and ordered “Jn° Cogswell, Jun., to be at liberty from the prison to attend his occasions till the case be heard” (record, 5:126).

The Chebacco church started in his house. The first meeting to seek a minister was held there in February 1677; he gave the land for the meeting house (a lot thirteen rods by three); and he entertained the council that organized the church and ordained John Wise on 12 Aug 1683 (Jameson pp. 9-10).

His will, dated 5 Aug 1696, says his wife had died; it left his land to his four sons and his personal estate to his four daughters. He died in December 1700, aged 81, and was buried on 17 Dec; a town meeting called for that day was adjourned “to give opportunity for citizens to attend Mr. Cogswell’s funeral” (Jameson pp. 10-11).

His daughter Susanna married Benjamin White in 1681. Through her daughter Ann (White) Boylston she was a great-grandmother of President John Adams (WikiTree Hawkes-12 and Cogswell-72).

The story that John was “a prisoner among the Indians,” captured in pursuit of hostile bands, grew from that spell in the marshal’s prison (History of Ipswich, p. 147; Jameson p. 30).