William Harlow

A cooper, sergeant of the Plymouth militia, and a selectman and deputy for the town [compiled]. He was in New England by 1637: at Lynn that year, then at Sandwich, then at Plymouth. His wives were Rebecca Bartlett, a granddaughter of Richard Warren (1649); Mary Faunce (1658); and Mary Shelley (1665/6). In the town’s rating of trades on 5 Aug 1672 “Serjeant harlow,” a cooper, was valued at £40, against £30 for Samuel Rider Jr. (Plymouth Town Records 1:118; record). In 1665 the town granted him “a little knowl or small parcel of land, lying near his now dwelling-house … to sett a new house upon” (Davis, Part I pp. 321-322) [compiled].

His second wife died in 1664, and on 12 Apr 1667 Nathaniel Morton, the colony’s secretary and later the author of New-Englands Memoriall, and his wife Lydia took their son “Nathaniel Harlow, being now neare two yeares and an half old,” to bring up until he was 21 (PCR 5). Mary Faunce had been Morton’s niece. Morton’s will (1685) calls him “my loving kinsman Seargent William Harlow” and remembers “my kinsman Nathaniel Harlow” (via Stratton) [compiled]. Elder Thomas Faunce, who identified Plymouth Rock in 1741, was Mary Faunce’s brother and is no blood relation of the line, which runs through Rebecca Bartlett.

On 5 June 1671 he was among the “psons apointed by the Court to view the Damage done to the Indians by the Horses and Hoggs of the English.” He was also appointed, with Lt. Morton, Joseph Warren and William Clarke, to buy “whatsoeuer lands are yett vnpurchased … att Sepecan” (PCR 5:54).

The Harlow Old Fort House. In 1675 the town ordered “a fortification … upon the fort hill … an hundred foot square the pallasadoes to be 10 foot and one halfe longe” (Plymouth Town Records 1:146-147). Davis says that after King Philip’s War “a grant of the timbers of the fort was made to William Harlow,” who built the house still standing at 119 Sandwich Street, and calls the fort-timber connection “not an unwarrantable inference.” Plymouth tradition has him building it in 1677 with timbers from the Pilgrims’ fort on Burial Hill [tradition]; an architectural historian who surveyed the house in 1996 dated it to 1700 or later. The Plymouth Antiquarian Society opened it to the public in 1921 (Wikipedia; Plymouth Antiquarian Society). The house passed to his son Samuel in the 1692 division, to Samuel’s son William, father of Phebe (Harlow) Stephens, in 1728, and out of the family in 1765. Later it came back to Phebe Stephens’s relatives: her uncle Eleazer Stephens (1778-84), her brother Sylvanus by his marriage to Joseph Doten’s widow, and her nephew Lemuel Stephens (from 1822) (Davis, Part I pp. 321-322, from deeds) [compiled].

On 9 Mar 1683/4, the first Sunday in the new meetinghouse, “Will’. Harlow did in such a manner expresse himselfe murmuring at the soe preaching” (CSM 22:254); the record does not say which of the two adult William Harlows. Nothing supports Mollie’s statement that he “finally became a Quaker,” and the sergeant died a church member in 1691.

On 10 Mar 1690/1 a drift whale came ashore against the Clarkes’ pasture fence, and the selectmen attached it for the town. The town then chose others to act in court, “seing serjant harlow & Joseph Bartlet did somwhat decline the Thing” (Plymouth Town Records 1:200). Mollie Pfeiffer prints the writ, “Dated at Plimouth January ye 8th 1689/90”, in which the selectmen sue Samuel Rider and William Harlow Jr. for taking the whale (it has not been checked against the original), and says Harlow stepped aside “that he might not prosecute his own son”; the town record gives no reason.

On 2 June 1691 the court approved the Plymouth selectmen: “Serjeant Willm Harlow, Plym, Nathll Southworth, Thomas Faunce” (PCR 6:264). He died on 25 Aug 1691, “in his 67th yeare neere finished.”

His children by Rebecca Bartlett: William (5-26 Oct 1650), Samuel (27 Jan 1652/3), Rebecca (12 June 1655), William (2 June 1657). By Mary Faunce: Mary (1659), Repentance (1660), John (1662), Nathaniel (30 Sept 1664). By Mary Shelley: Hannah, Bathsheba, Joanna, Mehitabel and Judith, whose dates are not in the research and who have no files.

Open questions

• His English origin is unknown (MD 12:193-194). Mollie’s suggestion that Capt. Edward Harlow of the Sagadahoc colony (1607) was his father or kinsman has no evidence.
• The drift-whale case: the writ Mollie prints is dated 8 Jan 1689/90, so the town meeting of “10 March 1690” may be 1689/90 rather than 1690/1. Check the Plymouth town records.