William Pynchon
Founder of Springfield, Massachusetts: an original patentee of the Bay Colony who came with Winthrop in 1630, began Roxbury, and in 1635-36 settled Agawam on the Connecticut, building it into a beaver-trading town. His book of 1650 was burned at Boston as heresy, and in 1652 he went back to England, where he died at Wraysbury in 1662. Probably the father of John Pynchon.
Life
- 1590Born11 Oct 1590compiledprobable
Sources
- 1662Died29 Oct 1662, Wraysbury, Buckinghamshire, England
Dwight has 9 Oct 1661, "aet. 72."
- —BuriedSt Andrew's Church, Wraysbury, Buckinghamshire, Englandcompiledprobable
Sources
Family
- Parents
- Spouse 1
- Anna Andrew
His first wife, the mother of his children, who died at Roxbury in 1630 "shortly after his arrival here" (Dwight, who did not know her name). The name is WikiTree's.
- Spouse 2
- Frances Sanford
"Widow Frances Sanford, 'a grave matron of the church of Dorchester'"; she died in England on 10 Oct 1657.
- Children
Pedigree
Notes
Father of John Pynchon, and the founder of Springfield. An original patentee of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he “came hither in 1630, with Gov. Winthrop, and began the settlement of Roxbury, Mass., being its principal founder” (source). In 1635-36 he led the settlement of Agawam on the Connecticut River, renamed Springfield in 1640 “after Pynchon’s home village, now a suburb of Chelmsford in Essex,” and built it into a trading town: in 1636-1652 he exported “between 4,000 and 6,000 beaver pelts a year” (source). He sided with Massachusetts against Connecticut over how to treat the Indians, and his warrant of 1650 for the man who had stolen a petticoat from Deacon Samuel Chapin’s married daughter Sarah told the constable that “if you find him at Woronoco [Westfield,] you may persuade him to come, and push him forward to make him come, but in case you cannot make him come by this means, then you shall not use violence.”
The banned book. In 1650 he published in London The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, which argued, against Puritan teaching, that obedience rather than suffering was the price of atonement. When it reached Boston it “was immediately burned on the Boston Common (only 4 copies survived), and soon after became the New World’s first-ever banned book.” The General Court charged him with heresy. “Instead of retracting his arguments, Pynchon stealthily transferred his land holdings to his son John … while William Pynchon returned to England in 1652, where he remained for the rest of his life” (source). Dwight tells it differently: “The next year he retracted his sentiments, and the censure was suspended; but he was so much dissatisfied that he went back to England, and never returned to this country again” (source). His departure put Springfield into the hands of his son John, Elizur Holyoke and Samuel Chapin. He died at Wraysbury in 1662.
His children, all by his first wife, were Ann (Mrs. Henry Smith), Mary (Mrs. Elizur Holyoke), John and Margaret (Mrs. William Davis). The novelist Thomas Pynchon is a descendant.
Research: research/hatten/Browne_Chapin_Cumins.md.