Wikipedia, "Humphrey Atherton"

Encyclopedia article on Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton of Dorchester (c. 1607-1661). His birth and origin are uncertain: a Lancashire origin is “presumed,” but Anderson’s Great Migration says this “does not come close to constituting proof of origin.” First in the Dorchester records 18 March 1637; freeman 2 May 1638; deputy and assistant; Speaker of the House in 1653; Major-General from 1656, “the highest military rank in colonial New England”; superintendent of the praying Indians from 1658. Sent to collect a fine of wampum, he forced his way, “pistol in hand,” into the wigwam of the Narragansett sachem Pessicus (Arnold, History of Rhode Island). He was instrumental in the execution of Ann Hibbins for witchcraft (1656) and in the persecution of the Quakers; at Mary Dyer’s hanging in 1660 he was said to have remarked, “She hangs there like a flag.”

He “died, September 16, 1661, from head injuries sustained in a fall from his horse … traveling through Boston Common, on his way home after drilling his troops when his mount collided with a cow.” The Quaker Joseph Besse (1722) made it a judgment: “his horse, suddenly affrighted, threw him with such violence, that he instantly died.” Longfellow put the death into his play John Endicott: “His horse took fright, and threw him to the ground, so that his brains were dashed about the street.” His epitaph in the Dorchester North Burying Ground begins “Here lies our Captain & Major of Suffolk was withall; / A godly magistrate was he, and Major General.”

His wife was Mary (her maiden name is disputed), who died in 1672; they had eleven children, among them daughters married to Timothy Mather, James Trowbridge, Obadiah Swift, Thomas Bird and Isaac Humphrey. The article’s list of daughters muddles Elizabeth, Catherine and Isabel.