S. F. Kneeland, Seven Centuries in the Kneeland Family (1897)

Compiled genealogy, read in the archive.org full text. Its Scottish pedigree is taken from Burke’s Landed Gentry (1847) and Anderson’s Scottish Nation; the author wrote (p. 19), “Personally, I do not stand sponsor for the truth of all this ancestry … I simply give it from Burke.” None of it is connected to the Boston Kneelands by any record. Gives Rachel Kneeland’s birth, 11 Aug 1705, “mostly from Bible records” (p. 52), her marriages to Samuel Foster and Timothy Parmerly “of Bradford,” and her death “July 10, 1776, ae. 71”; and makes Mary Green, wife of John Kneeland, a daughter of Samuel Green Jr.

Also: John Kneeland (d. 1691)’s “unsigned will, which was dated in 1684 and recorded in the Boston record of wills,” with “an abortive attempt to leave to his brother, Bartholomew, his house and grounds near Sudbury” and “I give my biggest gun and my cutlass to my eldest son, my best gun and my rapier to my youngest son” (p. 49; not found in the records); his children, with the first Mary dying 19 Oct 1660 and a Rachel, b. 20 Jan 1675, unmarried, d. 14 Sept 1753 (p. 50); John Kneeland (1668-1740), “ae. 72,” who “In some deeds … was described as ‘bricklayer,’ in some, under the more pretentious title of ‘builder,’” learned the trade from his uncle James Hawkins, and was the father of Samuel the printer and of John (1694-1774), builder, for whom Kneeland Street and Kneeland’s Wharf were named (pp. 50-52). It credits him with building the Old South Meeting House, which the building’s history does not support.