Will of Thomas Low of Ipswich

Printed in The Probate Records of Essex County (vol. 3, 1920), pp. 175-177, read in the archive.org full text for the Low master research (6 Oct 2026). Earlier known from the abstracts in Wm. G. Low (1908), Merriam (1901, p. 14) and the Hammatt Papers, which differ on the date: it was written 20 April and signed 30 April 1677, and proved at Ipswich court 6 Nov 1677 by James Chute.

“In the Name of God Amen … I Thomas Low Sent. of Ipswich in America in the Shire of Essex, being weake in body; but of good & perfect memory.” The bequests:

• To his wife Susannah: “what goods she brought with hir,” and “the vse of that roome which I Lye in”; the use of the cow “which she liketh best,” which his son John was to keep “winter & Sumer”; “one fourth part of her labor that she hath Spunn both Lening & woollen”; “& Also she shall haue hir beere as shee hath now, & also free vse of the fire”; a shoat yearly, a garden plot, ground “to sow half a peck of flax seede yeerely,” thirty shillings a year and five pounds. If she chose “to remoue from my Sonne John,” forty shillings a year, “John to send hir the pay to Boston or Charls Towne.”
• To son John, “all my Howsing & all my lands in Ipswich,” and the residue; John sole executor.
• “Item I Giue & bequeath vnto my Sonne Thomas Low Thirty pownds”; to daughters Margaret and Sarah, £40 each.
• £5 each to grandchildren Thomas Low, Margaret Davison, Sarah Safford and Sarah Low, at twenty or marriage (“my Grandchild Thomas Low five pownds”).
• Witnesses James Chute and Mary (her mark) Chute.

Inventory, 5 Nov 1677, by Samuel Ingals Sr. and Nathaniel Wells: “half the hous and half barne, 50li.”; “the mault hous and the things belonging to it, 35li.”; six acres of arable land, a division of marsh in the Hundreds, four and a half acres at Plum Island, six acres of marsh at Chebacco; four oxen, five cows, two heifers and a calf, a horse, eight sheep and six lambs, swine; “about fifty boushels of unthrest barly,” about 44 bushels of Indian corn, hemp and flax, spinning wheels, “twenty three pound of yarn”; “one Sword, belt, powder, boullets.” Total £290 16s. 6d.; debts £14 16s. 2d.

The will proves that Deacon Thomas Low was the immigrant’s son. “Boston or Charls Towne” is probably the root of Mollie’s statement that Susannah died at Charlestown.