From the earliest records in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Jonathan Wade is referred to as a merchant with the honorific “Mr.” prefixed to his last name. Whether this honor was due to his wealth when he moved to Ipswich (there are no references to it), or to his status as one of the investors in the Company of […]
Before launching into a review of Jonathan Wade’s brief time in Charlestown where he landed in September 1632, it would be helpful to briefly describe the early history of Charlestown and what it must have been like when Jonathan stepped off the boat. In 1628, the Sprague brothers, Ralph, Richard and William, and a few […]
We know that Jonathan Wade was born somewhere in England, most likely in East Anglia, and was born, according to his own statement of his age in 1678, around 1612 to 1614 though this could prove to be quite erroneous if primary documents were to be discovered. Having established that, it is time to begin […]
In this, my fifth post, I will conclude the discussion of probable places that Jonathan Wade may have been born. However, as stated earlier, there is no primary source, to the best of my knowledge, that has been uncovered that definitely identifies this place of origin. In my previous post, I concluded from the evidence […]
After determining when an ancestor was born, the next logical question is where he or she was born? This question may consume several long posts as we delve into the supposed birthplace of Jonathan Wade who emigrated from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632. In my research, I came across a sentence that has stayed with […]
In the course of history, billions of people have come and gone before us. And yet, with the tools and techniques of genealogical science and of family history, we try to focus on the life and times of one individual at a time until we arrive at some semblance of the history of a family. […]
We last left Jonathan Wade walking the corridors of the Ipswich and Salem courthouses looking to collect the various debts others owed him or answering to the court for some complaint about his prices or even, in typical puritan fashion, his behaviour. Between September 1659 and November 1682, I have recorded 62 occurrences involving Jonathan […]
In the last post, you were introduced to a character by the name of John Fuller. Fuller had an interesting history and was the subject of a sketch in the Great Migration 1634-1636, Volume II, C-F. According to the sketch, Fuller was born about 1620 and died in Ipswich on 4 June 1666, just about […]
In one of my earlier posts on April 1, 2012, I spent a considerable amount of time and space going over the details of Jonathan’s land purchases in England, some of which occurred during a trip he made to England in 1657. It was also during this trip that he signed his first will which […]
Before examining some of the transactions that Jonathan Wade was a party to in the years after 1647, it might be an appropriate time to deal with an issue that should surface in light of Jonathan’s successful business ventures as well as some that eventually led to his censure by the courts for particularly offensive business […]
