John Nathan Lord

• General Notes
  • According to legend, John left Wales as a youth and set out for London. He was accompanied by his friend, Abraham Conley, who was Irish. It was in London (or Kent) that John married Ann (or Jane) and they had a son, Nathan. Meanwhile, his friend, Abraham, had married and had a daughter, Judith Conley.  When John died, his friend Abraham, whose wife had also died, married John's widow, Ann (or Jane). It is supposed that Ann (or Jane) accompanied Abraham to New England, along with his daughter, Judith, and his step-son, Nathan Lord.  ******  The following is taken from a paper 'Nathan Lord of Old Kittery', presented by Ernest C. and Judith H. Maby, at the 1992 meeting of The Sons and Daughters of Nathan Lord:   ' We find a record of Nathan Lord's parents, Nathan Lord and Ann Lord, in Rye parish registers in Sussex, England, which show the baptism of five children, born between 1626 and 1633 to this couple. The same registers also record the burial of his father, Nathan Lord, shoemaker, February 1, 1633; the earlier deaths of three of the children; and the baptism of our Nathan Lord, September 1, 1633, seven months after his father's death. By February 1633, Nathan's mother, Ann, was a widow with two surviving children, Mary and Nathan.   On January 1, 1643, the widow Lord married Abraham Conley in Wittersham parish, Kent, England. Her daughter, Mary, died January 6, 1634, only a few days later. The baptismal records of Wittersham parish show a son of Abraham Conley, baptized on November 5, 1636. It is not known whether this child survived infancy. Ann Lord, herself is thought to have died about November 1636, not long after.   Abraham came to America bringing his step-son, Nathan, with him. Whether or not Ann Lord Conley, Nathan's mother, and the little boy baptized in 1636 lived long enough to come with Abraham and Nathan, we do not know.   Abraham Conley's second wife was Elizabeth (surname unknown). She is known to have been alive as late as 1664, for in that year she was with him as a witness against Thomas Crawley. Abraham and Elizabeth had a daughter, Judith, born about 1637/1638, who eventually became Nathan Lord's first wife. So Abraham Conley was not only Nathan's step-father but his father-in-law. Not only that, but Abraham Conley married once more after the death of Elizabeth, this time to Margery Everett Nash, and our Nathan's second wife was Martha Everett, Margery's daughter by her first marriage to William Everett, making Abraham Conley Nathan's father-in-law twice over.'  (Above excerpts from the paper 'Nathan Lord of Old Kittery' provided courtesy of Cushman and Louise Gray.)