General Notes

[Joanne's Tree.1 GED.GED]

2  SOUR S332582
3  DATA
4  TEXT Date of Import: 14 Jan 2004


[daveanthes.FTW]

Humphrey Turner and Lydia Gaymer were married in the Parish of Sandon in Essex County, England on 24 October 1618 and came to the Plymouth Colony in 1632. Some have speculated that Humphrey Turner (ca 1593 - 1673) was a son of John Turner but this has not been documented.

We have more information about the family of Humphrey's wife, Lydia Gaymer (ca 1602 - aft. 1669). She was a daughter of Richard Gaymer, a prosperous miller and landowner, who was born after 1561 inCogge-shall, County Essex, England and his wife, Margaret Mason who died in July 1602, shortly after the birth of her daughter. Richard Gaymer's fa-ther was also named Richard Gaymer and was born before 1540 and married Anne Dobbes or Hobbes on 8 Feb 1561/62.

Some early researchers have said that Humphrey Turner came to Plymouth in 1628 and had a house lot assigned to him in 1629. It is possible that he came alone in 1628, then returned to England and brought his wife and children later. Or it may be that the "house lot" was assigned to him while he was still in England, planning to come to the Massachusetts Colony. However, later research by Vernon Dow Turner clearly shows that the first four children of Humphrey and Lydia Turner, including our ancestor, Lydia Turner , wereborn in England that they did not come to Massachusetts until about 1632.
Humphrey Turner was a tanner. He was on the 1633 freeman list in Plymouth when, on 18 May of that year, he sold his right to a piece of land near Plymouth fort to Josias Winslow for eight pounds. This was proba-bly when he moved to Scituate where he was one of nine men with a house when the Rev. John Lothrop arrived in September 1634 [see sketch of Roger Goodspeed]. Humphrey Turner was one of the original seventeen organizers when Lothrop's church was formed on 8 January 1634/35 and his wife, Lydia, joined the church two days later. Their daughter, Mary, was baptized at Lothrop's house on 25 January of the same year. However, the Turners did not go to Barnstable with the Lothrop group.

In 1636 when the great lots, of 60 and 80 acres each, along the North River, were granted to the earliest settlers, Humphrey Turner received a lot of 80 acres at Union bridge on the west side, adjoining that of Edward Foster on the east and Ephraim Kempton on the west. This lot was settled later, in 1645 by his eldest son, John Turner, Sr. Also in 1636, Humphrey Turner erected the first tannery in the Colony and for years received the hides from all the Pilgrim farmers until a "leather mill" was erected upon Town brook in Plymouth by Nathaniel Thomas.

Humphrey Turner was a useful and enterprising man in the new settlement, and was often employed in public business. On 5 January 1635/36 he was elected constable ofScituate and was re-elected several times. He also served as surveyor of highways and on several juries. In the latter capacity he sat on the first jury empanelled in the colony to try a white man for the murder of an Indian. In 1630 John Billington of Plymouth had been hanged after a jury trial for the murder of his neighbor New-come or Newcomin; but the indictment of Thomas Jackson, Richard Stinnings, Arthur Peach and Daniel Crosse for the robbery and murder of the Indian, Penowanyanquis, was the first opportunity offered the forefathers to show Massasoit their ability and willingness to scrupulously keep their treaty faith with him. This was the jury on which Humphrey Turner sat. The trail took place before Governor Prence, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Miles Standish andJohn Alden and John Jenney, John Browne and John Atwood, Assistants. Upon the jury with Turner sat Edward Fos-ter, the lawyer, Elder William Hatch and Richard Sealis, his neighbors, John Peabody, a first citizen of Duxbury, John Winslow, the son of the Governor, and Samuel Hinckley, whose son Thomas was afterward the colony's chief executive. Cross broke jail and escaped, but the others had sentence of death pronounced, that they "be taken