General Notes

[Joanne's Tree.1 GED.GED]

2  PLAC 1056
2  SOUR S332582
3  DATA
4  TEXT Date of Import: 14 Jan 2004

ID: I26918
Name: Richard WALKER 1 1 2
Sex: M
Title: Captain
Birth: 1611 in Wimbledon, England 1 2
Death: 13 MAY 1687 in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA 1 2
Burial: 16 MAY 1687 Lynn, Massachusetts, USA 1 2
Change Date: 15 JAN 2004 2
Note: [daveanthes.FTW]

Richard, of Lynn, Massachusetts was married twice, his second wifebeing a Sarah Hempstead. Some people believe, however, that his second wife was really Jane Talmadge, sister of his first wife. Richard is the fountain of many of the Walkers of New Hampshire and of Maine. Richard's parents are not identified; however, it is plausable that he is the son of Richard Walker who joined the London Artillary Company is 1622 and was probably a native of Wimbledon, Surrey County, now a resident suburb of London, better known for its tennis matches.  Governow Winthrop mentions him as being at Salem, where he landed as early as 1629, somewhat ahead of the numerous English emigrants who came in Winthrop's fleet. Evidence ofhisspecial friendship with John Endicott supports the conjecture that he
reached Salem as one of Endicott's band, probably of those who came the second season.  If this be so, then he would have arrived on June 30, 1629, under Francis Higginson. This is very possible for he would have been 18 years old at the time, as proven by court testimony years later.

He resided in Salem for only a year, but during that time he acquired 51acres of land which he subsequently sold to Richard Saltonstall, who disposed of it in 1634 to Hugh Gunnison. It appears that Richard had familiarity with military affairs before arriving in Salem, for in1630, when the Lynn Train Band was formed, its officers, named by JohnEndicott, Governor of the Mass. Bay Colony, were: Captain, Richard Wright, Lieutenant, Daniel Howe, and Ensign, Richard Walker.  Richard had also been present in 1629-30 with a Thomas Dexter and others when Dexter bargained with "Blacke Will" at Nahant and gave the Indian a suit of clothes for a large tract of land there.  This we know from his sworn testimony in court.

When the Train Band had been in commission about two years, hostile Tarratine Indians from the Penobscot region advanced in war paint on a vengeful raid for an offense against them by Masconomo, the sagamore of nearby Ipswich.  In late September the settlers of Lynn heard that he also planned a raid on them. Members of the Train Band were therefore detailed to keep watch.  One evening about midnight Ensign Walker was on guard, and he heard bushes crack near him, and he felt an arrow pass though his coat and "buff waistcoat." He called the Guard and returned to the place when another arrow was shot through his clothes "betwixt his legges." It being imprudent to proceed further against a concealed enemy, the Ensigncalled off the search till morning.  The people then assembled and discharged
their two sakers (cannon) into the woods.  The affair wascommemorated, with variations of text, in several early records.  A Woburn poet inlater years wrote:

He fought the Eastern Indians there Where poisoned arrows filled theair And two of which those savage foes Lodged in Captain Walker's clothes.

The passage of time enhances the story, for the arrows have now become poisoned and the ensign has been promoted to captain.  Richard indeed was to be promoted to captain of a Train Band in later years, and it is possible that the above was written after that time.

In 1630 Richard joined with those who had  begun to explore some five miles westward, particularly at Saugus (Lynn), founded by these same explorers in 1629.  He selected land on "Walker's Plain", as it becameto be known, and within Hammersmith Village which was named after ancient Hammersmith in England. His land was on the west bank of the Saugus River,a nd very near to the spot where the Lynn Iron Works was to beestablished 13 years later.

Richard signed the pledge, was certified by his minister as aqualified resident (landowner) and as a full member (received the covenant) in the church and became a "Freeman" in 1634, along with his father-in-lawThomas Talmadge and Thomas's son William.

He made a trip back to England, probably late 1634, possibly to arrange for equipment and marketing arrangements for a planned Nahant venture. He was a likely person to make this trip as he was the only bachelor in the group. There are no records of the outward voyage to England, but his name was entered in a shipping office at London on 15 April, 1635, as one of those licensed "to go beyond the seas." On that day he took the required "oath of allegiance and Supremacy" before William Whitmore and Sir Miles Runton and was put down as a passenger "in the Elizabeth de London; Mr. Stagg for New England."  He gave his age as 24 at that time which agrees exactly with the age he gave at three subsequent court affidavits.  In this same ship there was a young lad of 15 by the name of William Walker who may well have been a younger brother to Richard. James Walker, age15, and Sarah Walker, age 17, were also listed as passengers. This James and Sarah were most likely cousins of Richard. There seems to be some confusion as to whom Sarah married in New England. According to some records she married a John Brown in 1640.  However, according to Savage's General Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Vol. 1V, page 398, Sarah married a John Tisdale, not Brown. Richard apparently married Jane Talmadge shortly after his return. He may have known her in England, but certainly they met regularly as they were neighbors on the Saugus River.  It was into this
home that his first two sons, Richard Jr. and John, were born andwhere his wife Jane died, not unlikely upon the birth of the younger of these two boys.  The Talmadge family records show that by 1640 Richard was a widower, as shown by the disposition of the will of her uncle who was still in England and apparently unaware of her death at the time of the drawing up of his last will and testament, for he left her money in the will.

Richard Walker, Thomas Talmadge, Sr., and Thomas Talmadge, Jr., one of Jane's brothers, held adjacent land along the banks of the river, when in 1638, the first division of lots was made.  Richard, who was head of the committee, and Thomas Sr. both received a grant of 200 acres, land which they had already been home steading for several years.  Thomas Jr.received 20 acres.  This Talmadge property may have been transferred to William, the son who had remained in Boston all these years, for about 1640 Thomas Sr. Robert, and Thomas Jr. were on Long Island where the new town of South Hampton was rising. A few years later, in 1649, they were to be founders of Easthampton, Long Island.  These Talmadges had goodconnections in both the old country and the new, and at his deathThomas Sr. was the wealthiest man in Easthampton.

Richard, along with other notable men of Lynn, were also involved as fishermen and planters at Nahant, as shown by the following Lynnrecord of a town meeting on 11 Jan. 1635.

"It is also voted by the freemen of the town that these menunderwritten shall have liberty to plant and build at Nahant and shall possess, each man for the said purpose and proceeding in the trade of fishing.  Mr. [John] Humfreys, Daniel How[e], Mr. [William] Ballard, Joseph Rednap, Timothy Tomlins, Richard Walker, Thomas Talmadge [Sr.] Henry Feakes, Francis Dent."

During Richard's time in Saugus the "Military Company of the Massachusetts", afterwards called the Ancient and Honorable Artillary
Company of Boston, was formed, the charter being granted on the first Monday of June, 1638.  It embraced members from the surrounding towns of the colony "to act as a sort of regulator of military affairs and as a school for instruction in tactics." Six charter members were chosen from Lynn, among them Nathaniel Turner, Daniel Howe, and Richard Walker,who were all officers of the Lynn Train Band. Richard, at this time, was 27 years of age, and as he was several years the junior of these other officers, this was recognition of his counsel and valor in Indian fighting which continued until he was a very old man.

In the years after the death of his wife Jane Talmadge, about 1640, Richard became a first settler at Lynn Village, later incorporated as
Reeding, later Reading, in a locality now called Wakefield, some eight miles up the Saugus River. His brother Samuel had moved there in 1642 and Richard received three tracts of land in Reading in 1642.  The town meeting that year having voted him 27 acres of upland " laying on the plain," which is identified as being "on the northernly side of the present Elm Street, at the northerly end of the Highway where theearly Train Band paraded."  The same town meeting voted him "a parcel of swampy medow," bounded by the Great Pond on the East and the Highway on the South, and the northwest by the first-mentioned acreage."  There wasfirst voted to him "a neck of upland containing ten acres more or less. "This was north of his first tract.  The original homestead was about one-third of a mile southwest of the entrance of the stream from Bear Hill into the Pond.

When he took his second wife Sarah (there is some confusion as to just who this Sarah was, a Talmadge or a Hempstead) about 1644, it was natural for him to occupy these grants.  The Talmadges had already left for Long Island.  His move up the river was also probably hastened by theopening of the first iron works in New England, which was the  very extensive(6 places, 3 miles square in each place) Lynn Iron Works with one siteright beside his grant.  The mining of bog iron over such a large adjacent area, with heavy black smoke from the forge and furnaces, would wrought havoc with any nearby farms. That he still owned the farm in 1644 is shown by his tax of L1 out of a total town tax rate of L80.

Richard and his second wife Sarah therefore had a considerable household in their early married years at Reading.  It included four sons, bornin Lynn, as follows:  Richard, Jr. (1637-1721), who was six  when they settled in Reading, John (1640-1721), four at the time, both children of Jane, Shubael (1641-1689), two at the time and whose name is from the Talmadge family, and Obediah (1643-1675), near his first birthday.  Three additional children were born at Reading:  Nathaniel (1645-1683), Tabitha (1647-    ), and Elizabeth (1649- ).  Both girls married while in their teens, sons of Captain Daniel King, Sr. (1602-1672), a Lynn pioneer from Waterford in Hertfordshire, and apparently dwelt at Swampscott.

In 1645 Lieut. Richard Walker was chosen by Governor Endicott alongwith his neighbor and friends Capt. Bridges and Sergeant Thomas Marshall to negotiate with d'Aulney, the commander of Acadia.  Upon their returnfrom Nova Scotia, the General Court (of which Richard had already been a member) voted Bridges, Walker, and Marshall L10, L4, and 40 shillings, respectively for their "good services."  This trip was to be the beginning of further trading activity with Acadia by Richard and his associates.

Richard had been promoted to lieutenant when he first arrived at Reading and there is mentioned in 1647 of "the Reading Train Band led by  Lieut. Walker" that organization then being required to train eight days ayear. When a new Train Band was formed in 1651, Richard was named as Captainby the Middlesex Court.

He is mentioned in 1648 as one of the church at Reading (Wakefield), along with his brother Samuel.  During a part of his residence there on the west side of Lake Quannapowitt, Rev. Samuel Haugh was his pastor. The church stood at Albion and Main Streets on what is now Wakefield Common. Sarah Haugh, the pastor's daughter, married Obediah Walker and thus became Richard's daughter-in-law.  She was to figure in extensive business transactions with Richard, the Haughs having been relatively wealthy.  He headed a petition in 1662 "to keep ye dogs out of ye meeting house onye Lord's day" by employing a dog whipper.  This apparently did not accomplish the desired results for the next action was to impose fine son the owners of the offending canines.  The scope of this problem ishard to understand until you place yourself back in time to when every family had one or more dogs who were with men and boys throughout the day andthat on the Sabbath they would accompany their master to the church and then be left outside with a score of other dogs to wait for hours for anyone to  again emerge to pet or to be with them.

Richard was also active in performing his civic duties and served on the board of selectmen in Reading in the years 1647, 1649, 1652, and 1658. He also served as chairman of "the seven Prudential Men" of Lynn for two years.  He was elected as Representative, or Deputy, to the GeneralCourt for the Colony from Lynn for the years 1640-1642, and again on his return to Lynnin 1679 and 1680. He was elected from Reading for the years 1647-1652, and 1658 and 1660.

In 1666 he moved into Boston Proper for a period of 11 years where he lived in the North End and became a menber of the Old North Church.S. Walker, propably his second wife, was admitted there in 1666, which was about the time that they moved there from Reading.  Richard's nameappears as a member of the board of trustees in 1671, along with Sir ThomasTemple, his associate in numerous business undertakings, as empowered to purchase land for the church. Richard then returned to Lynn in 1677 for the last ten years of his life.

Ref:  Pope's Pioneers of Mass. p. 446. Will of William Talmadge, uncle of Jane Talmadge.

The following is from the manuscript of Ernest George Walker, written in 1926:  Coloniel names, linked by marriage with Captain Richard Walker, his sons and grandsons - and with his brothers and their progeny - troopinto the picture in long array. A complete roster of them can hardly be given.  Town and family records, incompletely written often times, frequently omitted maiden names in marriages or failed to indicate bachelors and spinsters.  But through the first three American generations - which carried this Walker life stream beyond 1700 - the category of those allied to the Richard Walkers by marriage included Talmadge, Story, Coburnand Greenough; Leger and Mirick; Jewett and Hazeltine; the Hough and Dyer families.  On the distaff side were Walker daughters who married intothe
King family; the Larkin, Moore, Barker, and Sargent families; the Ayers, Bailey, Greeley, and Pierson families.  Akin to the stock of Captain
Richard Walker's brothers were the Moses, Philbrook, and Brookings families, the Roberts, Reed, Carter, Wyman, Baldwin, Leppingwell, Pierce, Haywood, Bruce, and Cook families; and the Snow family.

Much as a diary of outstanding achievements by Captain Richard's descendants might quicken reading interest, only a few have been  mentioned and in an incidental way.  Anything more would involve monumental search beyond the schope of this little volume.  The men and women of Captain Richard's blood have given a good account of themselves down through the ages, have gained positions of leadership and earned rewards in the higher brackets of business and the professions.  Two Walker members of a Harvard College class some years ago - belonging to widely separated families-were descendants, one of Captain Richard [George Albert Walker, Jr. Harvard, Class of 1894], the other of his brother Samuel.  One of these afterward resided near a Walker neighbor, , of like ancestry, who was
identified with prominent social and financial circles at Washington.  In the same city - far from the ancestral homesteads in New England - was another descendant of Samuel, who had an active career there as an attorney.  Attributes of character and ability prevail among these now far flung descendants of the great old Puritan founder of this Walker clan.

A few hours pilgrimage easily covers the scene of much of his life's activities and brings back on some measure the environment of his career.  Starting at Salem - where he landed after a sixty day voyage from London - the way is on to Lynn and the west bank of the Saugus [River].  There he started his home and family with Jane Talmadge.  On this ground one can contemplate his disappointment when the Iron Works were built at his front door.  Grief over his young wife's death gradually yielded to interest in a new home a few miles up the Saugus River.  There, in 1644, the General Court incorporated "Lynn Village" four miles square. Later it was "to take the name of 'Reddding.'" and still later to be known as Wakefield.

The adjacent hills are differently crowned these days than when they looked down upon the early Puritans.  But there is the same horizon over the broad Atlantic; the same circuitous channel up the Saugus to Lake Quannapowitt and Cowdry's Hill.  One can readily picture the many boat trips up the river with the rising tide and down again when the waters were ebbing;  welcomes galore from wife and children on Cowdry's Hillwhen work was finished; silent appreciation for the scenic glories of that beautiful region.

Subsequent years of residence at Boston's North End - only a few miles away- active associations with Sir Thomas Temple during the turbulent period; the closing decade at Lynn with continued occupation at private and public affairs, could hardly have erased memories of Wakefield where his business grew to be prosperous and his children by two marriages became men and women.

Pursuits that took him far afield oftener than surviving recordsindicate; voyages eastward to Arcadia; frequent journeys from Lynn and Readingas a Deputy to the General Court, duties at Lynn, Reading, Charlestown and elsewhere as a surveyor; family visits with brother William of Easthamon the Cape [Cod]; with cousins at Rehoboth and Taunton near there; with brother Samuel at Woburn; with married sons and daughters at Boston, Bradford, Ipswich, Charlestown, and Lynn - these and very much more, modern day descendants may visualize on a pilgrimage.

To see objects with which Captain Richard must have been familiar; to traverse places where he and one or two Walker generations after himwent their several ways, heightens comprehension of the long and unusual American family line that he founded.

The information contained herein dealing with the life of CaptainRichard Walker, of Lynn, was provided by Ernest George Walker via hismanuscript, written in 1935.

Richard arrived in Salem, MA 30 Jun 1629.  He was a farmer, fur trader, surveyor and military officer.  He was one of the first settlers and help lay out the town of Lynn, MA in 1630.  He was the Ensign of the watch in 1631 and admitted freeman 14 Mar 1634.  He was and Ensign in the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, attaining the rank of Lieutenant, then Captain in 1653.  From 1640 to 1649 he served as aDeputy to the Massachusetts General Court for Lynn four different terms.  In 1648-49 he helped found the townof Reading, MA.  Either he or his son Richard served as Deputy to the Court from Reading in 1650 and 1660.
     In 1642 he appointed the embassy to French Acadia to negotiate peace between La Tour and D'Aulney.  In 1645 he was appointed Deputy Governor of Acadia by Cromwell.  From 1662 to 1670 he served under Sir Thomas Temple, Baronet and nephew of the Earl of Lincoln.  In 1667 King Charles II ordered the return of Acadia to France under the treaty of Breda, and in Aug 1670, Captain Walker surrendered Fort Pentagoet (or Penobscot) to the Chevalier de Grnad Fontaine.
     Captain Walker is believed to have been the grandson of John Walker (1540-1584), an early explorer of the Penobscot Bay area and the present state of Maine.

Father: Richard WALKER b: ABT 1590 in Newton Stacey, Hampshire, Eng
Mother: MARJORIE b: ABT 1591 in England

Marriage 1 Jane TALMADGE b: ABT 1614 in Landulph, Cornwall, England
Married: ABT 1636 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA 1 2
Children
Richard WALKER b: 6 JAN 1636/37 in Lynn, Essex, Massachusetts, USA
John WALKER b: 1640 in Lynn, Essex, Massachusetts, USA

Marriage 2 Sarah HEMPSTEAD
Married: ABT 1641 1 2
Children
Shubael WALKER b: 1641 in Lynn, Essex, Massachusetts
Obadiah WALKER b: 1643 in Lynn, Essex, Massachusetts
Nathaniel WALKER b: 1645 in Reading, Essex, Massachusetts
Tabitha WALKER b: 19 MAR 1646/47 in Reading, Massachusetts, USA
Elizabeth WALKER b: 2 MAR 1648/49 in Reading, Essex, Massachusetts

Sources:
Title: daveanthes.FTW
Note: ABBR daveanthes.FTW
Note: Source Media Type: Other
Text: Date of Import: 14 Jan 2004
Title: Joanne's Tree.1 GED.GED
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Text: Date of Import: Feb 6, 2004