General Notes

Ancestral File Number:<AFN> 3GZT-RG
JOHN EDDY

ORIGIN: Boxted, Essex
MIGRATION: 1630 on Handmaid
FIRST RESIDENCE: Plymouth
REMOVES: Watertown 1631
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP: Admission to Watertown church prior to March 1632/3 implied by Winthrop anecdote [WJ 1:120].
FREEMAN: 3 September 1634 (eighth in a sequence of eleven Watertown men) [MBCR 1:369].
EDUCATION: On 29 November 1670 Watertown selectmen ordered "that John Edy senior shall go to John Fisk his house and to Georg Lorance and Willyam Preist houses to inquire about their children whether they be learned to read the English tongue and in case they be defective to warn in the said John, Georg and Willyam to the next meeting of the selectmen" [WaTR 102], and on 3 January 1670/1 "John Edy senior and Isaak Sternes were appointed to speak with Willyam Knop about the education of his daughter and to make return how they find it as to her education and also being kept under restraint and government" [WaTR 104]. His inventory included "a chain, a small table, a parcel of books" valued at 10s.
OFFICES: Watertown selectman, 23 August 1634, 30 [Nov]ember 1635, 10 October 1636, 7 November 1670 [WaTR 1, 2, 102]; with Nathaniel Treadway "nominated to look to the orders of hogs & fences," 14 January 1655/6 [WaTR 44]
ESTATE: Granted Great Dividend of fifty acres at Watertown, 25 July 1636 [WaBOP 5]; granted Beaverbrook Plowland of nine acres, 28 February 1636/7 [WaBOP 6]; granted Remote Meadow of nine acres, 26 June 1637 [WaBOP 8]; granted farm of one-hundred-twenty-three acres, 10 May 1642 [WaBOP 13].
In the Watertown Inventory of Grants John Eddy held ten parcels: sixteen acre homestall; two acres of meadow; Great Dividend of fifty acres; nineteen acres and a half of upland beyond the Further Plain; nine acres of Remote Meadow; six acres of upland; two acres and one rood of marsh; one acre and a half of meadow; seven acres of plowland in the Hither Plain; and one acre and a half of meadow in Ward's Meadow [WaBOP 81]. In the Inventory of Possessions he held three parcels, which he had acquired from Emanuel White: twenty acre homestall; three acres of Remote Meadows; and Great Dividend of twenty-five acres [WaBOP 117; see also WaBOP 78]. In the Composite Inventory he held seven parcels: forty acre homestall; four acres of meadow; Great Dividend of fifty acres; Great Dividend of twenty-five acres; nineteen acres and a half beyond the Further Plain; twelve acres of Remote Meadow; and a farm of one-hundred-twenty-three acres [WaBOP 25].
In his will, dated 11 January 1677[/8?] and proved 16 December 1684, "John Eddie of Watertowne, senior," bequeathed to "my son Samuell Eddie ... my homestall being by estimation forty acres more or less with my dwelling house and barn and all the appurtenances thereunto belonging, with seven acres of meadow and upland lying right over against Widow Barnard's house," he to pay to "my son John Eddie thirty pounds," as further limited by a writing "my sons-in-law John Miriam and Thomas Orton had ... of me"; also to "my son Samuell aforesaid a lot of twelve acres of upland more or less lying and being on the top of Stonie Brook Hill"; to "my four daughters Marie Orton, Sarah Miriam, Pilgrim Steadman, Ruth Gardner, a hundred acres of upland ... being a farm lying near upland called Nonesuch ... to be equally divided between my four daughters aforesaid"; to "my two sons aforesaid Samuell and John Eddie" all movables to be equally divided between them; "as for my dear and wellbeloved wife I have a writing under my hand and witness to it with the particulars therein mentioned what she shall enjoy after my death"; to "my son John aforesaid fourscore and five acres of land being land called by the name of farm land"; son Samuel Eddy to be executor [MPR Case #6825].
The inventory of the estate of John Eddy was taken 8 December 1684 and totalled £246 7s., of which £216 was real estate: "dwelling house and barn with about forty acres of land to it," £160; "