General Notes

Name Prefix:<NPFX> Lt.
Ancestral File Number:<AFN> 342V-3N
Notes: !Will: MD 10:7-8. Dated 3 Dec 1686: "Ensigne william merrick Senior of Eastham he being about Eighty Six years of Age..." Wife Rebecca to be sole executrix. "To my Eldest son william mirick" he "paying five pounds to my Son Stephen." Inventory on 17 Feb 1688/9, Oath 6 March 1688/9. He was probably the son of Ensign William Merrick who was probably early in Duxbury, and a proprietor of Bridgewater. See Freeman 1:365. Savage says: In Duxbury 1640, was one of the original proprietors of Bridgewater, early removed to Eastham. Hills II:66 says: b. Wales about 1615, ... He seems to have been the oldest of the four brothers to reach Charlestown in the "James" in the spring of 1636, and was a soldier serving for six years in the Colonial Militia under Capt. Standish as an Ensign and Lieutenant. At the end of his service he married, very likely, in Eastham. He married late in life.____________________________________________________________________________________
MERRICK, WILLIAM-Bom ca. 1600 (see will below), William Merrick first appears in Plymouth records 5 October 1636, when he was one of four men fined 45 after William Bradford charged them with trespass (PCR 1:44). Dawes-Gates 2:581-86 has an excellent account of what is known of him, though the speculation that he did not marry until ca. 1642, because I might have been in servitude until this time, does not hold, That he was probably a servant on arrival is backed up by his 1673 deed, when he sold land at Saconett and mentioned that the land had been granted to the 0ld Servants of which he was one; also in 1686 he made his "kinsman Partridge of Duxbury" his attorney for land in the Saconett purchase. Merrick being one of the first purchasers and one of the "Old Servants in the infancy of this jurisdiction" (Ply. Colony LR 4:260, 5:517). However, on 6 October 1636 he was one of several men granted land at Powder Point in Duxbury (PCR 1:45), and on 2 October 1637 he was granted twenty acres at Green's Harbor (PCR 1:66). Thus he would have been released from servitude prior to 6 October 1636, and he was quite possibly one of the servants who came over on the Talbot in 1629. By 1649 he was known as Sgt. William Merrick (PCR 12:178). On 5 June 1651, and again on 4 May 1652, he was proposed for freeman status, but did not become a freeman until 1 June 1658 (PCR 2:167, 3:7, 137). On 4 October 1652 William Merrick of Eastham sold his land in Duxbury to George Partridge (MD 1:135). On 1 June 1663 Ens. William Merrick was approved as lieutenant of the Eastham military company (PCR 4:41).
He married Rebecca Tracy, daughter of Stephen Tracy, ca. 1642 (Dawes-Gates 2:801, 584). In his will dated 3 December 1686, inventory 17 February 1688/89, he called himself about eighty-six years of age, and he named his wife Rebecca, oldest son William, son Stephen, "all my children," and grandchild Ruth Freeman (MD 10:7). His children, recorded at Eastham, though the first three or four must have been born at Duxbury, were William, Stephen, Rebecca, Mary, Ruth, Sarah, John, Isaac, Joseph, and Benjamin (PCR 8:28, 30; MD 5:23, 7:19). Dawes-Gates 2:585 states that son William mamed (1) Abigail Hopkins, daughter of Giles 2 Hopkins and (2) Elizabeth, the widow of Jabez Snow; Stephen married (1) Mercy Bangs and (2) Anna Wflbore; daughter Mary married Stephen Hopkins, son of Giles 2; Ruth married Edmond Freeman; Sarah married John Freeman; Joseph married (1) Elizabeth Hawes and (2) Elizabeth (Freeman) Remick, daughter of Samuel, Freeman (Samuel).

Source: Mayflower Increasings for Three Generations Mayflower Descendent. Bowan, George E.,
by Susan E. Roser 1989