Janet and Robert Wolfe Genealogy --- Go to Genealogy Page for John Faunce --- Go to Genealogy Page for Patience Morton

Notes for John Faunce and Patience Morton

In his sketch of John Faunce, Stratton wrote, [1]

John Faunce arrived at Plymouth in 1623 on the Anne. Banks guessed that he came from Perleigh, County Essex because he could find the surname only in that area, but others have found it elsewhere. He was a Purchaser and on the 1633 freeman list. Faunce married Patience Morton, daughter of George and Juliana (Carpenter) Morton. He served on juries and obtained various land grants (PCR, passim). His house was located in the southern part of Plymouth near the Eel River. He died 29 November 1654 (PCR 8:16). His children are given in Moore Families, p. 244-47, and the line is further carried forward by James F. Faunce, The Faunce Family History and Genealogy (Akron, Ohio, 1967). One of John's sons was the famed Elder Thomas Faunce, who lived to be almost 100, dying in 1746. A well known story originated in a talk given in the nineteenth [p.291] century at Plymouth's Old Colony Club that at age ninety-five Elder Faunce was driven to town in an open wagon from Eel River and taken to Plymouth Rock. He told the people gathered there how he had talked to John Howland and his wife, John Alden, Giles Hopkins, George Soule, Francis Cooke and his son John, and Mrs. Cushman, born Mary Allerton, who "died but yesterday." All of these, he said, told him that upon that rock they had stepped ashore, and John Winslow's wife, Mary (Chilton), had come there on her seventy-fifth birthday and laughed as she stepped on the rock and said she was the first woman to have stepped on it. This story, relayed to posterity verbally by one who claimed to hear it from a person who had been in Elder Faunce's audience that day, is as far back as we can go to authenticate that what we call today Plymouth Rock was in fact the first land at Plymouth touched by the Mayflower passengers.

In his article about the Faunce family, James Freer Faunce states, [2]

John Faunce joined the Pilgrims who, on or about 10 July 1623, sailed from England in the 140-ton ship Anne of London, William Peirce, Master. He was not a member of the original Scrooby group, but was a 'stranger' recruited by the merchant adventurers who financed the colony and a friend of the Francis Cook family. (George Willison, "Saints and Strangers", pg 449) The people coming on the Anne and the Little James started from England in the ship Paragon in the late fall of 1622. "But meeting the tempestuous storms in the Downs, the ship is so bruised and leaky that in fourteen days she returned to London, was forced to be put into dock, one hundred pounds laid out to mend her, and lay six or seven weeks to 22 December 1622, before she sailed a second time. But being half way over, met with extreme tempestuous weather about the middle of February, which held fourteen days, beat off the round house with all her upper works, obliged them to cut her masts and return to Portsmouth, having 109 souls aboard with Mr. Pierce himself. Upon which great and repeated loss and disappointment he is prevailed upon for L500 (pounds sterling) to resign to the company his patent, which cost him but l50. And the goods, with the charge of passengers in the ship cost the company L640, for which they were forced to hire another ship, the Anne. This ship arrived in July. Probably the above explains why the passengers on this ship were heavily in debt when they arrived." On this same ship was Patience Morton whose father, George Morton (1585-1624), was a merchant of a well-to-do Roman Catholic family of Harworth, near Scrooby, England, who organized the Ann and Little James company and died impoverished not long after landing. Also on board was her mother Juliana Carpenter Morton (1584-1665).

Research Notes:

Three articles provide information about John Faunce and his descendants. [3] [4] [5].

The Great Migration reports [6]:

John Faunce
Migration: 1623 in the Anne
First Residence: Plymouth
Freeman: In the "1633" list of Plymouth freemen "John Phance" appears in the midst of many persons admitted on 1 January 1632/3 [PCR 1:4]. In the 7 March 1636/7 list of Plymouth freemen [PCR 1:52]. In 1639 list of Plymouth freemen [PCR 8:174].
Education: The inventory included "an old Bible" valued at 6s.

Offices: Plymouth petit jury, 6 March 1637/8, 4 September 1638 [PCR 7:8, 9].
In Plymouth portion of 1643 Plymouth list of men able to bear arms [PCR 8:189].
Estate: In the 1623 Plymouth land division Manasseh Kempton and John Faunce were jointly granted two acres as 1623 passengers on the Anne [PCR 12:5]. In the 1627 Plymouth cattle division "John Fance" was the eleventh name in the first company [PCR 12:9].
Assessed 9s. in the 25 March 1633 and 27 March 1634 Plymouth tax lists [PCR 1:10, 28].
Allotted hay ground, 14 March 1635/6, 20 March 1636/7 [PCR 1:40, 56].
On 5 January 1637[/8] "Manasseth Kempton of New Plymouth, yeoman, doth acknowledge that he hath freely and absolutely given and confirmed unto John Faunce all that lot of land whereon the said John Faunce doth now dwell containing twenty acres or thereabouts" [PCR 12:26].
Granted six acres of meadow in the South Meadow, 2 November 1640 [PCR 1:166].
On 1 November 1647 George Bonum sold to John Faunce "that lot of land that lyeth next me at the Eel River with the housing and fencings thereabouts"; Manasseh and Jane Kempton witnessed the deed [MD 10:17-18, citing PCLR 2:1:161].
The inventory of John Faunce was taken 15 December 1653 and totalled £27 10s. 6d., with no real estate included; the most valuable item listed was "a weaver's loom, stays and tackling, valued at £2 10s. [PCPR 1:120]. On 7 March 1653/4 "letters of administration was granted unto Patience Faunce, to administer on the estate of John Faunce, deceased" [PCR 3:46].
On 29 October 1668 "Thomas Faunce appeared in the Court, and being of full age was taken notice of by the Court, and owned and ac~knowledged to be the right heir apparent to the lands of John Faunce, Seni[o]r, sometimes of Plymouth, in New England, deceased" [PCR 5:6].

Birth: By about 1608 based on estimated date of marriage.
Death: Plymouth 29 November 1653 [NEHGR 116:188-89, reinterpreting PCR 8:16, which gives the year as 1654].
Marriage: By about 1633 Patience Morton, daughter of George Morton; she married (2) after 9 June 1660 Thomas Whitney [MD 14:234; NEHGR 116:189]; she died at Plymouth 16 August 1691 "being entered into the 77 year of her age" [MD 16:62; PVR 135].

Children (all born Plymouth):
i Priscilla, born about 1633 (d. Plymouth 15 May 1707 "near 74 years of age" [PVR 136]); m. by 1653 Joseph Warren, son of Richard Warren (eldest child born Plymouth 23 September 1653 [PCR 8:33]; in his will of 4 May 1689 Joseph Warren requested "my brother Thomas Faunce" to be helpful to his widow in settling the estate [MD 4:16]).
ii Mary born say 1638; m. Plymouth 15 July 1658 William Harlow [PCR 8:21].
iii Patience born say 1641; m. Plymouth 20 November 1661 John Holmes [PCR 8:22].
iv Sarah born say 1643; m. (1) Plymouth 26 February 1662[/3] Edward Doty [PCR 8:23]; m. (2) Plymouth 26 April 1693 John Buck [PVR 86].
v Thomas born about 1647; m. Plymouth 13 December 1672 Jane Nelson [PCR 8:33].
vi Elizabeth, born 23 March 1648/9 [PCR 8:5]; d. Plymouth 3 March 1649/50 [PCR 8:8].
vii Mercy, born 10 April 1651 [PCR 8:12]; m. Plymouth 29 December 1667 Nathaniel Holmes [PCR 8:31].
viii Joseph, born 14 May 1653 [PCR 8:15]; m. Plymouth 3 January 1677[/8] Judith Rickard [PCR 8:68; NGSQ 30:136-37, 184].

Associations: The defective entry in the 1623 Plymouth land division has "Manasseh & John Faunce" receiving two acres as passengers on the Anne in 1623, but "Kempton" has been omitted after "Manasseh." This has given rise to references to a non-existent "Manasseh Faunce" (see Phantom File), but when corrected is suggestive in other ways. Within four years after their association at the time of the land division, Manasseh Kempton had married the widow of George Morton, and then six years after that Faunce married Kempton's stepdaughter. Faunce was nearly two decades younger than Kempton, and it may be that he came over in 1623 as Kempton's servant.
Comments: Banks derives John Faunce from Stow Maries, Essex, citing only "Banks Mss." [Topo Dict 52]. DeForest, however, states that Banks also suggested the neighboring parish of Purleigh, Essex, "merely because the name Faunce is an unusual one and he was only able to find it in and around Perleigh" [Moore Anc 244]. Apparently no one has explored this clue any further.
Savage creates an extra child by interpreting the 29 November 1654 death date as applying to a non-existent son John, rather than to the immigrant himself.
John Faunce was one of the Purchasers of 1627 [PCR 2:177].

Bibliographic Note: A good account of John Faunce was published by DeForest in his usual meticulous way [Moore Anc 244-47]. Rachel Barclay added some useful notes in 1962 [NEHGR 116:188-91].


Footnotes:

[1] Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History and People 1620-1691 (Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry Incorporated, 1986), 291, [GoogleBooks].

[2] James Freer Faunce, "The Faunce Family," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 114 (1960), 117, [AmericanAncestors].

[3] James Freer Faunce, "The Faunce Family," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 114 (1960), 115-125, [AmericanAncestors].

[4] Rachel E. Barclay, "The Faunce Family: Addenda and Corrections," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 116 (1962), 188, [AmericanAncestors].

[5] Rachel E. Barclay, "Correction to Faunce Article," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 48 (1960), 184.

[6] Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633 (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), 651, [AmericanAncestors].