Holbrook line: William White, Immigrant (but not on the Mayflower)

I've wanted to write about William White for a long time.  Well, actually, I've wanted to learn about him for a long time.  I knew he was not the William White of the Mayflower, and that's about all I was sure of.  Today I found a very well written and referenced profile of him on WikiTree and I'm going to borrow from it rather shamelessly, in order to provide a brief sketch of this most interesting ancestor.   Any errors of course are mine. 

William White is a most interesting man.  We don't know when or where he is born but conjecture is that he may have been the William White who was born about June 8, 1604 in Derbyshire, England.  Both the date and the location make sense based on his marriage date and on his future occupation(s), but the first date that we really can say "this is probably our William White is his marriage to Elizabeth Jackson in 1629 at St. Gregory but St Paul's in London, England.  This would put WIlliam at 25 years of age, and also puts him in London, where he apparently lived from his marriage until his emigration to England. 

William and Elizabeth's first three children, Elizabeth, William, and Margaret were born in London.  Margaret was born in 1635 and Ursula was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1639 so the family must have emigrated between 1635 and 1639.  I would tend to think it was earlier because most families didn't travel directly to Providence, but were in Massachusetts at first.  There is a possibility that the family, or at least William, went back to England because he is again noted in 1645, as having emigrated to Massachusetts in the company of Dr. Robert Child who had recruited him to work in the New England Iron Works for five shillings a day. 

William was not a common laborer, however.  He seems to have had special skills and knowledge because Samuel Hartlibs "Ephemerides in 1643 says "?Mr. White has amongst many other things invented a new kind of Furnace which will save charges and coales.  William White's "Catalogue of Inventions reveals him to have been involved in an exceptionally wide range of activities and to have been actively thinking about involvement in colonization. 

William was employed at the Saugus Ironworks from 1646-1648 but was not a model employee.  He was fined four pounds for selling beer without a license.  (It was about this time that his daughter Elizabeth married Benjamin Herendeen, an ironworker, and may have had cause to regret it, as he was found guilty of beating his wife.)  Perhaps the family was somewhat dysfunctional.

Next we find William White, and presumably his family, leaving Boston, where he had lived, and going to Bermuda to help a Bermudian merchant, William Berkeley, salvage a sunken Spanish treasure ship.  (The term 'Bermudian merchant' may imply that Berkeley was involved in the slave trade in one way or another.)  William supported himself and his family by repairing stills the Bermudians used for making liquor, as well as by fishing aand gardening.

Trouble developed between the White family and William Berkeley.  In 1654, one daughter, Margaret, charged that Berkeley had raped her.  Margaret had been a servant in Berkeley's home.  Another daughter, Ursula, said that he had given her a shilling and tried to get her into his bed.  Berkeley supposedly retaliated by accusing Elizabeth, William's wife, of putting a spell on his cattle, and accusing William of saying "the devil take them".  Both charges implied witchcraft, at a time when this was a serious charge.

It was time for the Whites to end their efforts in Bermuda and go back to New England.  He stopped first in Warwick, R.I., having underestimated the time it would take him to join John Winthrop Jr in Pequot.  He had intended to work for Winthrop in his "major alchemical/industrial enteerprise that he was planning on Fishers Island near New Haven.

William was granted land at Pawtucket in 1656, next to his son in law Benjamin Hearndon/Herendeen, and later was granted meadowlands.  It appears that he had at least something to do with a bridge that was at Weybosset.  He sold this land to Hearndon and went back to Boston, where he was described as a bricklayer.  William signed his will October 13, 1673, and he had died by December 30 of that year.  The inventory, found on American Ancestors, (Suffolk County #676) is difficult to make out but it clearly is more than just a typical household inventory.  One item alone is valued at 1000 pounds.  Since much of this appears to do with his industrial/alchemical business, one wonders who actually bought the equipment and what the family actually received as proceeds.

There is more to William's story than I have been able to write in this short sketch, but I hope it shows us that not everyone came to New England and farmed or fished.  Some helped build the industrial complexes of the day.  Some spent time on Bermuda, or Barbados, or other islands.  Some were truly interesting, even if they weren't famous.  Such was William White.

The line of descent is

William White-Elizabeth Jackson
Elizabeth White-Benjamin Hearnden
Alice Hearnden-Daniel Brown
Hosanna Brown-Mary Hawkins
Othniel Brown-Deborah Brown
Sarah Brown-Enos Eddy
Enos Eddy-Deborah Paine
Joseph Brown Eddy-Susan Lamphire
Susan Eddy-Hiram Stanard
Louis Stanard-Mary Alice Hetrick
Etta Stanard-Loren Holbrook
Gladys Holbrook-Richard Allen
Their descendants