Jeffrey Ferris
Jeffrey Ferris was made a freeman of the Massachusetts colony in 1635, probably on 6 May, from Watertown. He moved to Wethersfield on the Connecticut River and sold his lot of forty-five acres there to John Deming. He came with the first colony from Wethersfield to Stamford in 1641. He is on the list of those who paid for the survey, and he received ten acres at the first assignment of land.
He had married about 1629 in England. The name of his first wife is not known. Anderson's study of the immigrants of 1634 and 1635 finds that she came over with him and two small children, Peter, born about 1629, and Joseph, born about 1632. Mary followed about 1636, John about 1640 and James about 1642. She was the mother of all his children, and she died at Stamford on 31 July 1658. The Stamford register enters her death under his name as "d. 31, 5, 1658", the fifth month in the old reckoning, when the year began in March.
In 1649 he and Robert Hustice sued James Steward, who had agreed to keep the town oxen "from coming home, and out of the Indian's corne." The oxen got into the corn and ate twelve and a half bushels of corn and two and a half of peas, and the court made Steward pay.
He moved on to Greenwich. In 1656 he was one of eleven Greenwich men, with his sons Peter and Joseph, who petitioned to be taken under the jurisdiction of New Haven. He was one of the town's original proprietors.
He could not write his name and signed with a mark, yet his inventory held "one Bible [and] 2 psalm books". At Greenwich he bought William Hallet's housing and lands on 25 November 1650, with Hallet's share of the land Daniel Patrick and Robert Feake had bought from the Indians. A note added to the Indian deed reads: "Keofrum hath sold all his right in the abovesaid neck to Jeffere Ferris."
On 28 May 1661 he made a marriage contract with Susannah, the widow of Robert Lockwood. It pledged legacies to the Lockwood children and mortgaged his Greenwich lands and "housings." Susannah died at Greenwich on 23 December 1660 by the Stamford register, a date that conflicts with the contract. About 1662 he married his third wife, Judith, a daughter of James Feake of London and the widow of Lieutenant William Palmer. She brought her Palmer sons into his house.
His will, dated 6 January 1664/5 and found in the probate records at Fairfield, left ten pounds sterling apiece to "the four boys he brought up," to be paid if they lived with any of his children until eighteen and then put out at interest until they were twenty. The four boys were Judith's sons by William Palmer: John, James, William and Joseph. The will also named his wife Judy, his son James, his son-in-law Jonathan Lockwood and Mary Lockwood, "son Peter's three children, and son Joseph's two." He died at Greenwich on 31 May 1666 by Anderson's account; Huntington gives only the year. The inventory was taken in 1667, with Angell Husted among the appraisers. Anderson dates the proving of the will to 9 March 1666/7 and quotes his widow's acknowledgment: "Judah Bowers, lately widow of Ferris sometimes wife to Jeffery Ferris, do openly acknowledge I have received in full satisfaction what was given me by my husband's will." Another abstract dates her receipt 6 March 1667.
Children
Sources
If Jeffrey Ferris is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Jeffrey Ferris (d. 1666)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jeffrey-ferris-1666-e33af4.