John Sutliffe
John Sutliffe was born at Deerfield in Massachusetts in 1674, two years before his father was killed at the falls, and went to Branford in Connecticut about 1680 with his mother, his stepfather and the other Sutcliffe children. His daughters Hannah, Mary, Lydia and Abigail were baptised at Branford between 1699 and 1706, and he was enrolled in the Branford church in 1708.
He was among the first settlers of Durham, appointed a town officer at its first meeting in 1706 and named in 1708 as one of the inhabitants to whom the Legislature granted the patent of the town. He was put on the committee to run the town lines, and in 1709 the town made choice of Serj. John Sutliff to go to Guilford and elsewhere, to gather what money ye gentlemen that have farms within the town will contribute towards the building of the Meeting house. That errand was a delicate one, since the men he was sent to ask were absentee gentlemen holding colony land grants, and the compiler reads his selection as a token of his standing among the settlers. He was Representative for Durham in 1716.
Water ran through his whole career. In 1707 Durham voted and granted stream to dam up for use of sawmill to John Sutlief, and earlier the town had granted Allyn's brook to Thomas Stanley and John Sutlief for to run a cornmill. In 1723 he and his brother settled on Haddam Quarter, and from there he went to Northbury, now Plymouth, settling on the west side of the river below the Spruces. He came to own the land west as far as the Hemlocks and between Cemetery Hill and the Knife Shop village, a tract known afterwards as Sutliff Swamp, and he held the mill privilege at what became the Woolen Mill, where he had a grist mill in 1730, the first in the town of Waterbury of which Northbury was then part.
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Cite: Heirology, "John Sutliffe (1674-1747)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-sutliffe-1674-1747-e16a77.