Ancestors

Lt. William Bushnell

William Bushnell was baptised at St Mary the Virgin, Horsham, in Sussex, on 3 February 1610/11. The register reads: "William, son of Frauncis and Ferris Bushnell." He was their third son. That year the churchwardens paid his father five shillings for colouring the church's font. His mother died in childbirth when he was seventeen.

The 1945 Bushnell genealogy infers that he came to New England in 1635 with his brothers, lived for a few years at Salem in Massachusetts, and moved to Guilford in Connecticut, where his father settled in 1639. In 1652 a London executor called him "William Bushnell of Guilford, in New England, sadler." Daniel Sledd, executor of his father William Sledd, authorized his uncle John Leigh of Ipswich to collect a debt from him for goods bought of the elder Sledd. The claim was still alive on 5 October 1666, when Peter Blanchford of New London was empowered to collect it. By then William was of Saybrook. He is also named in the will of Bozone Allen of Boston.

About 1643 he married Rebecca Chapman at Saybrook. She was a sister of Capt. Robert Chapman. William was a carpenter, and the town had work for him. Tradition says he built Saybrook's first meeting house about 1646. By record he built the second. The town paid him six shillings "for mending the drum that called the people to worship and to town meetings" and ten shillings and sixpence "for making pikes for the soldiers."

The town gave him its offices one after another. In 1659/60 he collected the town rate. On 3 October 1661 he was appointed ensign of the train band, the town's militia company, and served in that rank through the Indian wars. In 1663 he took the inventory of Joseph Clark's estate. On 4 July 1665 he was one of six men who signed for the inhabitants of Saybrook an agreement with the Mohegans, by which the town acquired more land and its earlier grants were confirmed. The others were Robert Chapman, William Post, Francis Bushnell, Robert Lay and Abram Post. On 8 November 1669 he sold Abram Post two acres of pasture for a home lot. On 12 May 1670 he was deputy to the General Court. He was leather sealer in 1673, the officer who inspected and stamped leather for sale, lister of taxable property in 1675 and 1681, and townsman in 1677. On 12 May 1679 he was made lieutenant of the train band, and later that month he was one of four men chosen to draw up a plea.

His brother Richard had died at Norwalk in 1659 or 1660, and Richard's widow married Thomas Adgate. On 4 September 1672 Adgate sold William a tract at Saybrook, describing him as "brother William Bushnell."

In August 1683 he testified to the nuncupative will of Susannah Waddams, a will spoken aloud before witnesses rather than written. He died two months later, on 12 November 1683. His inventory went to the New London court on 24 November. Administration went to his eldest sons, Joshua and Samuel, until William Dudley was appointed at the September court. A distribution was ordered then, and every daughter was named by her married name except Lydia Seward.

Uncas, the sachem of the Mohegans, made his will on 29 April 1684 and devised 1500 acres to him. William had been dead five months. The land lay in what became Hebron. On 2 June 1710, at the request of his son Samuel, the only surviving administrator, Robert Chapman and John Clark were appointed to value the right. The heirs were named as Samuel, William, Thomas, Daniel, Rebecca Hand, Judith Seward, Abigail Seward and Lydia Seward. Ten days later Joseph Seward and Caleb Seward of Durham, with the consent of their wives Judith and Lydia, sold two thirds of a 500 acre right in Hebron "granted by Joshua, Sachem, son of Uncas, Sachem of the Mohigans, to our honored father, William Bushnell of Saybrook."

He had eleven children: Joshua, born 6 May 1644; Samuel, September 1645; Rebecca, 5 October 1646, who married John Hand of Guilford; Francis, 6 January 1649/50; the twins Stephen and Thomas, 4 January 1653; Judith, January 1655, who married Dr. Joseph Seward; William; Abigail, February 1659/60, who married Capt. John Seward; Lydia, 1661, who married Caleb Seward; and Daniel. Stephen was granted five acres by the town in 1678 for his service in the Indian wars and died unmarried in 1727. Francis went to Norwalk at about twenty one and afterwards helped settle Danbury. The Bushnell genealogy notes that for nearly two hundred years Westbrook, a parish of Saybrook, was never without a William Bushnell.

His fatherhood of Francis had once been disputed, an earlier printed claim making Francis a son of Richard Bushnell. A deed of record settles it. On 25 November 1696 Francis Bushnell of Danbury conveyed land to "his brother Joshua Bushnell of Saybrook."

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Cite: Heirology, "Lt. William Bushnell (1610-1683)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lt-william-bushnell-1610-1683-6d234c.