Miles Merwin

1623-1697 · New Windsor, Berkshire, England

Born 1623, New Windsor, Berkshire, England

Died 1697

Children include Abigail

Miles Merwin was born at Clewer, in Berkshire, England, beside Windsor Castle. He was baptized on 1 February 1623/4 at New Windsor, where the register calls him "Myles Murwin, the son of Gualter Murwin". The Bishop's Transcripts of Clewer record the same baptism. Gualter is the Latin form of Walter. Both entries were published by Douglas Richardson in 1995. He probably came to New England about 1640 with his uncle John Tinker.

About 1647, at Windsor, Connecticut, he married Elizabeth Powell. They settled at Milford, on the coast west of New Haven, where he was one of the principal planters who arrived between 1646 and about 1660. He was a tanner. In 1655 the town let Sergeant East build a warehouse "between this and the home of Miles Merwin the tanner", beside Richard Bryan's dock at the foot of Dock Lane, the street that ran down to the harbour. From that harbour Milford ships carried cattle, horses, beef and corn meal to the West Indies.

He and Elizabeth had seven children: Elizabeth, who married Samuel Canfield, John, born in 1650, Abigail, Thomas, Samuel, Miles and Daniel. Elizabeth died at Milford on 10 July 1664. About 1665 he married Sarah, daughter of Richard Platt and widow of Thomas Beach. They had five children, Martha, Mary, Hannah, Deborah and Daniel. Sarah died at Milford on 15 May 1670. On 30 November 1670, at Stamford, he married as his third wife Sarah, widow of Daniel Scofield. Her son Daniel married his daughter Abigail, so the two families were joined twice.

He made his will in May 1695, and it was presented at New Haven in June 1697. The inventory that follows it lists his children and grandchildren. Miles Merwin died at Milford on 23 April 1697, aged 74. His headstone, carved with a border, reads "Hear lies intered the body of Miles Merwin aged 74 years died 23rd of April 1697". His widow Sarah died there on 5 March 1697/8. She left the ten pounds he had willed her to her grandchildren and her son-in-law at Milford.

Children

Abigail Merwin (b. 1652)

Sources

Donald Lines Jacobus, History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield, vol. 1 (Fairfield, 1930), HathiTrust uva.x000303042, p. 521.

Historical Sketches of the Town of Milford (Milford, 1914), p. 33, archive.org cu31924028842676.

Pane-Joyce Genealogy, clarku.edu, report rr04_378 (compiled). E. B. Huntington, History of Stamford, Connecticut (Stamford, 1868), archive.org historyofstamfor00hunt, p. 41. "Descendants of Daniel Scofield I", CTGenWeb Fairfield County, Stamford pages (compiled, citing Jacobus, Families of Old Fairfield, and Prindle, Ancestry of Elizabeth Barrett Gillespie, 1973). Douglas Richardson, "The English Ancestry of the Merwin and Tinker Families of New England", NEHGR 149 (1995), 295-311, as quoted. Historical Sketches of the Town of Milford (1914), archive.org cu31924028842676, pp. 13, 33. Donald Lines Jacobus, History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield, vol. 1 (1930), pp. 484, 521-522. Find a Grave memorial 15019577.

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Cite: Heirology, "Miles Merwin (1623-1697)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/miles-merwin-1623-1697-f69339.