Ancestors

Samuel Hubbard

Samuel Hubbard was born in 1610 at Mendlesham in Suffolk. "I was born of good parents," he wrote of himself, "my mother brought me up in the fear of the Lord, in Mendlesham, in catechiseing and hearing choice ministers."

He came over to Salem in October 1633 and then moved, and kept moving, every time his beliefs outran the town he was in. Watertown in 1634, where he joined the church "by giving account of my faith." Windsor in 1635, where Mr. Ludlow married him to Tacy Cooper the following January. Wethersfield in 1636. Springfield in 1639, where a church was gathered with five men in all. Fairfield in 1647, and there the trouble came to a head. He set it down himself: "God having enlightened both, but mostly my wife, into his holy ordinances of baptizing only of visible believers, and being very zealous for it, she was mostly struck at and answered two terms publicly, where I was also said to be as bad as she, and sore threatened with imprisonment to Hartford jail, if not to renounce it or to remove; that scripture came into our mouths, if they persecute you in one place, flee to another; and so we did the 2 day of October, 1648, we went for Rhode Island."

They reached Newport on 12 October 1648 and were baptized three weeks later by John Clarke. In August 1651 the church sent him to Boston to visit the brethren in prison there, John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall, jailed by Massachusetts for holding a Baptist service. In 1657 he and Holmes rode to the Dutch and to Gravesend, Jamaica, Flushing and Cow Bay, and came home in November.

Then his household changed religion a second time. In March 1665 he wrote: "My wife took up keeping of the Lord's holy seventh day Sabbath." In April: "I took it up," and then the daughters and a son-in-law by name and date. On 23 December 1671 seven people entered into covenant with each other at Newport, and he listed them: "William Hiscox, Stephen Mumford, Samuel Hubbard, Roger Baxter, sister Hubbard, sister Mumford, Rachel Langworthy." That is the first Seventh Day Baptist church on the continent, and three of the seven were his own family.

He wrote letters all his life and enough of them were kept to hear him. In 1675, with King Philip's War on: "My wife and 3 daughters, who are all here by reason of the Indian war, with their 15 children, desire to remember their christian love to you." In 1678 to a doctor in London, on a cough he could not shake and a physician who "said he judged none help or hope of cure." In 1686, to John Thornton of Providence, on being one of the last men alive who remembered the beginning: "My old brother who was before me, you and brother Joseph Clarke (only alive) in that ordinance of baptism, I next and my wife in New England, although we stept before you in other ordinances: Oh! let us strive still to be first in the things of God." The last of him in his own hand is 7 May 1688, writing to Boston that the measles were still in the house and his daughter Rachel had them.

If Samuel Hubbard is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Samuel Hubbard (b. 1610)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/samuel-hubbard-1610-6b603b.