Ancestors

William Harvey

William Harvey was baptised at Ashill, in Somerset, on 19 August 1610. The parish register, as indexed, enters him as "William Harvie", son of Thomas Harvie. His sisters Agnes, Thomasine and Marie, and his brothers Mathew and James, were baptised there too. He is the only William son of Thomas in the Ashill register, and a will of 1647 places a William, son of the late Thomas Harvey, in New England with a brother James. So the Ashill child is very probably the Taunton settler.

The Harvey Book of 1899 says he came to New England in 1636 with a brother Thomas. On 2 April 1639 he married Joan Hucker. The colony court entered the marriage after its session of 1 April: "William Harvey & Joane Hucker, of Cohannett, marryed the second of Aprill, 1639." Cohannet was the settlement on the Taunton River, renamed Taunton that spring.

For some years the family lived at Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their children Abigail, Thomas, Experience and Joseph were born or baptised there between 1640 and 1645. Jonathan was born at Taunton about 1647. Their daughter Experience married her first cousin Thomas Harvey, son of William's brother Thomas, in 1668.

In England a kinswoman remembered him. On 20 October 1647 Agnes Clarke of Ashill, a widow, left eighteen pounds to "William Harvey the Sonne of Thomas Harvey deceased my kinsman now in New England". He had four years to claim it. She also left him her household goods for his life. If he did not come, the money was to go to his brother James's son William.

He was one of the original purchasers of Taunton. In the division of 1659 he paid a fourteen-shilling rate and was counted for seven heads, which gave him forty-four acres. He was the town's excise officer in 1661 and its deputy to the colony's General Court in 1664 and 1677. He was one of Taunton's first selectmen, approved on 5 June 1666. In October 1667 he sat on a coroner's jury at Taunton. In 1677, with William Witherell and James Walker, he held the money Taunton had raised toward the charges of the war.

That war was King Philip's War, fought in 1675 and 1676 between the New England colonies and the Wampanoag leader Metacom, called Philip, with his allies. In April 1676 the towns of Cape Cod offered to take in Taunton's people. William Harvey was one of four men who signed the town's refusal.

He made his will on 12 June 1691, "being growne to a considerable age". He left his son Thomas the house and land Thomas lived on and lands at Three Mile River. His son Jonathan received the home lot, house and barn. He provided for the children of his son Joseph, who had died, and for his grandson Nathaniel Thayer Jr. He signed the will himself. It names no wife, so Joan had died before him. He died at Taunton in 1691.

If William Harvey is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "William Harvey (1610-1691)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-harvey-1610-1691-426e65.