William Towne
William Towne was born in England in 1600 and married Joanna Blessing on 25 March 1620 in the church of St. Nicholas at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, a building founded in 1123 and dedicated in 1251, where their first six children were baptized. He crossed to Massachusetts with his wife and five or six children and settled at Salem.
His first American record is a grant: on the eighth month of 1640, a little neck of land right over against his house on the other side of the river. In the same year he sued John Cook for debt in the Salem court and the jury found for him. He lived in the part of Salem called the Northfields until 1651, the year after Topsfield was incorporated, when he bought forty acres there from William Paine of Ipswich. He sold his Salem property the following year and bought more Topsfield land in 1656.
In 1663, for natural affection and in contemplation of his son Joseph's marriage to Phebe Perkins, he and Joanna conveyed two thirds of the house they were living in, with barn, outhouses, yard, gardens and orchards, on the understanding that Joseph should have first refusal of the last third whenever it was sold.
He died at Topsfield about 1672, twenty years before his family became the most famous in New England for the worst possible reason.
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Cite: Heirology, "William Towne (1600-1672)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-towne-1600-1672-e94d2c.