Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Stephen BACHILER
A noted English divine of Hampshire. Came in the "William and Francis",arrived at Boston, Thursday, June 5, 1632. "An unforgiven puritan". B.A. from Oxford University in 1586. Emigrated from Hampshire, England to Boston in 1632; lived at Lynn, Mass.,where his daughter Theodite lived, for 4 years; removed to Ipswich, MA, 1636; Yarmouth, 1637; Newberry, 1638 [DG]; to Winniscunnet, New
Hampshire, 1638, which was named Hampton at his request.
In 1641 was dismissed and was heard of at Saco (Willis=37)[DG]. Removed to Casco, ME in 1647; returned to England in 1654, leaving third wife Mary, where he died.
Henry of Reading, probably his son, was persecuted in 1660 as a Quaker.
Nathaniel of Hampton, eldest son, born about 1611, married Deborah, daughter of John Smith. He had 17 children, 9 by Deborah, one was named Nathaniel.
Married 2nd 31 Oct 1676, Mary (Carter) Wyman. Married 3rd, Elizabeth _______.
Burial date provided by [RH]
! The name BACHILER is variously spelled in the old records, and not less variously at the present time by descendants; quoted from early settlers of Nantucket in which the name has been variously spelled, i.e., BACHELOR; and from which the following has been extracted:
Reverend Stephen BACHELOR was born in England in 1561. he was well educated and had received orders in the established church [Church of England?] but was not in sympathy with its rites and institutions. His unwillingnesss to conform to its requirements had resulted in his being deprived of his
ecclesiastical commissions.
He spent a few years in Holland, but returned to London. In some records we read that "his eldest daughter had emigrated to America and had settled in the new town of Saugus, now Lynn [MA]." Here came also Stephen BACHELOR on June 5, 1632, and here he established The First Episcopal Church of Lynn, according to his own ideas. Differences occurred from time to time, but finally, when a
Council of Ministers was called, it was decided that, "Although the church had not been properly instituted, yet the mutual exercise of their religeous duties had supplied the defect." [sic]
On May 6, 1635, he was admitted a freeman and removed first to Ipswich, where he received a grant of fifty acres of land and proposed to locate; but he soon left Ipswich, and, with some friends, John WING and others, went to Mattacheese, on Barnstable Bay, now Yarmouth, with a view to establishing a colony there. This enterprise proved impracticable, and he went next to newbury, and on the July 6, 1638, received a grant of land from the town.
On September 6 the General Court gave him permission to settle a town at Hampton, a few miles from Newburyport, in New Hampshire.
In 1639 the town of Ipswich offered him sixty acres of upland if he would reside with them; this he declined.
On July 5, he sold his house and lands in Newbury, and removing to Hampton, settled the town and established a church, of which he became pastor.
In 1640, Hampton granted him 300 acres of land, and he gave them "a bell for their meeting house."
In 1647, he was at Portsmouth, where he remained three years. At the age of eighty nine he married and lived with this third wife for only a year. In 1651, he returned to England and there died in his one hundredth year at Hackney, near London.
Edwin l. SANBORN, ll.d., in his "History of New Hampshire," page 53, says: "The first churches were formed at Hampton and Exeter. Hampton claims precedence in time .... the first pastor of this firstborn church of the new state, and the father of the town, was Reverend Stephen BATCHELDER, and ancestor on the mother's side of Daniel WEBSTER."
Lewis and Newhall's "History of Lynn," Page 141, N.E. reflects: "Susanna BATCHELDER, one of the descendants of Stephen's son Nathaniel, married, July 20th, 1738, Ebenezer WEBSTER [born at Hampton, October 10, 1714], the grandfather of Daniel WEBSTER."
The following information is extracted from "Founders of Early American Families, Emigrants from Europe 1607-1657, published by the General Court of The Order of Founders and Patriots of America as a contribution to the bicentennial of the United States of America, Cleveland, Ohio 1975":
The Reverand Stephen BATCHELDER [may be spelled BACGEKIR, BATCHELLER, or BACHILER] came on the "William and Francis" 1632, Lynn [MA], Ipswich 1636, Yarmouth 1637, Newbury 1638, Hampton 1639, Strawberry Bank 1647, Hackney, Middlesex, England, died Hackney, 1660. Oxford A.B. Preacher, Freeman......[New Hampshire Historical Society Proceedings 5:172 [BIG]; MNH; NER 46:58 [BIOG], 74:319 n. #1026, 1040, 1137, 3398.
"A Genealogical Register of the First Settlers of New England," containing an alphabetical list of the.......by John FARMER, as reprinted by Samuel G. DRAKE, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1979, includes the following: Stephen BATCHELOR, the first minister of Lynn and Hampton [Mass.], was born in England, about 1561, arrived at Boston, with Rev. Thomas WELD, 5 June 1632;
was the next year settled at Lynn, and in 1638 or 1639, became Minister of Hampton, but was dismissed in 1641. He is supposed to have returned to England in 1655 or 1956, leaving in America, a wife, Mary, who in 1956, petitioned the general court for a divorce, stating that her husband, Rev. S.
Batchelor, upon some pretended ends of his own, had gone to England, and had taken a new wife, and expressing her wish to be at liberty to marry, if she should have a good opportunity, and the lord should incline her heart.
She also stated that she had two children, who were diseased. Mr B. must therefore have been between 95 and 100 years when he died. His grandson Nathanial was a respectable inhabitant of Hampton, and living in 1690, and descendants of the minister are said to be numerous in Rockingham County, N.H.
In March 1992, Gerald M. BATCHELDER, P.O. Box 138, Stratham, NH 03885, provided the following: "The Reverend Stephen Bachiler-Saint or Sinner?", an examination and appraisal of the available evidence on the subjecty of this Puritanical Colonial, by Philip Mason MARSTON, Professor of History and Chairman of the Department, University of New Hampshire; published privately by the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New Hampshire, 1961. This Essay was delivered at the Society's Field Day Luncheon at Exeter, August 19, 1961.
The document is presented generally as printed, except the list of references for the research: The first minister of Hampton, New Hampshire and one of its founders has rightly or wrongly been accused by some of his contemporaries, as well as by later writers, of certain lapses in moral behavior over and
above the religeous dissensions common to the first part of the seventeenth century in New England.
His chief defender was a nineteenth century descendant, Victor C. SANBORN.
Specifically, the charges against Stephen BACHILER involve the disruption of churches, an alleged proposal to commit adultery with the wife of a neighbor in Hampton and marrying a fourth wife while still legally married to his third.
In all of these charges we have only what has survived of the contemporary journals, histories and records on which to base a decision and it should be noted that seemingly more of these have been lost than have been preserved.
The origin of the BACHILER (or BATCHELDER or BACHELLOR) Family in England is a matter of speculation which need not concern us in this paper. The date of the birth of Stephen BACHILER was probably 1560 or 1561 but the first definite record we have of him concerns his matriculation "in the University of Oxford from St. John's College about 1581." His B.A. Degree was granted in 1586
following which he may have served briefly as Chaplain to Lord de la WARR [DELAWARE] before becoming Vicar of Wherwell in Hampshire, "on presentation of" His Lordship, in 1587. All six of his children, by his first wife, were born during the eighteen years he was at Wherewell, three sons and three daughters.
Information cited by a decendent, Sandra CLUNIES [BMFH46A] over Prodigy Computer Network, extracted from "N.H. Gen. Record 8:1, Jan 1992," Funded by The SANBORN Family is as follows:
Stephen was buried 31 Oct. 1656, Parish of Allhallows Staining, London, Eng. In the pages I have from the "Genealogical Dictionary of Maine & New Hampshire; the "good" Rev. m. (1) ----Bate, a relative of Rev John BATE , vicar at
Wherwell; (2) at Abbots -Ann 2 Mar 1623/4 Christian Weare, wid.; (3) at Abbots-Ann Helena Mason, wid. age 48 in 1631, d bef 3 May 1647; (4) unhappily the widow, Mary Beadle of Kittery, with whom in 1640 he was ordered to live.
The same year he was charged with marrying without bans. I have he died at Hackney near London ca 1660.
Children by wife 1:
THEODATE b 1588 m. Christopher Hussey
NATHANIEL b 1590, merchant of Southampton, Eng.d 1645 m. Hester le Mercer & had 5 children
Children by wife 3:
BENJAMIN
DEBORAH b1592, m. Rev John Wing
STEPHEN Jr b 1594, living with father at Wherwell in 1614, having been expelled from Magdelen
College as the author of libelous verses (chip off the old block)
SAMUEL b 1597, a minister, late of Gorcum, Holland
ANN b 1600 m. (1) Sanborn (2) bef 1640 Henry Atkinson of London
Child by wife 4:
MARY, 21 in 1671, had m. by 26 Mar 1673 William Richards whom the court on his petition after
deliberation, appoved his admin. of STEPHEN BATCHELDER'S estate.
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