Other Colonists (Murch)

A few other notable colonists who are ancestors of Charles Murch:



SKETCH OF JAMESTOWN (1608)
John Price (1584-1628)

John Price, a Welshman, arrived in Jamestown on the ship Starr in 1611. His son Matthew followed him on the ship George in 1635. Matthew’s daughter, Sarah, was born in Virginia, but later migrated to Maine, where she met and married William Jameson from Scotland.


John Tisdale (1614-1675)
Sarah Walker Tisdale (1618-1676)

Sarah Walker came over from England on the ship Elizabeth in 1635, as a servant. Four years after she arrived in Massachusetts, she married into the noble Tisdale family. Her husband John was a victim of an assault by Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower (also an ancestor), and later became constable of Taunton. He was killed by Indians in King Phillip’s War. The Indians stole his gun, and when the gun was later recovered, it was used as evidence against the three Indians, who were then sold into slavery and removed from the country.


Richard Higgins (1603-1675)
Nicholas Snow (1599-1676)

Two of Charles Murch’s ancestors, English Richard Higgins & Nicholas Snow, were founding members of the Town of Eastham, Massachusetts in the 1640’s. Eastham is the site of first encounter, where the Mayflower pilgrims first landed and had contact with the Nauset Indians, before deciding to move up the coast to Plymouth to settle. While Richard and Nicholas were not on board the Mayflower, they arrived a couple years afterward on the ship Anne. Richard’s daughter ended up marrying Nicholas’ son. Nicholas married Constance Hopkins, daughter of Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower. Plaques dedicated to both these Pilgrims are on display as monuments in Eastham Town Hall.


MONUMENT TO FIRST ENCOUNTER
Eastham, Massachusetts

FIRST ENCOUNTER BEACH
Eastham, Massachusetts

Elizabeth Hull (1628-1706)

Another of Charles Murch’s ancestors, English born Elizabeth Hull, who arrived in the New World in 1635, had several personal run-ins with the Indians. One particular story I discovered is where she apparently hid a young Indian in her home (where she and her husband John Heard raised their 15 kids) in Dover, New Hampshire, protecting him from slaughter by her neighbors during the 1676 Massacre, and then aided his escape afterwards. Then in 1688, she ended up a captive of the Indians, and was enabled to escape unharmed by the aid of the same Indian she protected 12 years prior.

Her father, Reverend Joseph Hull (a Cambridge graduate) traveled to the New World with her, and his other children. When they arrived in Boston, they settled in an area that he helped name Weymouth, Massachusetts. In 1639, he and his family moved to the Indian area of “Mattakeese”, and he called the town Barnstable, Massachusetts. He used to preach from a rock to the masses of settlers, many of them armed and ready for battle with the Indians, and also with the Puritans, who didn’t like his style of preaching, as it was too Anglican. The rock is still there, surrounded by the highway. Due to the Civil War in England, there was a dearth of immigration in 1639, and he found himself in a religious minority. He moved north to an Episcopal Colony in what is now York, Maine. But in 1653, Massachusetts took Maine under its jurisdiction, and Hull’s religion was once again under threat. He ended up going back to England for a while, but he eventually came back to York, where he died in 1665.