Walter Haynes

Born Abt in England. April 24, 1638: Walter with his wife Elizabeth, their children Thomas, John, Josias, Suffrane, and Mary, and 3 servants (or farmhands) John Blanford, John Riddot, and Richard Biddlecomb departed from England aboard the ship Confidence bound from Southampton, England to Boston, Massachusetts. He worked as linen weaver. He died February 14, 1664[1665] in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

Founding Sudbury

Walter Haynes, a linen weaver born around 1583 in England, sailed for Massachusetts in April 1638 with his wife Elizabeth, five children, and three hired farmhands aboard the ship Confidence. He settled first in Watertown before becoming one of the founding settlers of Sudbury around 1639, serving repeatedly as the town's deputy to the Massachusetts General Court through the 1640s and early 1650s and as one of its first selectmen from 1644. In 1648 Walter and a neighbor negotiated the purchase of a second tract of land for the growing town from an Indigenous man named Cato, paying five pounds in goods and wampum to expand Sudbury to five square miles; Walter was later trusted with the town's store of gunpowder and shot, kept under his care with the town's assurance he would bear no liability for any accident.

A Weaver's Estate

Walter helped organize much of early Sudbury's civic life — signing the contract to build its meeting house, choosing the site for its first bridge, setting town labor rates, and helping enlarge the meeting house in 1649. In his May 1659 will he divided his substantial landholdings among his children, leaving his home and its surrounding land to his wife Elizabeth for her lifetime, with the remainder split between his sons John and Josiah, and a tenement he still owned in Shaftesbury, England, to his daughter Elizabeth. Walter died in February 1665; his estate, appraised at nearly 406 pounds, included his Sudbury house and land, cattle, and a collection of books valued at four pounds.