William Phelps ★

Born Abt in Crewkerne, Somerset, England. March 20, 1630: Departed from Plymouth, England with his wife and children aboard the Mary and John piloted by Captain Squeb. He married November 14, 1626, in Crewkerne, England. He died July 14, 1672, in Windsor, Connecticut.

Founding Dorchester

William Phelps sailed from Plymouth, England, in March 1630 with his wife and children aboard the Mary and John, arriving at Natasket (now Hull), Massachusetts, that May as part of the founding company of Dorchester. He quickly became one of the young settlement's most active civic figures: elected constable in 1631, he went on to serve repeatedly as selectman and as Dorchester's deputy to the Massachusetts Bay General Court through the mid-1630s, and sat on numerous boundary-surveying committees, including one that laid out the line between Boston and Roxbury and another between Weymouth and Hingham. In November 1630 he served on the twelve-man jury that tried Walter Palmer for the death of Austin Bratcher and returned a verdict of not guilty — remembered as the first jury trial in New England.

Founding Connecticut

In 1636 William was one of seven commissioners appointed by the Massachusetts Company to govern the new colony of Connecticut, moving with his family to found Dorchester's namesake settlement, later renamed Windsor. He served for years afterward as an assistant to the Connecticut General Court and, from 1639, as a colonial magistrate — in January of that year joining Roger Ludlow and the other magistrates in drafting Connecticut's first constitution, among the earliest written constitutions in the American colonies. In May 1637 he presided over the court session that declared war on the Pequot people, and in 1639 he helped organize the expeditionary force that followed. He continued as a Windsor deputy and magistrate on and off for another two decades, into the 1660s.

A Windsor Landholder

William built a large landholding around Windsor, including a nine-acre home lot and a fifty-acre great lot with adjoining meadow, and in 1635 began negotiating with Sehat, a Paquannuck sachem, for a substantial tract of land — a purchase he didn't fully pay off until 1665, thirty years later, with additional trucking coats. He survived the great flood of 1639, which damaged his home and land, and in his April 1660 will made his son Timothy joint owner of his estate, with instructions to support his wife and pay set sums to his other children. William died in Windsor on July 14, 1672.