#52 Ancestors - #3 Jonathan Sparrow (1629-1707)

Week # 3  - Jonathan Sparrow (1629-1707)

An ancestor a week for 52 Weeks!   #52ancestors

I wrote about Rebecca Bangs last week and this week I selected a child of Richard Sparrow and his wife Pandora -  Jonathan Sparrow. You will find him in Wikitree.com as Sparrow-36.  Jonathan happens to have married Rebecca Bangs so you already know quite a bit about him since I used some of the details of his life last week. It appears Jonathan was born in England about 1629 and migrated with his parents to Plymouth before 1632. We know his first wife, Rebecca, but as she died fairly young he married again.  His second marriage to Hannah Prence (she b. 1628) was after 5 Jun 1667 when Hannah was nearly 40, she was widow of Nathaniel Mayo. Hannah died about 1698, aged 63. Jonathan's third marriage on 23 Nov 1698 was to Sarah Lewis (she b. 1643), widow of James Cobb.

Jonathan Sparrow grew up in the expanding town of Plymouth, headquarters of Plymouth Colony (and Plymouth County when it was formed in 1685) until it all merged into Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. He and his parents moved across Plymouth Bay to settle Nauset (aka Eastham), on Cape Cod, around 1650, when he would have been 21 years old.

The following is a sad part of our legacy but the colonists of this time period were trying to hang on to a tenuous existence in this new land. An interesting account of the order of battle for the Narragansett Expedition, part of King Phillips War is described in Ebenezer Weaver Peirce's "Indian History, Biography and Genealogy: Pertaining to the Good Sachem Massasoit of the Wampanoag Tribe" (Z.G. Mitchell, North Abington, Mass., 1878) Page 122.  The Second Plymouth company was commanded by John Gorham of Barnstable and our Jonathan Sparrow was a Lieutenant. In Dec 1675, the Colonial Militia of New England attacked the Narragansett people near Kingston, Rhode Island in what was called the Great Swamp Massacre. From Wikipedia- "the Pokanoket Indians had helped the original pilgrim settlers survive but when Philip succeeded his father as Sachem of the tribe about 1662, he began laying plans and gathering a federation of tribes to attack the colonists in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.  Officials from the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies responded quickly to the Wampanoag attacks on Swansea in June of 1675 and that began King Phillip's War."

Even though the Narragansett's were officially neutral, they were seen as harboring King Phillip's men and were attacked by nearly 1,000 colonial militia along with allied Pequot and Mohegan Indians. Sadly, many hundreds of Narragansett non-combatants were killed in this battle.

Sparrow survived this battle and in June, 1680 was commissioned captain of the company of militia in Eastham, with Joseph Snow as his lieutenant and Jonathan Bangs, ensign.  All able-bodied male colonists were obligated to participate in the colonial militia. 

Our family is descended from Jonathan and Rebecca's daughter, Rebecca Sparrow (1655-1740) who married Thomas Freeman. Mrs. Rebecca Freeman, executrix of her late husband Thomas, petitioned for the revival of proceedings of proprietors of land, against Robert Nickerson and others. 

Rebekah Freeman is buried in Old Burying Ground in Brewster, Barnstable County, Massachusetts. [6]

Inscription:

Here lyes y Body
of Mrs. Rebeckah
Freeman, Wife of Decon
Thomas Freeman
Who Departed this
life Febry 1740 in ye
86th Year of her Age