5th GENERATION: PLYMOUTH

JOSIAH COTTON

(5th great grandfather)

(1679 -1756)

PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS

Josiah Cotton^1,1,2,2, son of Rev. John Cotton Jr. & Joanna Rossiter. Born on 8 Jan 1679 in Plymouth Township, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts.^3,1,3,1 Josiah died in Plymouth Township, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, on 19 Aug 1756; he was 77.^3,3 Buried in Aug 1756 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^3,4,5,3,4,5

Brief Bio: The Hon. Josiah Cotton was son of John Cotton, some time minister of Plymouth, and grandson of John Cotton, minister in Boston. He was born in Plymouth, Jan. 8th, 1679, and graduated at Harvard College in 1698, and became a teacher of a school in Marblehead, in October fol lowing, where he preached his first sermon, September, 1702. In 1704, he discontinued preaching and re turned to his native town, where he was a school in- structor for seven years. This respectable man held, at different times, several civil offices in the county, as clerk of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, Justice of the same court, Register of Probate, and Register of Deeds. He was also occasionally employed as a preacher to the Indians in Plymouth and the vicinity, having acquired a competent acquaintance with their language. He was the author of the Supplement to the New England Memorial. He left a Diary, which he began in his youth, soon after he left college, and continued nearly to the time of his decease. It is in the possession of his grandson, Rosseter Cotton, Esq. the present Register of Deeds for the county of Plymouth. It contains many historical facts, which it would be desirable to have extracted and presented to the Massachusetts Historical, or to the Pilgrim Society, for preservation. Mr. Cotton died in 1756, aged 76 years, leaving a numerous progeny. He possessed a strong and sound mind, and was fervently pious, and indefatigable in the discharge of all the duties of his various and honorable stations in life.⁶Josiah Cotton

Josiah Cotton, schoolmaster, Indian missionary, and public servant, was born January 8, 1679/80, a son of the Reverend John Cotton (A.B. 1657), and a nephew of Cotton Mather. His mother’s maiden name was Jane Rossiter. When Josiah was nine a lady of the congregation found him in one of her trees, yanked him out “with her hand, and then threw him over the fence . . . the child fell flat upon the ground by her pulling him by the leg. . . .”1 In spite of a youth occupied by narrow escapes from drowning in a tub, in a well, and in the ocean, in addition to being run over by a cart and falling out of trees, he found time to learn to read without going to school. He studied Latin successively under the Reverend Mr. Wiswall of Duxbury, who went to England; under the Reverend Jonathan Russell of Barnstable, who sent him to Boston to the school of Joseph Dassett, who shortly died; and under Wiswall again, who sent him back to Boston to Peter Burr’s school. Thence Josiah was admitted to college in June, 1694, and assigned to John Leverett as tutor and William Brattle as patron. His statement “thro. Favour, not merit I happened to be placed second of the Class Mr Symes being the first,” is one of the few bits of direct evidence we have of the principles of the class order. It is also Cotton who informs us that in his time it was customary for “many of the scholars to draw off in the winter.” He spent the winter of his freshman year studying under Eliphalet Adams at Taunton, the next winter teaching school at Plymouth under his father’s direction in the parsonage and at the town charge; the third winter he continued in college, and the fourth he “dwelt and studed at home.” Of his life at college, he tells: I learnt (among other arts) to smoke it, but might have improved my time much better, for so much time is consumed in sleeping and eating and other necessary diversions of life, that we have no need to continue those that are altogether needless. This is a practice I should not have run readily into at home, for my Father and Mother never inclined to it, but example abroad brought me into it. Howsoever our Class did some penance about this time for some of their faults being obliged to recite at five o’clock in the winter mornings that Mr Leverett might seasonably attend the General Court at Boston, being Representative for the town of Cambridge.2

From the college records it appears that Josiah was a quiet student, although he paid one fine of 5s 6d, and spent a good deal for commons and sizings in an erratic fashion. His diary enables us to make the only personal attribution of a Bachelor’s commencement thesis in his college generation. Under the moderation of President Mather, Cotton as respondent and Hubbard as opponent disputed on the thesis “Cometos [sic] sunt meteora,” indicating that the astronomy of Gassendi was then taught at Harvard. At his Master’s Commencement Cotton took a theological question “An Detur in non Renatis liberum arbitrium ad bonum Spirituale?” He denied that free will was of any use to the unconverted.

From Josiah Cotton’s diary it appears that after taking his first degree he did a surprising amount of traveling up and down New England. On one of these trips he visited Marblehead where on October 17, 1698, he was invited to settle and keep school. His salary was 15l a year from the town and a groat a week “according to their learning for each scholar.” He also picked up money “Writing Indentures for Jersey Boys and Girls,” for whom the going price was 12l.3 Altogether he made the handsome sum of 50l a year in silver, but he had some difficulty in the matter of board:

I kept at Capt Browne’s and Capt Brattle’s, where I was his Chaplain, and about three months boarded myself in the schoolhouse; but dwelt longest at the minister’s, Mr Cheever’s where were my first and last quarters. . . . When I came to the place I was raw and young, not 19 years old, and therefore it is not so much to be wondered at, if I gave way too much to that extravagance, Intemperance, Negligence in Religion, and Disorderliness, that is too rife in that place. . . . I studied divinity, read over the Greek and Latin Testament with some annotations, and first preached at Marblehead Nov 23, 1701. . . and was admitted to the church at Marblehead Sept. 6, 1703.4

In July, 1704, Cotton took his leave of Marblehead, and after visiting Connecticut went to his brother Roland’s (A.B. 1685) at Sandwich to teach Latin grammar to his nephews John Cotton and John Denison (both A.B. 1710). During the fall he kept school at Sandwich, and during the winter preached at Yarmouth. He thought of settling in the ministry but found writing sermons very fatiguing and a strain on his health, for he “had then a lingering headache always attending him.” Consequently he accepted an invitation to teach school at Plymouth at 40l a year, and began on November 2, 1705, in the house in which he had been born, the use of which he gave to the town until it built a schoolhouse. For two years he boarded with Thomas Little (A.B. 1695), and occasionally assisted the Reverend Ephraim Little (A.B. 1695) in preaching. Thus he became acquainted with the minister’s cousin, Hannah Sturtevant, to whom he was married on January 8, 1707/8. He described his wife as “a person not ill natured, of honest principles, true to her friends, and one that has brought me well favored and I hope well disposed children.” In the next year he gave up the school and moved to a farm which he had bought about two miles north of the town, but making a poor hand of farming, resumed teaching in November, 1711. In the spring of 1713 he succeeded Thomas Little as clerk of the Inferior Court and Register of Deeds and keeper of the Colony Records, but after a year was forced out of office by Little’s brother, and again returned to keeping school. In 1715 he was restored to office, and in succeeding years he became justice of the peace and quorum, Register of Probate, Notary Public, and Register of Deeds, special justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and justice of the Inferior Court. In 1721, 1723, and 1727 he was elected to the House of Representatives.

The salaries and fees attached to these offices permitted the Cottons to return to their farm. For seventeen years Josiah had been the leading citizen of Plymouth when, in 1739, he suddenly dropped from the service of the town. No reason is apparent; he had once cast “sundrey reflecttions upon the Selectmen” in regard to their treatment of smallpox;5 he had some trouble with the minister over the revival meetings of Andrew Croswell (A.B. 1728); and he had aroused opposition by a proposal to distribute gratis copies of Hale’s book on witches “as a service acceptable to God and profitable to future generations”; but this would not explain a seclusion from which not even threats of prosecution if he did not continue to serve as assessor could move him. He continued to serve as a justice of the Inferior Court until 1747 when, he writes, his resignation was occasioned by his “growing forgetfulness and decays of mind.”

To Mr. Cotton, the important part of his life was not the holding of these offices, but his faithful labors in preaching to the Indians for half a century. Before he took up the Plymouth school he had begun to learn the Indian language so as to follow in his father’s footsteps as a missionary. He traveled constantly over Plymouth Colony, preaching on the average twenty Sundays a year. He compiled an Indian dictionary and translated one of Mather’s sermons into that language. For a part of the time he received a salary of 20l a year from the Commissioners for Propagating the Gospel in New England. Although he found the savages inclined to be frolicsome, and time and again he wrote that little, if anything, was being accomplished, he persisted in the work. In 1744, he writes, the Commissioners “gave me a dismission, because the Indians did not attend; a business I had been in about 39 years.”

Josiah and Hannah Cotton had fourteen children: Hannah, b. Apr. 3, 1709; m. Thompson Phillips, Sept. 30, 1725; d. Oct. 27, 1731. Mary, b. Aug. 14, 1710; m. John Cushing of Scituate, 1729. John, b. Apr. 5, 1712; A.B. 1730; m. Hannah Sturtevant Dec. 9, 1746; d. 1789. Bethiah, b. June 8, 1714; m. Abiell Pulsifer Mar. 1, 1732/3; d. Sept. 20, 1735. Theophilus, b. Mar. 31, 1716; m. Martha Saunders Oct. 27, 1742; d. Feb. 1782. Lucy, b. Feb. 19, 1717/8; m. Charles Dyer Mar. 25, 1736. Josiah, b. Nov. 18, 1724; entered Harvard with Class of 1740; lost at sea 1745. Margaret, b. Jan. 23, 1729/30; m. Thomas Sawyer of North Carolina. Rowland, b. Sept. 13, 1732. Five others died in infancy.6 With this experience, Cotton writes that a man’s children are “himself multiplied; and the greater the sum the better, provided they take good courses and are faithful in their generation. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them.”

Josiah Cotton died August 19, 1756, according to his gravestone, and August 27, according to the Boston Weekly News-Letter of September 16, 1756.

WORKS:

Josiah Cotton in 1728 wrote a sketch of his life and of the Cotton family, and thereafter brought it up to date each year. This Ms., referred to as the Diary, was used by historians of the last century, and a copy of it was made by William G. Brooks, but both have been lost for twenty-five years. Parts of it have been published in Roads’s History of Marblehead and in the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, as noticed above. Another Ms. by Cotton, described as a Diary of the years 1732-1756, has recently been lost from the papers of the late Arthur Lord. The M. H. S. has several personal letters from Josiah to Rowland Cotton, some legal documents, the notes for an Indian sermon, the Ms. of his printed ‘Vocabulary,’ and an interesting detailed account of services among the Indians in 1716-17. In the Curwin Mss. at the A. A. S. are numerous letters addressed to him, calendared under the senders.

A Vocabulary of the Massachusetts (or Natick) Indian Language. Cambridge, 1829. pp. 112, (1). Also printed in 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. II, 147-257 (1830).

Supplement to the second (1721) and later editions of Nathaniel Morton, New-England’s Memorial.

WORKS:

• Plymouth Church Records (Publications Colonial Soc. Mass.), I, 266.
• 2. Publ. C.S.M. XXVI, 279-80. The following extracts are from a Ms. copy of the same diary, both now lost.
• Letters and Papers 1632-1776, Mass. Hist. Soc., 71 H 168.

SOURCES:

• Parts of Cotton’s diary relating to his stay at Marblehead are printed in Samuel Roads, History and Traditions of Marblehead (Boston, 1880), pp. 37-40.
• Records of the Town of Plymouth (Plymouth, 1889-1903), II, 212.
• These are chiefly from William G. Brooks’s Ms. Genealogy of the Cotton Family, p. 74, M. H. S., corrected by town records. According to Cotton’s diary, however, he had but twelve children.
•  Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 4:398-402.

On 8 Jan 1707 when Josiah was 28, he married Hannah Sturtevant^3,3, daughter of John Sturtevant & Hannah Winslow,  Plymouth Township, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts.^7,8 Born on 10 Apr 1687 in Plymouth Township, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts.^3,3 Hannah died in Plymouth Township, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, on 27 May 1756; she was 69.^3,3

They had the following children:

•           2            i.          Hannah (1709-1731)
•           3           ii.          Mary (1710-1789)
•           4          iii.          Rev. John (1712-1789)
•           5          iv.          Bethia (1714-)
•           6           v.          Colonel Theophilus (1716-1782)
•           7          vi.          Lucy (1717-)
•           8         vii.          Josiah (1719-1719)
•           9        viii.          UNNAMED (1721-1721)
•          10          ix.          Edward (1722-1722)
•          11           x.          Josiah (1723-1723)
•          12          xi.          Josiah (1724-1745)
•          13         xii.          Edward (1726-1726)
•          14        xiii.          Rowland (1727-1727)
•          15         xiv.          Margaret (1730-1789)
•          16          xv.          Rowland (1732-1734)

Second Generation

_____________________________________________________________

2. Hannah Cotton. Born on 3 Apr 1709 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts. Hannah died in Boston, Massachusetts, on 27 Oct 1731; she was 22. Buried in Oct 1731 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^5,5

On 30 Sep 1725 when Hannah was 16, she first married Captain Tomson Phillips in Plymouth Township, Plymouth County, Massachusetts.⁹ Born bef 1690 in Jamaica West Indies.^9,9 Tomson died in drowned at sea off Jamaica, West Indies, in Dec 1729; he was 39.^9,9

They had one child:

1. Hannah (1728-)

Abt 1730 when Hannah was 20, she second married Captain William Dyer^5,9,5,9, son of John Dyer & Hannah Morton,  Plymouth Township, Plymouth County, Massachusetts.⁹

3. Mary Cotton. Born on 14 Aug 1710 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Mary died in Scituate Township, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, on 4 Nov 1789; she was 79.

On 20 Nov 1729 when Mary was 19, she married John Cushing, son of John Cushing & Debra Loring. Born in 1710.

They had one child:

1. William (1732-1810)

3. Rev. John Cotton^11,11. Born on 5 Apr 1712 in HalifaxTownship, Massachusetts.^3,10,3,10 John died in Plymouth Township, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, on 4 Nov 1789; he was 77.^11,12,11 Buried in Nov 1789 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^13,13

Brief Bio: John Cotton, Esq. son of the above, was born April, 1712, graduated at Harvard College, 1730, and was ordained minister at Halifax, county of Plymouth, October, 1736. From an indisposition, which greatly affected his voice, he requested and received his dismiss sion in 1756. He succeeded his father in the office of Register of Deeds, which he held until his decease, which took place Nov. 4th, 1789, in the 78th year of his age. He was considered an able theologian, and his pulpit performances were much esteemed by judicious auditors. He was the author of the valuable Ac count of Plymouth Church, appended to the sermon preached at the ordination of Rev. Chandler Robbins, in 1760. This account was republished in the 4th vol. of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical So ciety, and has been resorted to by the author of the present work. He published, also, seasonable warnings to the churches of New England, and tracts on Infant Baptism, and several occasional sermons. He was chosen by the town, delegate to the convention for forming a constitution for the Commonwealth, in the year 1780, and was one of the committee for the county to draft the constitution. He left sons and daughters. Josiah, the eldest, was the minister at Wareham, and afterwards a magistrate and clerk of the court for the county of Plymouth. He died April, 1819, aged 71, leaving one son, who is a physician in the state of Ohio, and one daughter, who is the wife of Isaac L. Hedge, Esq. of this town. Two other $ons of John Cotton, are Rosseter, the present Register of Deeds for the county, and Ward, minister of Boylston.⁶ On 9 Dec 1746 when John was 34, he married Hannah Sturtevant¹⁴, daughter of Capt. Josiah Sturtevant & Hannah Church,  HalifaxTownship, Massachusetts.¹¹ Born on 7 Dec 1727 in Plymouth, Massachusetts.¹⁴ Hannah died in Plymouth Township, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1800; she was 72.^15,15

They had the following children:

1. Josiah (1747-1819)
2. Dr. Rossiter (1758-1837)

iii.          Joanna (1760-1822)

3. Lucy^11,11 (1768-1818)4

4. Sarah “Sally” (1763-1828)

5. Bethia Cotton. Born on 8 Jun 1714 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10, On 1 Mar 1733 when Bethia was 18, she married Abiell Pulsifer.

6. Colonel Theophilus Cotton^10,10,16,16. Born on 31 Mar 1716 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^17,10,17,10 Theophilus died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, on 18 Feb 1782; he was 65.^18,18 Buried in Feb 1782 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^{18,19,20,18,20} On 29 Oct 1742 when Theophilus was 26, he married Martha Sanders^16,16, daughter of Henry Sanders & Anne Bates,  Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^21,22 Born abt 1717 in Sandwich Township, Massachusetts.^18,18 Martha died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, on 10 Apr 1796; she was 79.^18,18

They had the following children:

1. Lieutenant John^{23,24,25,24,25,18,26,18} (1746-1831)
2. Rowland (1748-1759
3.  William Crowe (1751-1813)
4. Captain Josiah (1753-1829
5.  Edward (1759-)
6. Bethia (1749-1837)
7. Lucy Cotton. Born 19 Feb 1717/18 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Lucy died in Unknown. On 25 Mar 1736 when Lucy was 19, she married Charles Dyer, son of John Dyer & Hannah Morton.²⁷

They had the following children:

1. Captain Charles (1740-1786)
2. Lucy (1741-1804)

8. Josiah Cotton. Born on 19 Jan 1719 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Josiah died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, on 1 Aug 1719; he was <1.^10,10 Buried in Aug 1719 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^28,

9. Cotton. Born on 3 May 1721 in Plymouth Township, Plymouth County, Massachusetts.²⁹ Cotton died in Plymouth Township, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, on 28 May 1721; he was <1.^27,27 Buried in Jun 1721 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^28,28

10. Edward Cotton. Born on 20 Jul 1722 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts. Edward died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, on 20 Jul 1722; he was <1. Buried in Jul 1722 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^28,28
11. Josiah Cotton. Born on 30 Jul 1723 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Josiah died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, on 23 Oct 1723; he was <1.^10,10 Buried in Oct 1723 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^28,28
12. Josiah Cotton. Born on 18 Nov 1724. Josiah died on 22 Dec 1745; he was 21.
13. Edward Cotton. Born on 6 Apr 1726 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Edward died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, on 20 Jun 1726; he was <1.^10,10 Buried in Jun 1726 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^28,28
14. Rowland Cotton. Born on 27 Jul 1727 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Rowland died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, on 10 Aug 1727; he was <1.^10,10 Buried in Aug 1727 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^28,28
15. Margaret Cotton. Born on 23 Jan 1730 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Margaret died in Unknown in Nov 1789; she was 59. Margaret married Thomas Sawyer. Born in South Carolina.
16. Rowland Cotton. Born on 13 Sep 1732 in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts.^10,10 Rowland died in Plymouth Township, Massachusetts, in 1734; he was 1. Buried in 1734 in Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts.^28,28

Sources

1. Lee D. van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Ruth Wilder Sherman, Picton Press, page 2.
2. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, pages 30-31.
3. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 24.
4. Kingman, Epitaphs from Bulrial Hill, Plymouth, MA, pages 31 & 32.
5. Robinson, Barbara, Howard & Cynthia, Burial Hill in the 1990s, Plymouth Massachusetts, Plymouth Public Library Corporation, page 370.
6. Dr. James Thacher, History of the Town of Plymouth, Original Published 1835, Boston, Parnassus Imprints, Yarmouthport, MA 1972, published through a grant from the Plymouth-Provincetown 350th Anniversary Commission.
7. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 30.
8. Lee D. van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Ruth Wilder Sherman, Picton Press, page 89.
9. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 36.
10. Lee D. van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Ruth Wilder Sherman, Picton Press, page 39.
11. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 37.
12. Lee D. van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Ruth Wilder Sherman, Picton Press.
13. Robinson, Barbara, Howard & Cynthia, Burial Hill in the 1990s, Plymouth Massachusetts, Plymouth Public Library Corporation, page 419.
14. Robert S. Wakefield, F.A.S.G., Mayflower Families through Five Generations: Family of Richard Warren, General Society of Mayflower Descendants 1999, Vol. 18.
15. Robinson, Barbara, Howard & Cynthia, Burial Hill in the 1990s, Plymouth Massachusetts, Plymouth Public Library Corporation, page 418.
16. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, pages 37 & 38.
17. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 24 & 38.
18. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 38.
19. Patricia Law Hatcher, Abstract of Graves of Revolutionary Patriots, Pioneer Heritage Press, Dallas, Texas 1987, Volume I of IV (4), Serial 11999.
20. Robinson, Barbara, Howard & Cynthia, Burial Hill in the 1990s, Plymouth Massachusetts, Plymouth Public Library Corporation, page 414.
21. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 37 & 38.
22. Lee D. van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Ruth Wilder Sherman, Picton Press, page 102.
23. Elizabeth Cotton vs Eliza Allen et. al Complaint for Partition, August 1865, Wells County Circuit Court, T. W. Wilson, Plaintiff’s Attorney.
24. Daughters of the American Revolution, Official Roster III: Soldiers of the American Revolution Who Lived in the State of Ohio, DAR, Published by the DAR, 1959, page 84.
25. Lee D. van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850, Ruth Wilder Sherman, Picton Press, page 131.
26. “Last Will and Testament of Kezia (Atwood/Adams) Little,” Probate Records Vol. I (P.R. Vol. 1), Page/Item 255, Washington County, Ohio.
27. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I, page 31.
28. Robinson, Barbara, Howard & Cynthia, Burial Hill in the 1990s, Plymouth Massachusetts, Plymouth Public Library Corporation, page 369.
29. La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton and a COTTON GENEALOGY of His Descendants, Published Privately in Batavia, New York 1945, Vol. I.