The Webster-Emery Family of Ipswich, Newbury and Haverhill

John Webster and his wife Mary Shatswell Webster arrived in Boston from Ipswich, England, and he was admitted a freeman, at Boston, March 4, 1634-5. After moving to Ipswich they were provided a lot of land, which was “granted to Mr. Rogers” in 1642. He was admitted a commoner by vote of the Town, February 28, 1644-5.

Documents from a chancery court case in England show that Mary Shatswell’s mother, Judith, died in Sibbertoft, Northamptonshire, England about 1616.

Mary Shatswell Webster’s brother, John Shatswell (also spelled “Satchwell”), was listed as a commoner in 1641. Upon arriving in Ipswich in 1636, John Shatswell was granted ‘‘about six acres of ground, upon part of which the said John Shatswell hath built a house, being between Mr. Wade’s house lot on the east, and Mr. Firman’s on the West, having Goodman Webster on the northeast.’’ (John Fawn had a house lot granted in 1634 on the north side of High street, between John Baker and Thomas Bracy, which lot he sold to Thomas Firman.)

It was common for the early settlers to sell and purchase house lots to construct permanent homes. The oldest part of the ancient Shatswell House on High Street just beyond Lords Square was constructed in the second half of the 17th century. In his will, Feb. 11, 1646 (Ips. Deeds 1: 22), John Shatswell bequeathed “to my sister webster about seaven yards of stuff to make her a sute and alsoe a yonge heiffer thought to be wth calfe.”

From the descriptions of the adjoining lots, it appears that John and Mary Webster’s crude home was located on the hill above the Ipswich Inn at the intersection of North Main, High and East Streets, where an ancient path extends along the hillside to Spring Street. John Webster died in 1646, leaving Mary a widow with four sons. There is no mention of this modest house after his death.

John and Mary Shatswell Webber had eight children:

  • Mary Webster, born about 1630, married John Emery Jr. of Newbury in 1648. After John Webster Sr. died, his widow Mary Shatswell Webster married John Emery Sr., which must have caused confusion.
  • John Webster, born about 1633, married Ann Batt of Newbury in 1653. She died on October, 1716 “when she had lived in a marriage state with her sd husband about sixty three years,” 
  • Hannah Webster, born about 1635, married Michael Emerson of Haverhill in 1657. She is believed to have died in 1707 at about age 71 in Haverhill. Their daughter Hannah Duston, killed and scalped ten Abenaki who had kidnapped her family during King Williams’ War. Alice Keenan wrote that Hannah Duston was born in Ipswich on High Street in 1657 while her mother, Hannah Webster Emerson was visiting her Shatswell relatives, but other sources show her place of birth as Haverhill. In 1879, a bronze statue of Hannah Duston was created by Calvin Weeks in Haverhill in Grand Army Park.
  • Stephen Webster, born about 1637, was a tailor. He married first, Hannah Ayer of Haverhill in 1662, and married second, Mrs. Judith Broad, in 1678. Hannah Ayer was the daughter of John Ayer(s) and his wife Hannah, who, along with several of their children came to New England on board the ship James, which was caught in the Great Colonial Hurricane off the New Hampshire coast, but managed to make it to Boston Harbor two days later. (Another, possibly distantly-related John Ayer/Ayres was an early resident of Ipswich, and was murdered at Brookfield during King Philip’s War.) Ayer’s Hill in Haverhill is named after this family.
  • Elizabeth Webster, born about 1639, married Samuel Simons of Haverhill in 1668.
  • Abigail Webster, born about 1641, married Deacon Abraham Merrill of Newbury in 1660. Her gravestone is at the Sawyer Hill Cemetery in Newburyport.
  • Israel Webster, born about 1644, married Elizabeth Brown in 1665/6, and married second, Elizabeth Lunt. The Brown family lived in the Rocks Village section of Haverhill, across the river from West Newbury.

After John Webster’s death, John Andrews conveyed to Mary Webster, “widow”, for the use of herself and her children, “all ye island lately in possession of George Carr, twenty acres more or less, bounded by the labour-in-vain creek west; Thomas Emerson’s farm southeast; Thomas Boreman’s farm on the northeast; which said island lyeth in the town of Ipswich.” This “island” is now connected to Labor in Vain Road by a raised causeway, on the left after crossing the bridge over Gould’s Creek, and was known historically as “Brown’s Point.”

On November 4, 1646, the widow Mary Webster petitioned the Court that when her eldest son, John Webster, reached the age of twenty-one, he should have the thirty-two-acre farm in Chebacco which was situated between Mr. Roger’s oxen pasture and Thomas Bishop’s farm. John would be obligated to pay Nathan, called the youngest child, five pounds when Nathan reached fourteen years.

Mary Webster’s marriage to John Emery Sr.

In 1634, the ship “Mary and John” left England carrying John Parker, James Noyes, and others to found a new town. They wintered in Agawam (today Ipswich) and in the Spring of 1635, they settled just north of the Parker River. One of the settlers was John Emery Sr, from Romsey, Hampshire, Eng­land.

The widow Mary Webster married John Emery Sr. in 1650, four years after her husband’s death. It may be that they knew each other from when the Newbury settlers had wintered over in Ipswich. Two years after they married, Mary gave birth to a son, Jonathan, her ninth child. Her daughter Mary married John Emery Jr. John Emery, Sr. died on No­vember 3, 1683, and left his heirs a consideable estate valued at 263 pounds. The mother, Mary Shatswell Webster Emery, died April 28, 1694.

John Emery’s first house was in the original location of Newbury, just north of the Parker River. After a dozen years or so, the entire town moved to the banks of the Merrimac River to the “New Town.” and John Emery was assigned “an house lot at the new town joyning Cross Street…at the upper end of the new town.” on today’s High Street. The town of Newbury granted 80 acres on the west side of the Artichoke River to John Emery, where the family owned and operated a mill, known today as Curson’s Mill, and accessible from Maudslay State Park. The mill remained in the Emery family until 1761, and the nearby Emery House, built by Stephen Emery, son of John Emory Jr. , is a retreat center operated by the Episcopal Church. The gravestones of Stephen Emory and his wife Hannah Rolfe (1708-1779) are at Sawyer’s Hill Burying Ground, near the entrance of Maudslay State Park.

In 1661 John Emery was elected a select­man, and in 1666 he was ap­pointed fence viewer and was appointed to the grand jury. In 1672 he was appointed a juror. This area was home to a group of Quakers, and in 1663, John Emery was presented at court for “entertaining Quakers” and was fined four pounds for granting food and lodging to two men and two women, who were traveling through. One of the witnesses testified that John Emery took the Quakers by the hand and bid them welcome. After being exiled, some Quakers repeatedly returned to Massachusetts. On June 1, 1660, Quaker Mary Dyer was taken to the gallows.

On October 7, 1652, John and Mary Emery of Newbury sold the twenty-acre parcel she had purchased from John Andrews to Thomas Boreman of Ipswich for the sum of thirty-five pounds. That same year, John and Mary Webster’s son, John Webster II, a blacksmith, sold a 25-acre farming lot at Chebacco, a former part of Ipswich, which his father had purchased from the executors of John Fawn’s estate.

All eight of the Webster’s children relocated with their mother to Newbury and joined the Emery family, ending the brief residency of the Webster family in Ipswich.

John Emery’s management of the Webster children’s inheritance played out in the Ipswich and Newbury courts over several decades. He became the primary guardian and administrator of her eight children’s portions from their late father, John Webster. In October 1651, John Emery petitioned the General Court for permission to sell specific real estate left to the Webster children to fulfill their cash inheritances. He was granted power to sell the Labor in Vain island in Ipswich that had been divided among three of the children (Mary, Stephen, and Hannah). In 1652, He sold the former home of John and Mary Shatswell Webster, which included a six-acre plot, to Thomas Boreman to raise the £20 owed to three other children (Elizabeth, Abigail, and Israel). As a condition of these sales, the court required John to post a bond ensuring the children received their full portions—£8 each—when the daughters reached 18 and the sons reached 21. On March 30, 1669, John Emery appeared in court to provide written receipts proving he had paid out the required inheritances to the now-adult Webster children.

In her book, Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian, Sarah Emery Smith, (1787-1879) wrote, “John Emery was very fond of his stepchildren, and they reciprocated the affection. Israel and Nathan, the one eighteen and the other fifteen years of age, with their mother, soon after her marriage, petitioned the General Court to consent to their choosing their father-in-law, John Emery, Senior, and brother, John Emery, Jr., as their guardians. All of the Websters were remembered in Mr. Emery’s will, where they are styled “his dear children.”

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