Thomas Mayhew

Background

Thomas Mayhew was baptized at Tisbury, Wiltshire, England, April 1, 1593. His parents were Matthew and Alice (Barter) Mayhew.

Career

After apprenticeship, Mayhew became a mercer in Southampton. Before 1632 he settled in Medford, Massachussets, as factor for Matthew Cradock, London merchant, for whom he built a mill at Watertown, later acquiring and operating it himself. On May 14, 1634, he was admitted a freeman of the Bay Colony. He engaged rather unsuccessfully in mercantile ventures, acting also as agent for Cradock who, becoming dissatisfied, ended this relationship about 1637. From the first, Mayhew served on responsible committees appointed by the General Court. He was deputy from Medford in 1636, and between 1637 and 1644 from Watertown, where he served locally as selectman and commissioner and built a bridge across the Charles River. In September 1641 he purchased, under Lord Stirling's patent, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands, also securing under the Gorges patent a more valid title to the Vineyard, where his son Thomas settled with others about 1642. Thomas the elder followed about 1646, and thereafter acted as magistrate. The younger Thomas converted the Indian Hiacoomes to Christianity in 1643, and developed the work of Christianizing the natives until his death at sea in 1657. Thereafter his father continued and extended it throughout his own life. All the Vineyard, and many Nantucket, Indians became professed Christians, acknowledging Mayhew's rule. Their first church was organized in 1670, Mayhew refusing the pastorate because of his age and his magisterial duties. He governed first as magistrate in the Massachusetts manner, but a later tendency to govern as patentee through himself and his family was confirmed in 1671, when Lovelace, governor under the Duke of York, proprietary successor to Stirling and Gorges, commissioned him governor for life. In 1673-74, when the Dutch again held New York, Mayhew's paternal rule was challenged by the Vineyard settlers, but not overthrown. His commission was afterward confirmed by Andros. During King Philip's War the Vineyard Indians, then the most fully civilized and Christianized in New England, remained entirely loyal to the English. Mayhew formed and armed an Indian guard, to which the common safety was entrusted. He died (1682) just short of eighty-nine years of age, active to the last as governor and father to the Indians, the first of five generations of Mayhews who were Indian missionaries.

Achievements

• Thomas Mayhew is known as the first governor of Martha's Vineyard, and missionary to the Indians. He quickly entered into prominance in the political and business life of the 'boom' years of Puritan immigration, the 1630's. In the 1640's he acquired the title to Martha's Vineyard and followed an advance settlement of that island by his son by several years.

Personality

Mayhew was succeeded as missionary and chief magistrate respectively by his grandsons John and Matthew.

Connections

Thomas Mayhew was married first, in England, to the mother of his son Thomas Jr. , and second, about 1635, to Jane (Gallion), widow of Thomas Paine, a London merchant. Four daughters were born of this second marriage.

Father:

Matthew Mayhew

1550 - 24 June 1614

Mother:

Alice (Barter) Mayhew

Wife:

Abigail Parkus or Parkhurst Mayhew

1595 - 1635

Wife:

Jane Gallion Paine Mayhew

1602 - 15 May 1666

Daughter:

Martha Mayhew Tupper

1641 - 15 November 1717

Daughter:

Mary Mayhew

14 January 1639 - ______

Daughter:

Hannah Mayhew Doggett

15 June 1635 - 7 February 1723

Daughter:

Bethiah Mayhew Harlock Way

6 December 1636 - August 1678

Son:

Rev Thomas Mayhew, Jr

1618 - 1657

References

• Annals of the American Methodist Pulpit: Or Commemorative Notices of Distinguished Clergymen of the Methodist Denomination in the United States, From ... Hundred and Fifty-Five (Classic Reprint)
• THOMAS MAYHEW: PATRIARCH TO THE INDIANS (1593 - 1682)
• Magnalia Christi Americana: Or the Ecclesiastical History of New-England, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)
• A brief narrative of the success which the Gospel hath had, among the Indians, of Martha's-Vineyard (and the places adjacent) in New-England. With some remarkable curiosities (1694)