Search -
Journal and Letters of Col. John May, of Boston
Journal and Letters of Col John May of Boston Author:John May Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Colonel John May John May, the subject of our memoir, and writer of the Journal and Letters, was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, November... more » 24, 1748. His parents were Eleazer and Dorothy, whose maiden family name was Davis (of Brookline, Massachusetts), married in 1735. The father was a man of great height and size, and from that circumstance unwieldy in his last years ; while the mother was of a more fragile and delicate constitution, and died just as she was entering middle life. John, our subject, was the youngest of a family of six children ; two brothers, Eleazer and William, respectively ten and eight years older, preceding him, and three sisters. Of these sisters, Dorothy, the oldest, married Amariah Dana (the parents of Mrs. Nathaniel Goddard, of Boston,)—in early life, on the death of her own parents, adopted into the family of Colonel May; Mary, the next, Jonathan Sabin (progenitors of Mrs. Faith C. Hosmer, now of Springfield, Massachusetts) ; and Prudence, the third, Silas Sabin, brother of aforesaid Jonathan. After the death of his first wife, who died in 1750, Eleazer May married again, taking for a second wife Abigail Sumner, and, by her, had two more children, Ithamarand Abigail. Lucy, who many years afterward married William Rufus, a son of Colonel John, was a descendant of said Ithamar. As it is matter of interest to some who will probably read the pages which succeed, these statements are followed by others, condensed as much as possible, relative to the more remote ancestry which preceded, and the families which followed the subject of our notice. John,1 the immigrant ancestor, bearing the family name (spelt in the olden time also Mayes and Males), is said to have come from Mayfield, County Sussex, England. He was born in 1590, ...« less