My Farnhams connection - Mary Tyler Farnham - 7gg

  (repost from Dec. 9, 2017)

This week my posts will be about the family of my father's mother, Ada Swasey Rogers.

Mary TYLER Farnham 1668–1733

Birth 31 JAN 1668 • Mendon, Worchester County, Massachusetts

Death 20 JAN 1733 • Mendon, Worcester County, Mass

Here's another of the Tyler family of Mendon MA.  Mary was the oldest child of  Hopestill Tyler Sr, and Mary Lovett Tyler. She was my 7th great grandmother on the Swasey Family Tree.  She had between 3 and 9 siblings, according to the various trees over on Ancestry.   Her father Hopestill Tyler, had been the son of Job Tyler who had been apprenticed and his father Job Tyler made a fuss about it (resulting in a court case where he had to post letters of apology to the blacksmith aprentice mentor.)
 

South-western view of the central part of Mendon. (no date, no artist's name)

Her mother and sisters were accused of witchcraft in Salem, while they lived in Andover MA.  This was in 1692-3, and Mary got married in 1693 to John Farnham II (1672-1749) in Andover.  Her parents' family moved to Preston City, CT.  Apparently Mary and John Farnham remained in MA.

John Farnham's house "Coronet" was the site of the first Uxbridge town meeting in 1727.  It is now the site for the Uxbridge MA Historical Society.

A story has been added to Ancestry, with little source data given, but sounds as if there was documentation to most of the facts: Donna Rich was the author of the following:

John and Mary Farnham

The following is my research to date.  The Tyler family, John Farnum’s in-laws, moved often but seemed to be based in Andover. Perhaps due to the witchcraft hysteria of 1692-3 in which the Tylers were involved, Hopestill Tyler, John’s father-in-law, moved permanently away from Andover. His father and brother Moses had already moved to Mendon and it is possible that Hopestill was there as well before settling in Preston, CT, by 1697. This may explain why John and Mary Farnum were not obviously settled in this period. Their marriage is recorded at Andover. Their first child was born in Boston but recorded in the Mendon vital records. Another child was recorded at Andover in 1697. Although it is likely that the family lived in Mendon, however impermanently, before 1701, John purchased from his brother-in-law Moses Tyler the house lot of his father-in-law Job Tyler in Mendon in July 1701 for 61 lbs. This appears to establish the Farnums in Mendon.

John was elected a constable for Mendon on 1 March 1703. A tax list for the town reported at a town meeting in January of 1704 lists John with the rate of 3 shillings, 8 pence. He appears in the 7th division of town lands in 1707. He bought Thomas Jewell’s house lot in 1709 and 20 more acres in 1710. 

Deacon William Warfield had been the schoolmaster for Mendon for many years. He was replaced in 1712 by Robert Husse who was given a 6 month contract and 5 lbs. for his service and "Diet." He was to "begin [presumably boarding] at John Farnum’s and there continue untill the 28th of January."  

In December of 1718 John was granted his share in Shockolog (cedar) Swamp. In the same year he bought 40 acres of land belonging to the Tyler family. John was elected a selectman for the town along with fellow-ancestor Thomas Sanford on 21 March 1721. The town of Uxbridge, MA, was formed from Mendon in 1727. The first town meeting was held at "Coronet" John Farnum’s house on 27 July of that year. His was likely one of the few residences in that part of Mendon. The house still stands as a museum and home of the Uxbridge Historical Society and is ascribed a circa date of 1715.  

In 1728 John was on a committee representing Uxbridge, MA, that met with one from Mendon to settle a controversy about the border line between the towns. In the same year he offered to the town land on which to make a pond, now Mumford Pond.

\John eventually became a Quaker. Given that his youngest child Moses married the daughter of a prominent Congregationalist of Mendon in 1726, it was likely after that, and may have been by the time a Friends meeting house was built in Mendon in 1729, indicating a well-established congregation in the area.

John is buried in the Uxbridge Friends cemetery. John’s second wife Abigail had 6 under-age children when she married him and she is buried next to him. Their gravestones were moved to their present sites when the Center School and other buildings replaced the Center Cemetery on South Main St. 

NOTE One: Mary died in 1733. I just found John's will and it gives his bed to wife Abigail Farnham.

SECOND NOTE: Mary and John Farnham's granddaughter Sarah Farnham married Jacob Granger (also on the Swasey Family tree.)  Jacob Granger's father Samuel Granger's great grandmother was Mary Farnham Poor, wife of Daniel Poor.  

They were also his great grandparents on his father's mothers tree as well...so his grandmothers were sisters, Elizabeth Poor Marston and Martha Poor Granger, children of Mary Farnham Poor and Daniel Poor, who were both immigrants to Andover, MA.  Thus he and his wife were cousins...

This post is part of my father's mother, 

Ada Swasey Rogers Family Tree. 

The photo shows her mother, 

my great grandmother,

Zulieka Granger Swasey as a young woman.