Thomas Wiggin

Captain Thomas Wiggin (1592 - 1667), often known as Governor Thomas Wiggin, was the first governor of the Upper Plantation of New Hampshire which eventually became the Royal Province of New Hampshire in 1741.

Captain Thomas Wiggin first ventured to New England in 1630 when he sailed with John Winthrop to Boston on the Winthrop Fleet. In the years that followed, he served as the governor of the Upper Plantation, comprising modern-day Dover, Durham and Stratham. In 1631 he settled in Stratham. He was also the holder of the massive Squamscott patent, land east of the mouth of the Squamscott River, and continued to be a close ally of Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Thomas Wiggin and his son Thomas Wiggin Jr. joined other New Hampshire residents in signing a petition to King James II of England protesting the grant of land to John Mason (governor), proprietor of the controversial Masonian Grant (issued to Mason and fellow speculator Sir Ferdinando Gorges), which sought to hold enormous tracts of New Hampshire land. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=Y18SAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=%22thomas+wiggin%22+leavitt&source=web&ots=bSBb2Up462&sig=3Rf0JRnsE4xJG0dpEF7Axm3KaIA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA227,M1 Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society, Vol. VIII, Concord, 1866] ] Following the death in England of John Mason, who never set foot in America, Mason's heirs attempted to seize the lands granted Mason by voiding deeds held by colonists and throwing them off their hard-won acres, enraging the colonists. The petition signed by Wiggin and others referred to "our pretended proprietor Robert Mason Esq." and begged for Royal relief from the greed of well-connected adventurers.

Captain Thomas Wiggin was a Puritan and extremely religious. He ascribed fervently to the belief that the Anglican Church had to be cleansed of Catholic theology and ritual. He was convinced that God would punish England for its heresy, and believed that English Puritans needed to create a New England in a new world.

In June 1659, his son Andrew Wiggin married Hannah Bradstreet, daughter of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Simon Bradstreet and Anne Bradstreet (daughter of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Dudley).

References

External links

* [http://www.dover.lib.nh.us/DoverHistory/many_names_of_dover.htm More Info]