John Endecott

Infobox Governor
name = John Endecott


order =
office = Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
term_start = 1629
term_end = 1630
1644 – 1645
1649 – 1650
1651 – 1654
1655 – 1665
lieutenant =
predecessor = John Winthrop (1644 & 1649)
Thomas Dudley (1651)
Richard Bellingham (1655)
successor = John Winthrop (1630)
Thomas Dudley (1645 & 1650)
Richard Bellingham (1654 & 1665)
birth_date = circa 1588
birth_place = Chagford, England (claimed to be)
death_date = March 15, 1665
death_place =
party =
spouse =
profession =
religion =

John Endecott (c. 1588ndash March 15, 1665), was a colonial magistrate, soldier and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

John Endecott was most likely born before 1600. His origins, as of yet, have not been discovered—although there is a building named after him in the English town of Chagford, locally claimed to be his birthplace. Almost nothing is known of him before his presence as one of the six original patentees of the Dorchester Company. This group of Puritan settlers bought land from the Plymouth Company, and settled it in 1628, two years before the arrival of John Winthrop's fleet. Endecott was chosen to lead the first expedition, and he settled with sixty other men in Naumkeag, which would soon become Salem, Massachusetts. The land had been previously settled by one Roger Conant, who had left Plymouth Colony two years before.

Nathaniel Hawthorne relates a story about these years, "The Maypole of Merry Mount", where Endecott's strict Puritanism came into conflict with the previous settlers. Endecott was the local governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from April 1629 to June 1630, when John Winthrop brought the charter to Salem and became governor of the colony as well as of the company. Though he was no longer at the head of the colony, Endecott continued to serve in several important positions, including a stint as the leader of an expedition against the Pequot in 1636. Though it seems slightly out of character, Endecott strongly defended the religious dissenter Roger Williams, and, around that time, he was alleged to have cut the Cross of St. George from an English flag in protest of the use of the symbols of the Roman Catholic Church. This action is celebrated in Hawthorne's story, "Endicott and the Red Cross," in which Roger Williams makes a prominent appearance. He served as deputy-governor from 1641 to 1644, and governor in 1644–1645. At times he was also the commander-in-chief of the militia and a commissioner and president of the United Colonies of New England.

In 1636 Endecott led the Massachusetts militia in the Pequot War.

After John Winthrop died in 1649, Endecott was elected governor, and by annual re-elections served continuously until his death, with the exception of two years (1650–1651 and 1654–1655), when he was deputy-governor.

According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, "Under his authority the colony of Massachusetts Bay made rapid progress, and except in the matter of religious intolerance in which he showed great bigotry and harshness, particularly towards the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)" (including religious executions), "his rule was just and praiseworthy. Of him Edward Eggleston says: A strange mixture of rashness, pious zeal, genial manners, hot temper, and harsh bigotry, his extravagances supply the condiment of humour to a very serious history; it is perhaps the principal debt posterity owes him. He died on the March 15, 1665."

Endecott was an ancestor of the later Massachusetts governor Endicott Peabody and of the United States Secretary of War William Crowninshield Endicott.

Biographical Information

Endecott married for the first time, probably before 1628, Anne Gower. After her death, he was married to Mrs. Elizabeth (Cogan) Gibson, the daughter of Philobert Cogan, of Somersetshire. Anne Gower was named by governor Matthew Craddock as a cousin of his, and Endecott's second wife was a sister-in-law of the colonial financier and magistrate Roger Ludlow. Endecott had two children with his second wife, John Endecott and Dr. Zerubabbel Endecott, neither of whom, seemingly to his disappointment, followed him into public service. Despite his high position, Endecott was never wealthy, and he died in poverty. He was buried in the Granary Burying Ground at Boston.

ee also

* Endicott Pear Tree

References

*Anderson, Robert Charles. "The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620 – 1633", vols. 1–3. Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995.
*Bolton, Charles Knowles. "The Founders: Portraits of Persons Born Abroad Who Came to the Colonies in North America Before the Year 1701". The Boston Athenæum (1919), Vol. II, pp. 385-86.
*Endicott, C. M. "Memoir of John Endecott" (Salem, 1847), and "A Memoir of John Endecott" in "Antiquarian Papers of the American Antiquarian Society" (Worcester, Mass., 1879).

External links

* [http://www.mass.gov/statehouse/massgovs/jendecott.htm Governors of Massachusetts] article at State of Massachusetts Government Interactive State House