GENERATION 12

GENERATION 11

Biography

JOHN PEET was born about 1597 in Duffield Parish, Derbyshire, England. It is not known with certainty that his wife's name was MARGARET ALLCOCK, but a search of the marriage records at the Derbyshire Record office reveals only one marriage to a JOHN PEET (or Peat, Peyte, Peate, Pytte) for the period between 1598 and 1635. The marriage is Feb. 16, 1621/22 to MARGARET ALLCOCK of Heage.

JOHN was a husbandman at the time of his embarkation for America on the ship Hopewell in 1635. His age given in the ship's register was 38. The Hopewell, mastered by Captain Bundock, sailed from England, April 3, 1635, and reached Boston in June that year. Nothing more is known of JOHN PEET, until his removal in 1639, to Stratford, Fairfield, CT, via Wethersfield, Hartford, CT, with the first group of founders and pioneer setlers in a series of new settlements in the Connecticut River Valley and the southwestern part of the state. At least seventeen (Orcutt) and more probably twent-five fmilies (Wilcoxson) constituted the first group of settlers in Stratford in the Spring of 1639.

The original settlement of Stratford, incorporated in 1639, is on the site bounded by present day Stratford Avenue on the north, home lots on the west side of Main Street on the west, Birdseye Street on the south, and the Houseatonic River (then called the Pootatuck River) to the east. Home lots were undoubtedly assigned to the first settlers shortly after arrival, yet no record prior to 1650 exists. Based upon available records, W. H. Wilcoxson reconstructed a map of old Stratford showing the home lots as owned during the 1639-1660 period.

JOHN PEET's home lot, designated by number seven on Wilcoxson's reconstructed map, today is bound on the north by Stratford Avenue, on the wets by Elm Street, and on the east by the salt pond called Selby's Pond and Terry Bridge Creek emanating from the pond. The south portion of the home lot is presently occupied by a parking lot for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The Peet home site now incorporates several 150-200 year old homes, in partial disrepair, along Stratford Avenue and one facing Elm Street.

Presumably JOHN PEET labored as a farmer. He is known, however, to have been the first sexton and bell ringer at the Congregational church at Stratford, gathered first in 1639. Here at this church he performed his weekly task of ringing the bell until 1660 when the First Congregational Church voted "that Goodman Pickett shall take the place of Goodman Peake for age hath layd downe in ringing the bell." The bell was the first in the colony of Connecticut and must have been imported from England. JOHN PEET's duties, undoubtedly the same as his successors, were carefully described as to "... ring the bell twice on a lecture day and also to watch over the disordered persons in the meeting and use his discretion in striking any person whomw he finds so disordering. He is also to keep ye meeting house and sweepe it so often as it needs" and "they do allow unto him 2d. 10s. to be payd yarely."

In 1668, JOHN gave his home lot to JOHN Jr. and divided his other lands between his two sons, JOHN and Benjamin. JOHN PEET died Sep. 1, 1684, in his 87th year.