Job Judkins of Boston (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 Week 43 theme: "Urban")

As unlikely as it seems, my 10th great grandfather Job Judkins is said to have been a Scot who migrated to New England during the Great Migration of 1620-1640. (Since the Scots did not tend to join the Puritan settlers, perhaps it is more likely that he originated from Warwickshire as others have suggested.) Wherever he came from, he was found in Boston by 1637, just seven years after the English started to settle the area naming it after Boston in Lincolnshire, England.

Certainly Boston was not then the large urban center that it has since become. As of the 2020 US Census, the population was 675, 647 -- several hundred thousand more than in Job's time.

Present Day Boston MA Google Earth map showing approximate location of Job Judkins' home facing Washington Street near Summer Street

The extent of this part of Boston shown on present day Google Earth map is very misleading to the uninformed. Settlement by the English in the 1630s was on the hilly Shawmut Peninsula in the center of this map. It was only about 738 acres (smaller than my Dad's Saskatchewan farm where I grew up) and was almost completely surrounded by water at the time. The original peninsula was connected to mainland Roxbury to the south by a narrow neck of land along present-day Washington Street. Mud flats and marshes to the west were known as the Back Bay. The Charles River flowed through the Back Bay to Boston Harbor, separating the peninsula from the mainland to the north and west.  On the east side Town Cove divided the city into the North and South Ends. 

The additional lands around the outside were all added by reclamation done to roll back the waterfront in the 19th century. This expanded the land area to 48.4 square miles (an incredible 40X larger than it was during Job's time). 

The center of the original town was at the Old State House (built 1711-47 long after Job Judkins' time). When we visited Boston in 1999 we visited the Old State House and nearby Old South Meeting House, among many other historic sites. We had no idea at the time that we were treading on land so near the home of our ancestor Job Judkins near Washington and Summer Streets!

Old South Meeting House on Washington Street, Boston - photo by author 1999

Job was a sawyer. He married Sarah Dudley and had four sons, then finally one daughter who was my 9th great grandmother Sarah Judkins Pratt (1645-1726). Both Job and his wife are believed to have died and been buried in Boston in 1657.

The only cemetery in Boston until 1660 was the King's Chapel Burying Ground. Perhaps this was their burial location.

King's Chapel Burying Ground  - background is City Hall and King's Chapel Church photo taken 12 September 1929 by Leon H. Abdalian, author Boston Public Library on Wikimedia Commons This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Some Resources:

• "Boston by the Numbers, Land Area and Use", City of Boston accessed online 14 September 2025 at https://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/86dd4b02-a7f3-499e-874e-53b7e8be4770
• Britannica website accessed 11 September 2025  at www.Britannica.com/place/Boston
• Judkins, Elizabeth Littlefield, Job Judkins of Boston and his descendants, Larchmont, N.Y., 1962 accessed 11 September 2025 on Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/jobjudkinsofbost00judk_0/page/n5/mode/2up
• US Census Bureau information for Boston, Massachusetts accessed 14 September 2025 at https://data.census.gov/profile/Boston_city,_Massachusetts?g=160XX00US2507000