Kenelm Winslow (1599-1672) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 43) Theme: "Quite the Character"

Does the name make the man? Call a  man John or Edward and he may grow into the upstanding conventional sort of man those names seem to evince. Call a man Kenelm and it's quite possible he will be just a wee bit eccentric. At least that's my theory about why he among his Winslow brothers is the one who grew up to be quite the character!

Kenelm (my 8X great grandfather), born 30 April 1599, was  the fourth child born to Edward Winslow and Malgdalene Ollyver of Droitwich, England.  The names of his seven siblings were: Edward, John, Eleanor, Gilbert, Elizabeth, Magdalene and Josiah. Kenelm was named for his paternal grandfather, though we don't know whether the grandfather also had proven to be a bit of a character.

The Winslow family was quite well-to-do with father Edward owning a salt production business. The family home called Kerswell is still a magnificent home. My husband had made prior arrangements with the owners who graciously allowed us to have a tour inside the home on our 2004 visit to England. 

The old Winslow family home - Kerswell, photo taken 1998

It felt like such a tangible connection to be able to touch the ancient exposed beams that would have been touched centuries ago by Kenelm and his family. 

Lovely old beams from the time Kenelm grew up here at Kerswell, photos 2004

Of the five Winslow brothers, oldest brother Edward is the best known. He and younger brother Gilbert were both passengers on the Mayflower that arrived in America 400 years ago. (Gilbert returned to England within a few years and little is known of him.) Edward apprenticed as a printer and joined the Separatist religious group in Leiden, Holland, where he was involved in the underground printing activities of the dissident congregation. Once in America, Edward was one of the first signers of the Mayflower Compact, was a well-respected leader in the colony and is renowned for his report about that well-known first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony. 

Brother John Winslow (my 10X great grandfather) followed on the ship Fortune in 1621. He was a ship owner and respected businessman and took an active role in civic affairs like his older brother Edward. 

Another brother, Josiah, also arrived in Plymouth Colony in its early years, but he is sadly remembered for making a total shambles of trying to straighten out the financial affairs of the Colony. 

And then there was Kenelm.

He would have been about 30 when he arrived, unmarried, in Plymouth Colony. Unlike older brother Edward, his was not primarily a move for religious reasons. In fact, he sometimes found himself at odds with the church in his new home community, as we shall see. 

In 1634, he married the widowed Ellen (Newton) Adams. At the time of this marriage, Kenelm Winslow put up security to pay James Adams, Ellen's son from her first marriage, 5 pounds when he came of age. Kenelm was a man of his word: this was done and recorded on 26 December 1651. He and Ellen would have four children of their own, the oldest of whom was another Kenelm Winslow, my 7X great grandfather. 

In many ways, Kenelm was, like his brothers, an upstanding man and a major contributor to his new community. Having completed his seven year apprenticeship to Abraham Worthington prior to leaving England, he had been admitted to the Joiners' Company of London, England in about 1624. As a joiner, he would have designed and built much of the furniture needed by the colonists.  Kenelm was also known as the colony's coffin-maker.

Langdon (pp. 28 and 32) describes the significance of joiners to the community:  

The early settlers also made chests for themselves. They had joiners or cabinetmakers as they called them rather than carpenters, who did any work with wood for them that required skill in the mortise and tenon construction from building a house to making a chest or stool.  John Alden and Kenelm Winslow were the "joyners" of Plymouth.  They made chests and chairs and other furniture no doubt for the Pilgrims. . . .  From Plymouth Colony mostly there has come a type of chair, or two similar types of chair which are indeed instinct with dignity and certain formality but not so repellent in their magnificence.  These are the Carver Chair and the Brewster Chair.  It seems reasonable to believe that  John Alden  and Kenelm Winslow made quite a number of these, especially for the older leaders of the Colony.  There are chairs of these types extant ascribed to the ownership of Governor Carver, Elder Brewster, Captain Miles Standish and Edward Winslow.

Examples of Plymouth Colony furniture of the period can be found at the Plymouth Hall Museum website. 

In addition to his contributions to making the necessary furniture and coffins for the colony, Kenelm also took an active role in civic life. In 1635 he was one of the men chosen to assist the governor and council to set rates on goods and wages. In 1638 John and Kenelm Winslow were witnesses against Stephen Hopkins for selling wine at excessive prices. One might assume that they were just doing their rate-setting jobs, but it may equally have presaged Kenelm's propensity to take matters to court.

He was elected the town's highway surveyor where we get an early glimpse of him marching to the beat of his own drum. On 1 December 1640, he was fined 10 shillings for neglecting those surveying duties.

The following year, the Winslow brothers moved their families to Marshfield where Kenelm was living in 1646 when he was jailed for four weeks for for  using "approbrious words" against the church of Marshfield, calling them all a bunch of liars.

Memorial to the Early Settlers of Marshfield
Kenelm Winslow and wife Ellen listed between brothers Edward and Josiah and their wives

While resident in Marshfield, Kenelm was Deputy to the General Court 1642 - 44 and 1649 - 53. On 1 June 1647 he was chosen constable for Marshfield.   He served on juries and committees, but one sometimes gets the sense that he might have been granted these respected positions based in large part on the success and reputation of his older brothers. 

Stratton describes the many instances of Kenelm's litigious nature (pp. 376-77):  

On 4 June 1645 a committee examined his complaint of injustice and found it to be untrue.  He had said that he could not be heard in a case between himself and John Maynard, but the committee found the judge and jury without fault and ordered Kenelm imprisoned and fined 10 pounds.  On his petition the same day in which he acknowledged his offence and sorrow for same, he was released from imprisonment, and his fine was suspended for one year, and then if he showed good behavior, it would be remitted.  

On 5 May 1646 Kenelm was sued by Roger Chandler for detaining his daughter's clothes on pretense that she owed him further service, and the court ordered Kenelm to return her clothes immediately.

On the same day the court ordered Kenelm to find sureties for his good behavior for uttering those approbrious words against the Marshfield Church, having called them all liars. When he refused to do so, he was sentenced to prison, where he remained until the next month's court. 

Perhaps his month in jail taught him a valuable lesson for he seems to have gone quiet for awhile after these episodes. Still, one can imagine him in his workshop laboring over the next piece of furniture while fuming over some perceived slight, but he held things in check, at least for awhile.

Old habits die hard. On 7 March  1653/54 Kenelm complained against John Soule for speaking falsely of his daughter Eleanor by scandalizing her in carrying reports of her and Josias Standish. John Soule's father George requested that the matter be referred to another court to be tried by a jury of twelve of his equals, but  there is no further mention of the matter so perhaps the complaint was simply dropped. And that seemed to mark the end of Kenelm's public complaints.

Kenelm may have been a character who got himself embroiled in controversy, but he was not alone. People then were much like people now, notwithstanding their Puritan reputation. Cullity (p.9) recounted a couple of lawsuits involving my 7X great granduncles Joseph and Nathaniel Turner in nearby Scituate (spelling in the following as in the original): 

Consider the language and behavior reported in the suit brought by Charles Stockbridge and his wife, Abigail against Joseph Turner of Scituate in 1669. The two charged Turner with slander and defamation for reportedly saying that "the said Charles Stockbridge is a coocally rogue, and that Abigail, his wife, is as very strumpet as an in New England, and that the said Abigaill is a brasen faced whore, and that her husband is a coocally raskall, and he would prove him soe." Turner was fined 100 pounds. Another case in the same year involved the same Charles Stockbridge, but on the other end of the stick: "Mr. Joseph Tilden (1657-1712) complained against Charles Stockbridge, of Scituate, in an action of slander and defamation, to the damage of 1000 pound, for saying and reporting that Nathaniel Turner and Joseph Turner could kisse Elizabeth, the wife of the said Tilden, as ofte as they listed, and doe something else too, and that the said Nathaniel Turner knew her, the said Elizabeth Tilden, as well as her owne husband knew her.

Yes, this is of more than prurient interest in connection to today's story. Kenelm's great granddaughter Sarah Winslow would in the course of time marry James Whitcomb, the granddaughter of Nathaniel and Joseph Turner's sister Mary Turner. 

In any event, Kenelm lived another couple of decades, apparently in greater harmony with those around him. His eldest brother Edward died in Jamaica in 1655 while on colony business. Brother John had moved his family to Boston by then. No longer having his more successful brothers in  Marshfield may have put an end to much of his community involvement. 

Kenelm signed his will dated 8 August 1672. He must have had a premonition of his impending death which occurred 12 September while he was visiting his daughter at Salem; he was buried there the following day. His wife Ellen was named sole executrix of his estate which included real estate, money, goods and movables including a Bible and 7 other books. 

Some Resources:

• Anderson, Robert C., The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620–1633, 3 Volumes (Boston: New England Genealogical Society, 1995–1996), Vol.3  pp. 2033-2036.
• Cullity, Brian (Chief Curator), A Cubberd, Four Joyne Stools & Other Smalle Thinges: the Material Culture of Plymouth Colony, Printed for the Loan Exhibition May 8 - October 23, 1994, Heritage Plantation of Sandwich.
• Follansbee, Peter, Connecting a London-Trained Joiner to 1630s Plymouth Colony article accessed online 15 October 2020 at https://www.incollect.com/articles/connecting-a-london-trained-joiner-to-1630s-plymouth-colony
• Langdon, William Chauncy, Everyday Things in American Life 1607-1776, MacMillan Publishing Co., 1981.
• Roberts Gary Boyd, Mayflower Source Records: Deaths and Burials from the Early Records of Marshfield, accessed 9 October 2020 on ancestry.com, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1986.
• Stratton,  Plymouth Colony: Its History and People 1620-1691, Ancestry Publishing 1986.
• Williston, George, Saints and Strangers, New York: Reynal and Hitchcock 1945.