Watertown: Some Specifics

We’d love to include our distinguished kinsman, Captain Robert Seel(e)y the Pioneer (1601?-1668), who came with Saltonstall, who is listed on the Monument, and whom we had long claimed as a 9GGF. The most recent research I’ve seen, however would suggest that he’s unlikely to be the father of 8GGF Obadiah (1619-1657), who did apparently live for many years in Robert’s immigrant household in Watertown, Wethersfield, and New Haven where he (Robert) is reputed to have laid out the original roads and property boundaries. If, as I’ve been told, Robert and Obadiah differed in age by only about ten years, it would appear that Obadiah may have been a younger brother or some sort of cousin to Robert. Holding and hoping for further clarification.

Another fairly well-documented story has Captain Robert commanding some militia in the Pequot War and taking an arrow directly into his forehead while scaling an Indian palisade. After the battle, they were gathering up the dead, and a friend put his foot on Robert’s (presumably deceased) face to pull out the arrow, when Robert emitted a groan. He recovered, and went on to take part in the founding party of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Uncles in the founding party include 10GU Anthony Pierce (1611-1678), 10GU Captain Timothy Wheeler (1604-1687), and 11GU Ephraim Child (1593-1662). Just about everybody else is related to us by marriage, in some degree.

In 1633, our 8GGF the Reverend Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) brought a sizable group to Watertown from Cambridge on their way to the founding of Hartford and the new Connecticut colony. More about this whole episode in later chapters, when we turn our attention to our deep roots in Connecticut. For now, let’s just note that Grandpa Hooker was a hugely popular and controversial Separatist preacher in England, where Archbishop Laud (later to lose his head during the Puritan Commonwealth) summoned him to Canterbury for discipline. He headed in the other direction and wound up as one of the original landowners in the New Towne, later Cambridge, in Massachusetts.