Nicholas Pinion

M, b. circa 1607, d. April 1676
FatherNicholas Pinion
Relationship10th great-grandfather of Pamela Joyce Wood
Last Edited24 Apr 2021
     Nicholas Pinion was born circa 1607 at Sussex Co, England; There is a very distinct chance that the line was originally of French descent. Nicholas, was baptised at Warbleton, a small village in East Sussex, know for French ironworkers. He was son of "Nicholas Spraye/Pinnion". However, it is likely that within one generation or two, the family had been of Belgium of France.
Ironworkers were recruited from England to go to New England to settle as ironworkers were needed. He was probably in the original group whose passage to America was paid for by John Winthrop, Jr. in 1643. Winthrop had gone to Englandd in 1641, and returned with both machinery and men. Saugus (Hammersmith) Ironworks began in 1646. They were not property owners though, and had no say in government. The family first appears in Lynn records in 1647/8.
After the ironworks failed at Lynn about 1664, Nicholas was among those recruited to go to New Haven by Winthrop.1 He was the son of Nicholas Pinion. Nicholas Pinion was baptized on 27 March 1607 at Warbleton, Sussex, England.2 He married Elizabeth Starre, daughter of John Starre, on 1 October 1639 at St Bartholomew, Burwash, Sussex Co, England. Nicholas Pinion married Mary (?) after 1667. Nicholas Pinion died in April 1676 at East Haven, New Haven Co, Connecticut.3
     The ironworkers were far from Puritans, and the settlers of the area found it difficult to keep them obeying their laws of God and man. They often were in trouble for swearing, not attending church, fighting, drinking and gambling.
"If anyone had held a 'most dysfunctional family' contest in seventeenth-century New England, the clan headed by Nicholas Pinion, an iron worker, would have won easily," Norton writes. Pinion family members were prosecuted 26 times over two generations, for offenses ranging from profanity to gossip, theft, absence from church and infanticide. Especially egregious, in the colonists' eyes, was Pinion's inability to control his wife. "That was shown . . . by her physical and verbal attacks on Nicholas," Norton writes, "actions indicating the absence of appropriate wifely deference." One of Pinion's daughters was charged because she tried to leave her own husband. When he ordered her to return home, according to court transcripts, she, "contrary to the duty of a wife," refused to do so, thus "casting contempt upon Authority whoe had enjoined her returne to him." When they were in Lynn, Nicholas accused her of an adulterous relationship , she physically attacked her husband several times, he in turn beat her severely enough to miscarry, and she then charged him with the "killi ng off ffyve Children... one of them was a yeare old." When they were in New Haven, Nicholas twice failed to act as the head of household when his wife and daughters were involved in court cases.4,5,6

Family 1

Elizabeth Starre d. 1667
Children

Family 2

Mary (?) d. a 1660

Citations

  1. [S1574] Robert E. Bowman, "Glimpses into the English and Continental Ancestry", p. 63-77.
  2. [S1016] FamilySearch.com: England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 , Nicholas Spraye or Pinnion.
  3. [S63] Donald Lines Jacobus, Fams of Ancient New Haven, p. 1449.
  4. [S1575] John Bezis-Selfa, Forging America, p. 56-64.
  5. [S817] Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers.
  6. [S1576] Saugus Iron Works Historic Site, online https://www.nps.gov/sair/learn/historyculture/…, accessed 26 Jan 2021.