Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

I Barnstable,
GENEALOGICAL NOTES OF BARNSTABLE FAMILIES. 253
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till the autumn of that year.
Mr. Cudworth's name appears only once on the records of
the town of Barnstable now preserved. It occurs on the list of
townsmen and proprietors dated Jan. 1643-4, and its position
thereon, indicates that he resided in the vicinity of Coggin's
Pond. In the church records he is named as of Barnstable
April 18, 1641, March 28, 1642, and June 24, 1644. He
conveyed, by deed, his second house and lot in Scituate, to
Thomas Ensign, June 8, 1642. In that deed he is styled "gentleman
of Barnstable," Jan. 4, 1641-2, he is called an inhabitant of
though at that date he was absent from town. In
1642, Mr. Cudworth was again elected a deputy to the June court
from Barnstable, and his name was again underscored, and Mr.
Thomas Dimmocli's written against it. The fact that Barnstable
was entitled to only two deputies at thfe June terms in 1640 and
in 1642, and that Anthony Annable and Mr. Dimmock served at
those terms, seems to make it certain that Mr. Cudworth was
sick, or absent from the town at the terms named. In Aug. 1643,
a return was made of all in the colony "able to bear arms." JMr.
Cudworth's name appears on the return
that from Scituate. On the former it is
on the latter.
from Barnstable, and on
crossed out, and retained
These few isolated facts are all that the records furnish
relative to Mr Cudworth's residence in Barnstable. The records
of the laying out of the lands at the time of the settlement, being
lost, nothing is known respecting his lands in Barnstable. By a
municipal regulation, an inhabitant removing from town, was
obliged to offer his lands to the other inhabitants, before he could
legally sell to a stranger. In such cases a memorandum of the
transfer was made on the proprietor's records now lost.t
Mr. Hathway, in his deed to the Conihasset Partners, Dec.
1, 1646, styles him a"salter," that is, one who makes or sells salt,
and this fact, perhaps, explains the uncertainty of his place of
residence from 1639 to 1646. He had a salt work at Scituate,
which it does not appear that he sold on his removal to Barn-
stable. This required his attention at certain seasons of the j'ear,
and explains why he was so often absent from Barnstable. A
salt work was erected in Barnstable very early, on the point of
land on the west of the entrance of Rendevous Creek, still known
t Thomas Bird, Byrd, or Bourd, was at this time a resident in Barnstable, and a servant
of Mr. Cudworth. His father, also named Thomas, was one of the earliest settlers in
Scituate, and a freeman in 1633. There was a man of the same name at Hartford, and
another iit Dorchester, one of whom was perhaps the same who was at Barnstable. As
Thomas Bird resided only a short time in Barnstable, I have not taken the trouble to
investigate his history. In a notice of the criminal calendar of Barnstable, nnder the title
of Casely, I 'perhaps ought to have mentioned the crime of Bird. In Jan. 1641-2, for
running away irom his master and breaking into one or more houses in Barnstable, and
stealing therefrom "apparel and victuals," he was sentenced to be whipt, once in Barnstable
and once in Plymouth. His father settled with iv^r Cudworth for the tijne Thomas
had to serve, and the young man was released from the messenger's hands, though not
absolved from the punishment of his crimes. He afterwards resided in Scituate.