Jael Tosh

From the Hylbom Family History Project

http://hylbom.com/family/paternal-lines/paternal-to-to-vi/tosh-1358/

Jael Sullivan was evidently one of a shipload of Irish captives sent to New England in 1654 [2], although little is known of the circumstances.

When a company of residents of Braintree, Massachusetts set out to colonize Block Island [3], off the Rhode Island coast, William Tosh and his wife, Jael Sullivan, accompanied them and where among the first settlers on the island. They purchased the island from the colony of Massachusetts in 1660 and started from Boston in April 1661. They probably spent the winter in Taunton, Massachusetts, however, while surveyors worked to apportion the island’s acreage fairly among the subscribers. These 16 families arrived seeking to establish a democratic settlement free from religious persecution, and apparently they chose Block Island despite its harsh environment, hostile natives and poor soil, because of its isolation and lack of good harbors; they wanted a place where they would not be followed.

Footnotes:

• 2. This is from “The Genealogy of Nathaniel Mott of Scituate and His Sons” in Genealogies of Rhode Island Familes(Vol. I, p. 711-14) by G. Andrews Moriarty, and he does not cite his source for this information.
• 3. A good resource for the history of the island is History of Block Island, Rhode Island by S. T. Livermore (Bridgewater, Massachusetts) 1877. Though its inhabitants have never been very numerous (in 1662, natives on the island numbered somewhere from 1,200 1,500, and as of the 2000 census, the population was 1,010 inhabitants), Block Island has played a somewhat larger role in American history (and the history of our family) than might be expected of a remote coastal island. The first full-fledged war waged against natives by English settlers in New England (the Pequot War) began there. In 1634, Western Niantic Indians defended their tribe by killing John Stone, a renegade Boston man, who was known for stealing Pilgrim vessels, near the mouth of the Connecticut River. Despite the fact the man was trying to kidnap native women and children to sell as slaves in Virginia, the colonists became furious (partly due to earlier Indian atrocities against settlers on the mainland by a related tribe). The English demanded that the Pequot Indians (who spoke for the Western Niantic) surrender his killers. This was refused and began the slide towards war. In the summer of 1637, the Western Niantic killed another Boston man, the trader John Oldham, near Block Island. Without consulting the Connecticut colonists, Massachusetts, in August, sent a punitive expedition of 90 men under John Endicott to Block Island with instructions to kill every Niantic warrior and capture the woman and children, who would be valuable as slaves. The expedition was ordered by Massachusetts Governor Henry Vane to “massacre all of the Native men on the island”. The expedition killed 14 Eastern Niantic and burned their village and crops. The English burned 60 wigwams and the corn fields. They also shot every dog, but the Niantic fled into the woods, and the soldiers only managed to kill 14 of them. Deciding this punishment was insufficient, Endicott and his men sailed over to Fort Saybrook before going after the Pequot village at the mouth of the Thames River to demand 1,000 fathoms of wampum to pay for the murder of John Oldham and some Pequot children as hostages to insure peace. This incident is seen as one of the initial events that led to the Pequot War.