Benjamin* Cooley

Other Events and Attributes:

• Emigration: Bef 1648, England
• Immigration: Bef 1648, Massachusetts (probably)
• Property: 2 Feb 1657, Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts
• Possessions: 1684, Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts

Notes:

He probably immigrated with at least his wife and perhaps some of his children sometime before 1663.

In 1635, from his initial base in Roxbury, Massachusetts, Pynchon and two others conducted an exploratory expedition up the Connecticut River looking for a good place to establish a beaver trade. They found it at Agawam, and his two colleagues remained there for the winter to get things started. Both Burt (1898) and Swift (1969) provide abundant documentation of Pynchon?s dealings with the Native Americans as they established their beaver operations.

In the following spring (1636) Pynchon led a larger expedition to create a settlement on the banks of the Connecticut River. In 1640 that settlement was named Springfield, after the town in Essex where Pynchon was from. Burt (1898, pg. 20) reports that several of the new settlers in 1640 were married prior to their arrival in Springfield, among them he lists Benjamin Cooley. This explains why there is no record of Benjamin and Sarah?s wedding in Springfield. Unfortunately their names have not been found on any ship passenger list, but many ships arrived in New England at that time without a surviving record of passenger names. The first official record of Benjamin?s Springfield presence was the birth of their daughter Bethia on September 16,1643.


Benjamin Cooley was baptized in the nearby town of Tring in 1617. As a young lad he must have been trained as a weaver, for soon after his arrival in Springfield, MA he took on an apprentice weaver named Samuel Terry. We also know from Benjamin?s will that tools of the weaver craft was a big part of his estate.

As Mortimer Cooley (1941, pg. 72) reports, ?there is ample evidence that Benjamin Cooley was a skilled worker in both flax and wool.? So it is very probable that Pynchon?s agents in Essex and Hertfordshire (Swift, 1969, pg. 16) convinced a young weaver named Benjamin Cooley to move to the new world. That recruitment may have been fairly easy for a number of reasons.


References
Burt, Henry (1898) The First Century of the History of Springfield: 1636 to 1736 Michigan Historical Reprint Series.
Bremer, Francis (1995) The Puritan Experiment University Press of New England.

Cooley, Mortimer (1941) The Cooley Genealogy Tuttle Publishing Company.

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He settled in Longmeadow, MA. The library in Longmeadow has a great resource of all the Cooleys descendeds,from Benjamin and Sarah. In the Longmeadow, MA there is a Cooley Street and markers on the historical homes, many of which were Cooleys. It's amazing that many of the families had 6 or more children. Benjamin was active in the town's government and lived a long life with his wife Sarah.
Sources:
1. Torrey, C.A. "New England Marriages before 1700" pp.179.

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The Cooley Genealogy, page 137

Few dividends slipped away from Benjamin Cooley,
except as he made exchanges for property more useful and
convenient to him. In 1647 he was taxed for 40 1/2 acres,
while the inventory of his estate in 1684 included 527 acres
exclusive of the "land that Obadiah Cooley occupieth." This
latter tract, at Main and York streets in Springfield,
comprised perhaps ten acres, giving as a total, 537 acres
acquired during Benjamin Cooley's forty years as an
inhabitant of Springfield.

Source: found at Genforum, for Benj. & Sarah Cooley of Springfield, MA

Posted by: Jo Ann Sherwood Date: August 30, 1999.
In Reply to: Benj. & Sarah Cooley of Springfield, MA by Skip Cooley of 720

Dear Skip:

I enjoyed your articles on the dress codes. In return I thought you might like a copy of the Indian deed "selling" Springfield.

February 4, 1678. The indians above named viz Wawapana and Wawaba and Wecombo the true and proper owners of all the lands above mentioned did set and by sale forever pass away all the land above mentioned to Mr. Elizaber Holyoke, George Colton, Benjamin Cooley, Samuel Marshfield and Anthony Dorchester for the use and behoofe of the town of Springfield the bargain being meade in my presence and as I remember it was in the year 1674 or thereabout I was offered in treaty about it which at last came to a conclusion to be as above mentioned the payment also for the land as above expressed passing through my hands to the indians which they gladly accepted and did willingly own the sale to me after this deed was they comeing particulary one at a tyme to me to subscribe it when I told them they must came altogether the want of which was the onely obstruction for they often severally acknowledged the sale and the writing to be according to their minde and meaning also testifying their readiness to come all together and subscribe which as they promised no doubt they would have done but that the indian wars happening in the year 1675 they with other indians we drove away before which time they made the above said purchase and sale and I declare they did come personally and owne and acknowledge the conveyhance and sale of the land above mentioned as above expressed. This then done and by ye Indians Wequanquan and Wawapaw and Wecomobo owned and acknowledged. John Pynchon, Attestant. This entred these records for the county of Hampshire July 12 1679 as attested.

John Holyoke (Source: Hampshire County Massachusetts Deeds, Book AB, page 24, Film 844486.
SOURCE: Files of Jackie Drybread in Rootsweb

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From: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ma/county/hampden/hist/hist2.html
EARLY SPRINGFIELD AND LONGMEADOW, MASSACHUSETTS
Page 2 (Continued)

George Colton is said to have married Deborah Gardner at Hartford about the time of his settling at Springfield. He named his second daughter Sarah. Is it possible that Benjamin Cooley's wife Sarah was a sister of George Colton? The relations between Cooley and Colton would seem to have been far more binding than a mere Damon and Pythias attachment. If the origins of George Colton could be determined they might shed an important light on the early life of Benjamin Cooley.

There seems to have been nothing precipitate in the nature of Benjamin Cooley, who appears to have always made haste slowly. One of such a nature would not have been apt to accept the first home site offered. A mere four acre strip of arable land from the street to the river must have seemed a pitiful provision for a family, especially if part of the tract was to be occupied by a house and its appurtenances. Along almost its entire length the town street followed the line of the marsh and the artificial ditch which became the town brook, and there seems to have been an official prejudice against the locating of buildings on the marsh side of the street. However, at the south end of the town, the brook turned off to the east for the breadth of six or seven lots, sufficiently to provide a sizeable plot of hard ground east of the street.

Cooley was a desirable prospect; one to be encouraged. Therefore on February 23, 1643/44 it, was "ordered and voted that there shall be no barns nor any other housing set up betwixt the street fence and the brook except they have four rod for the highway."

1 Thus Cooley's objections were met and he chose the third lot from the south, where the brook course provided the minimum of marsh. East of the street he built his house. At the rear of it was the clear running natural brook. Across the street was his barn. Three lots to the north was a site offering similar advantages and this was chosen by George Colton who also established himself on the east side of the town street.
After his permanent removal to Longmeadow,

Cooley sold this property in the town plot to his next-door neighbor, Richard Sikes, on January 12, 1667/68.2 Both the house and the barn were burned by the Indians in the sack of the town on October 5, 1675, so that nothing definite is known of them, but consideration of other buildings of the time provides a knowledge of their nature and construction.

It can be most positively affirmed that the Cooley house was not one of those log cabins, so beloved by poets and painters, that actually were unknown in pioneer New England. An Englishman, coming to America in the early 17th century, would have had about as much knowledge of a log house as he would have had of an Esquimau igloo--and no more. He simply would never have heard of such a thing. In any event, lack of material would have prohibited such wasteful construction for, contrary to general thought, southern New England was then not one huge forest but was an expanse almost entirely of great open spaces, due to the annual burnings of the Indians. There is today, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, far more wooded area than there was when the Pilgrims landed. So scarce was timber about Springfield that the very earliest plantation order prohibited the cutting of a single tree on the town plot. As the Indians were exterminated this unnatural condition corrected itself, but as late as 1699, Northampton was forced to consider ways and means for overcoming their great lack of firewood.

Springfield carpenters and builders planned and built in the English tradition the type of houses they had known in the old country. The home of Anne Hathaway at Shottery which has been made so familiar by modern photography well illustrates the type.

Rather complete details of the house built for the first minister in 1639 are of record. It is shown to have been a two and a half-story building with an entrance porch, the second story of the latter being designed for a study. The roof was thatched and the walls were "wattled," that framework being covered with clay with a result not unlike a stucco house in appearance. The rods of the wattling were known as "wales" and the process of covering them with clay was called "daubing the wales."

Such construction was well adapted to the mild winters and damp summers of Old England but here the settlers found that this clay-stucco siding succumbed to the rigors of ice and snow, and for protection they were forced to overlay it with an outside covering of boarding. Continuous winter fires and hot, dry summers constituted a fire hazard that led to the early abandonment of thatched roofs.

Until the coming, about 1645, of Hugh Parsons, the brick maker and chimney specialist, chimneys were built after the English manner, in cob-house fashion of round sticks, daubed with clay.
The church of 1645 was of similar construction to the parsonage except that the roof was covered with hand riven shingles, eighteen inches in length. Seven years later the outside was clapboarded.

Apparently the "daubed" house persisted for a considerable period for at the hearing in the witchcraft charges against Hugh Parsons, on March 17, 1650/51, John Lombard testified "that one day last summer he set a trowel and a stick which he used to hold to his clay when he daubed, on the ground just without his door; after which two Indians came in and presently went away again. When he also went out to look for his trowel, there was the stick, but the trowel was gone." Thus the tools of the trade seem to have been in common use at least as late as 1650.
Diagonally across the street from the Cooley house was the home of widow Margaret Bliss. Across the street to the south was that of Hugh Parsons. Both of these were built about 1643-1645 and both were garrisoned during King Philip's was and so were preserved until the camera could make a permanent record of them, and thus is had a knowledge of the house of the period.

One can surmise that the first Cooley home in America was a substantial and commodious two and a half-story structure of half-timbered, clay-daubed walls. The materials undoubtedly came from his own hillside wood-lot east of the brook. There, with frow and beetle he probably rived his own shingles. Presumably the windows had casement sashes, with tiny diamond panes set in lead.

Benjamin Cooley came into the community at a busy time. In 1645 the first church was built and every inhabitant was obligated to give twenty days work to its furtherance (not twenty-three days as appears in Burt's transcript, Vol. I, page 176). Here is meat for the statistician and the economist. Exclusive of William Pynchon and Pastor Moxon, there must have been forty townsmen who contributed their labor; a total of eight hundred days, or the equivalent of between two and three years of working days for one man. The maximum day for carpenters and similar workers had previous been set at ten hours. Thus, eight thousand hours of labor went into the fashioning of the church. It would seem that either tools were inadequate or labor was inefficient, or that the structure was far more pretentious than the recorded specifications indicate.

Within five years an attic floor was laid in the church, providing a chamber which was used by various individuals for the storage of corn, and the records show that on "December 28, 1653, it is granted to Benjamin Cooley to have the use of the meeting house chamber from the innermost side of the pillars to the end of the house and to enjoy it the first Tuesday in November next, in consideration whereof he is to pay seven shillings in good wheat or wampum by the first of November next."

The earliest of Benjamin Cooley in the Springfield records is dated September 16, 1643, when his daughter, Bethia, was born. The next is February 8, 1643/44 when he was called for jury duty. On September 23, 1645, a reference to fences indicates that he was then established on his property and that he was then the most southerly lot occupant, his later neighbors on the south not then having arrived. From then on the records are replete with references to his public services, some of which must have been quite arduous. On February 8, 1643/44, when he served as a juryman in a petty case involving a pig, the group reported that "the jury having been held till near midnight hearing the plea and the proofs, desires liberty not to bring in their verdict until the next day, an hour before sun set." Here is perhaps something significant and illuminating. Benjamin Cooley was then almost a stranger in town and it was his first experience with a local jury. It was a jury of six, the others being Thomas Cooper, John Dober, Richard Sikes, William Branch and John Harmon. Was it a Cooley insistence on justice that protracted the session until all arguments were heard, despite personal sacrifices? Was here first demonstrated a sense of justice that brought later honors?

In 1667, with Deacon Samuel Chapin and George Colton, he was in charge of the first local "Community Chest" for the distribution of "four or five pounds to help a little against the want of some families." He not only had the confidence of the community but he seems to have endeared himself to all classes. The testimony in the Hugh Parsons hearing relates that at the Pynchon store he was "one that was liked." And it was to his neighbor Cooley that the bedeviled and harassed Hugh Parsons went for help when distracted with anxiety over his sick child.
On March 4, 1650/51, there died at Springfield, Joshua Parsons, infant son of Hugh Parsons and his wife, Mary Lewis. The available evidence indicates that the child succumbed to croup or some similar ailment, but the father was accused of witchcraft in connection with the death. He was examined before magistrate Pynchon and the testimony then given sheds such light on the homely affairs of the day that it is here rehearsed, in so far as it relates to Benjamin Cooley.

Hugh Parsons desired that Goodman Cooley would testify whether he was not affected with the death of his child when he came to speak to him to go to the burial of it. He said he could not speak to him for weeping.

Benjamin Cooley said that when he spoke to him to go to the burial of his child, he cannot remember any sorrow that he showed, for he came to him taking a pipe of tobacco.

Hugh Parsons said that when his child was sick and like to die, he ran barefoot and barelegged and with tears to desire Goody Cooley to come to his wife, because his child was so ill.

One can picture the poor, bewildered maniac, rushing across the street in the middle of the night, barefooted and night-shirted, pounding on Sarah Cooley's door and pleading for help, desperate because his child was choking with croup, while its mother was not a fit person to give it care. Perhaps in his saner moments he recalled the Goodwife's success with her own children.

Goody Cooley testified that this was at the first time the child was taken. There was some speeches used that it might be bewitched, for those that are now bewitched have often times something rise up into their throats that doth stop their breath and it seems by George Colton's testimony that the child was strangely taken.

Benjamin Cooley said upon oath that Mary Parsons told him about a year since that she feared her husband was a witch and that she so far suspected him that she had searched him when he had been asleep in his bed but could not find anything about him unless it be in his secret parts.

Benjamin Cooley and Anthony Dorchester said upon oath that being charged by the constable to watch Mary Parsons this last night, she told them that if her husband had fallen out with anybody, he would say that he would be even with them and then she found that he did bewitch his own child that she might be at liberty to help him in his Indian corn harvest; for he expected help from her and because her time was taken up about her child, he being eager after the world, seemed to be troubled at it and she suspected that he was a means to make an end of his child quickly, that she might be at liberty to help him. Another thing said she made her to suspect her husband to be a witch was that most things he sold to others did not prosper. Another ground of suspicion was because he was so backward to go to the ordinances, either to the lecture or to any other meeting and she had been feign to threaten him that she would complain to the magistrate or else she thought he would not let her go once in the year. Another thing that made her suspect him to be a witch was because of the great noise that she could hear in the house when he was abroad. And she said that last Tuesday, at night, when he was abroad, she heard a noise in the house as if forty horses had been there and after he was come to bed he kept a noise and a calling in his sleep, but she could not understand one word and so he hath done many times formerly and when she asked him what he ailed he would say he had strange dreams and one time he said that the devil and he were fighting and once he had almost overcome him but at last he overcame the devil.

Jonathan Taylor said upon oath, March 21, 1650/51, that when he was at the house of Hugh Parsons this winter he told me that he had been at Mr. Pynchon's to get as much whitleather as to make a cap for a flail, and he was willing, but Simon Beamon would not let him have any. It had been as good, said he, he had. He shall get nothing by it; I will be even with him. Mary Parsons said; husband, why do you threaten the fellow so; it is like he was busy. He answered, if Goodman Cooley or any one else that he had liked had come, he should have had it. But I'll remember him.

Jonathan Taylor on oath said that sometime this winter on a night, a pair of Goodman Matthews pales fell down with a noise and going out presently to see the occasion thereof, could not perceive anything. But going into his house again, it being very dark, Hugh Parsons was at his back, his hand on his door as soon as his was, he bidding him sit down, which he did, Parsons saying, Goodman Cooley's boy nothing but beat my calf. His master will take no order with him, but I will. Anon after, Goody Cooley came and inquired after her boy, whether this deponent had seen him, he telling her no. She replied, I sent him to Goodman Matthews a good while since and cannot tell what is become of him, and desired this deponent to help her look for him, which he did, in all the hay mows and out houses with whooping and hallooing for him but could not find him nor hear of him. At last she gave over looking for him and this deponent enquired of the said Goody Cooley whether Hugh Parsons had not met him and took orders with him and he threatened him for beating his calf. And after they were parted a while, the boy came home, and his dame asked him where he had been. He said, in a great cellar and was carried headlong into it, Hugh Parsons going before him, and fell down with me there, and afterwards he will me into it.

This "boy" was of course not Sarah Cooley's son, but Samuel Terry whom Cooley had taken as an apprentice.

Benjamin married * Sarah Savage on 1642 in Springfield, Hampden Co., Massachusetts. Sarah was born about 1620 in England.


The Great Puritan Migration to New England
Between 1630 and 1642, over 20,000 Englishmen migrated to New England. William Pynchon, the Puritan founder of Springfield, Massachusetts was one of them. So was Benjamin Cooley, the founder of the Cooley family in America, of which I am a member. Mortimer Cooley, in his remarkable two volume work, The Cooley Genealogy (1941), clearly documents Benjamin Cooley's early days in Massachusetts and how we all descended from Benjamin and his wife Sarah.

SOURCE: Cooley - The Great Puritan Migration to New England
carolaug Posted: 19 Jan 2009 11:52PM GMT






http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=pusch&id=I001589





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1648: Samuel Chapin became a member of the Board of Selectmen on which Benjamin Cooley first served.


Property:
2 Feb 1657/8: Benjamin Cooley was granted ten acreas of land bounded by John Lumbard on ye North of its Breadth (Springfield Book of Possessions asquoted in The Cooley Genealogy, p. 140)


Possessions:
Only three men other than the magistrate held estates valued in excess of L800. Ensign Benjamin Cooley owned holdings worth L1,241 when he died in 1684. Pynchon's brother-in-law, Elizur Holyoke, died eight years later leaving his heirs property worth L1,187. At his death in 1690, quartermaster George Colton owned assets valued at L847.
The Pynchons and The People of Early Springfield
http://www.americancenturies.mass.edu/classroom/curriculum_12th/unit1/lesson4/innes.html

Benjamin* married Sarah* Savage about 1642 in England (probably). Sarah* was born about 1620 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts, or England (probably); died on 23 Aug 1684 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Bethiah* Cooley was born on 16 Sep 1643 in Longmeadow, Hampden Co, Massachusetts; died on 11 Dec 1711 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts; was buried in Chicopee Street Burying Ground, Chicopee, Hampden County, Massachusetts, USA.
2. Obadiah Cooley was born on 27 Jan 1647 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts; died on 03 Sep 1690 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts.
3. Eliakim Cooley was born on 8 Jan 1649 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts; died on 01 Dec 1711 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts.
4. Daniel Cooley was born on 2 May 1651 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts; died on 9 Feb 1726 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts.
5. Sarah Cooley was born on 27 Feb 1654; died after 1655.
6. Benjamin Cooley was born on 1 Sep 1656 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts; died on 29 Nov 1731 in Springfield, Hampden Co, Massachusetts.
7. Mary Cooley was born on 22 Jun 1659; died after 1660.
8. Joseph Cooley was born on 6 Mar 1662; died after 1663.

William* married Joan* Arnett about 1608 in Tring, Hartfordshire (probably), England. Joan* was born about 1594 in England (probably); died after 1616 in England (probably). [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]