The Daily Times Chronicle, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 1987

Burlington Past & Present, by John E. Fogelberg
(Article # 427)


Good Queen Bess died in 1603 ending a long and prosperous
reign and bringing to an end the line of Tudor monarchs on the
English throne. During her reign Shakespeare became England's
greatest playwright; the Spanish Armada was defeated; Hakluyt's
"Principal Navigations" was published; the East India Company
was founded, the great Francis Drake and John Hawkyns, English
buccaneers, died; religious dissension either abated or was
held in check; and Ireland, at least for a time, was brought
totally under English control.
James VI, King of Scotland followed Queen Elizabeth to the
throne of England as James I, thus uniting the two countries so
often in the past at war with one another. But James did not
understand the English Parliamentary system and his insistence
on "the Divine Right of Kings " to make decisions sometimes
even in the most trivial matters soon brought about a confront-
ation with Parliament which was to cause his son, Charles I, an
equally pig-headed autocrat, to lose his head in 1649. So
between 1603 and 1649 things political, ecclesiastical and much
else had grown progressively worse in Merry Old England.
Francis Wyman who probably was but a boy when Elizabeth
died married her namesake Elizabeth Richardson in 1617, a year
after Shakespeare died, and settled down to run a farm and
raise a family in the little village of Westmill in Hertford-
shire. With the exception of several times being cited for not
paying his tithes to the church, things for Francis Wyman did
prosper. His wife presented him with six children, Thomas in
1618, Francis 1619, John 1622, Richard 1624, Elizabeth 1626,
and William in 1628.
The children, though brought up on a farm some distance
from London, must have heard of or read about the exploits of
John Smith or Richard Hakluyt or, Sir Walter Raleigh or others
who had braved the seas to visit a new land or rain destruction
upon Spanish possessions there. Or the three Richardson
brothers who had just emigrated from Westmill to Charlestown
and who probably were relatives of Mrs. Wyman, may have written
home. In any case, emigration to that new land was an exciting
prospect for scores of eager young men and women. Wyman's sons
were no exception.
Thomas, the eldest son, would inherit the estate under the
English law of primogeniture and so stayed put aud did in fact
inherit when his father died in 1645. Richard became a farmer
as well, his father possibly setting him up as such in a place
called Braughing. Nothing is known of Elizabeth and William
died at the age of two.
It was the second and third sons of Francis Wyman of
Westmill who decided to try their fortunes in a new land. The
two of them sailed for America either late in 1639 or early in
1640 for both of them, along with the Richardson boys, were to
sign the Town Orders for the new settlement of Woburn in Dec-
ember of 1640. Thus Francis Wyman could barely have been
twenty-one when he came to New England and John still a teen-
ager of seventeen or eighteen. Both were to do exceptionally
well here.
Much has been written about Francis Wyman partly because
the farm house he built here in 1666, in what was then frontier
territory, is still standing, and there the Wyman Association
members hold a family reunion once a year. The last one was
held a month ago with a cookout and much fanfare. The Associa-
tion bought the place in 1900.
Where Francis and John Wyman learned the curriers trade is
not known but they did start a leather curing business on the
property given to them on what is now Wyman Street near Central
Square, Woburn.
From the Woburn Records of March 1648 comes this note: "In
consideration of those that had formerly but five acres it is
agreed these nineteen persons following shall have one acre and
one half, amounting to twenty-eight acres and one half.
Francis and John Wyman to have theirs in the swamp next their
house, and if they refuse, then James Parker and Thomas Fuller
to change with them, providing it be done in three days after
this present day." Thus it seems that each young man at that
time owned only five acres of land, a far cry from the hundreds
of acres they were to own later.
John Wyman built his farmhouse in the Shawshin area of
Woburn just as his brother had and not far removed from him.
According to a map drawn of the Wyman farms in 1665 by a Dr.
Sterns in 1957 the John Wyman house was situated on what is now
the road leading to the Rifle Club and directly on the
Burlington-Billerica line as it stands now. No trace of that
house is in existence. But that John Wyman and his family once
lived there, there is no doubt.
In John Wyman's will his son Seth is given "three quarters
of my house & housing and farme at Shawshin, where I did form-
erly dwell, Moreover I do give him all that tract of land
joining to (formerly) the farme of Major Daniel Gookin on the
west & Francis Wyman on the east with the long swamp in the
midst.." The other guarter of the farm at Shawshin was given
to Isabel Wyman, a grandchild who seems to have been a daughter
of his son David.
John Wyman married Sarah the daughter of Miles Nutt of
Woburn in 1644. Their children were Samuel 1646, died an
infant; John 1648 married a daughter of the Rev. Mr. Thomas
Carter and was killed in the Indian Fort fight at Mt. Hope in
1675; Sarah 1650 married Joseph Walker of Billerica; Solomon
1651; David 1654 a tanner, died of the small pox 1678;
Elizabeth 1655 died a youngster; Bathsheba 1658 married
Nathaniel Tay of Billerica; Jonathan 1661; Seth 1663; Jacob
also a tanner married a daugher of Samuel Richardson.
Bathsheba made the Court records in 1676 when she helped
her father resist the efforts of Constable Sears to seize one
of his horses. It seems she tripped the good constable so that
he fell in the dust doing inestimable damage to his dignity as
an officer of the court. The Court fined both her and her
father forty shilling each.
Seth Wyman married Esther, the daughter of Major William
Johnson in 1685. Seth was a Lieutenant in the Woburn militia
company. He fathered seven children of whom the eldest son
Seth, born 1686, made a name for himself in the famous Indian
fight at Lovewell's Pond in which both Paugus the Indian Chief
and Captain Lovewell died. Of the thirty-four men who entered
the fight, only eighteen returned home.
That any survived was due mainly to the cool-headed direc-
tion and courageous example set by Seth Wyman who as Sewall
Relates, "distinguished himself by his self-possession, forti-
tude and valor" after all his superior officers had been
killed. Among the dead was young Ichabod Johnson whose father
tilled the soil where the Episcopal Church stands today. It is
said that Ichabod's father died of a broken heart shortly after
hearing of the death of his favorite son.
John Wyman was admitted freeman in 1647, served as a
selectman in 1666 the year he built his farmhouse here and
again in 1667, 1668 and 1673. He also was Commissioner for the
County Rate in 1656 and 1672. He also was a lieutenant in the
local militia. He died in May of 1684. His wife remarried in
August a Thomas Fuller of Woburn. The death of John Wyman does
not appear in the Woburn Record of Deaths.
Any number of Wymuns have continued to hold positions of
public trust over the years and they have moved north, west and
south to do so. Thus it is no surprise to hear that one Philip
D. Wyman is now an Assemblyman in the California Legislature at
Sacramento. His forefathers moved from Massachusetts to Ver-
mont, to New York, to Ohio and finally to California. His line
runs back through his father Elliott, Elliott, Francis, Albert,
John, Daniel, Daniel, Jacob and the immigrant John Wyman.
Of such as the Wymans was Anierican history made.