Samuel Packard

  General Notes:

Samuel Packard (constable and tavern-keeper) was baptized on September 17, 1612 in Stonham Aspal, a small village in the Mid-Suffolk region of England. He married Elizabeth 1643.

Samuel died on November 7, 1684 in Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Elizabeth died on October 27, 1694 in Bridgewater.

"The status of a yeoman farmer in these times was relatively good if he were successful, and there was enough social mobility that he could actually aspire to the status of the gentry for some of his children. Samuel was the third son. however, and in a land where promogeniture was the practice, he could expect little in the way of inheritance" (Packard, Karle S., "Samuel Packard and the English Origins of the Packard Family", an excerpt from a Packard's Progress editon).

Samuel Packard with his wife, Elizabeth, and a daughter left Ipswich on the Ship Diligent on June 1638. They arrived in Boston Harbor on August 10, 1638. They immediately went to Hingham. They were in Highham in 1652, when his daughter Deliverance was baptised. The family then moved to Weymouth where Samuel was a Selectman from 1654 to 1664 and some of his children were born in Weymouth. Then they settled in Bridgewater, Massachsuetts about 1664 where he was appointed Constable. Samuel purchased land in Bridgewater before August 1662. He was Collector of Minister's Rates in 1670, Surveyor of Highways in 1672, and Constable again in 1674. In 1671 Samuel was licensed to keep an ordinary
(tavern) which he had in 1670. Since Samuel signed with a mark, this suggests that he could not write. This may be why some early records show the name as Packer.

Samuel married Elizabeth Stream, daughter of John Stream and Elizabeth Whitman, in 1637 in Wyndham, Norfolk, England. (Elizabeth Stream was born about 1622 and died on 27 Oct 1694 in Bridgewater, Plymouth, MA.)