My Family Tree

John Bursley arrived in Wessagusett, the present town of Weymouth sometime around 1623. Wessagusett was the second settlement in New England after Plymouth. The original settlement was a disaster and Bursley seems to have been part of a second group that brought some order to the community. There is a Bursley Road in the Wessagusett Beach area of today's Weymouth. He served as a Deputy to the General Court from Weymouth/Dorchester area. After living in Weymouth he moved for a time to Scituate, MA. He was one of the founding settlers in Barnstable on Cape Cod. He may have been there before the village was officially granted a charter in 1639. According to an old story, Bursley acquired his land in West Barnstable from an Indian around 1634, paying a copper kettle and a bushel of wheat. This would be where the Bursley Manor is located. In 1639 he married Joanna Hull, the daughter of Barnstable's minister, Rev. Joseph Hull. He was approximately 50 and she was around 19. When Rev. Hull left Barnstable for Maine, John and Joanna lived in the Rev. Hull's house in Barnstable Village. Around 1650 they sold the house to Mr. Allyn and moved to the Bursley Manor on the Bursley Farm in West Barnstable.

COMMENTS: Charles Francis Adams marshalled the evidence in favor of the position that John Bursley was part of the company of ROBERT GORGES which arrived in New England in the fall of 1623 and settled at the location that was to become Weymouth [MHSP 1:16:197]. One of the most important pieces of evidence in this argument is the list of those who contributed to the expenses involved in deporting THOMAS MORTON in 1628, which included an entry for "Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Burslem, £2" [Bradford LB 43]. The identity of the John Bursley of Weymouth with the man of the same name in Barnstable is based on the marriage of Bursley to the daughter of Reverend Joseph Hull, at about the time the latter moved from Weymouth to Barnstable, and the disappearance of John Bursley from Weymouth about the time of this marriage. Both Pope and GDMNH have separate entries for the activities of this man in the two towns. That this same man was patentee of York is based on the continued association with WILLIAM JEFFREY, and with the Gorges family. The John Bursley who resided in Exeter, Hampton and Kittery was a different man, since he was of a lower social stratum, and there were chronological conflicts between him and the Barnstable man [GDMNH 122-23; Granberry 186]. On 14 May 1634 the General Court ordered that Wessaguscus [i.e., Weymouth] should bear the charges for "Thomas Lane, late servant to John Burslyn, [who], by the providence of God, is fallen lame & impotent, & hath since remained at Dorchester" [MBCR 1:121]. This record, and the service of John Bursley on the Dorchester committee to make a rate for the pay of the captain of the train band, have led some writers to state that Bursley lived for a time at Dorchester. However, since Weymouth was in these early years an appendage of Dorchester for church and military matters [GMN 1:29], the appearance of Bursley in association with Dorchester does not require that he ever lived there.