John Throckmorton

John Throckmorton, Gent. (1601–1684) was an early settler of Providence Plantation in what became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and he was one of the 12 original proprietors of that settlement. He emigrated from Norfolk, England to settle in Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but religious tensions brought about his removal to Providence. In 1643, Throckmorton made a land purchase in New Netherland and settled there with several dozen others. However, an Indian attack during Kieft's War caused him and others to return to Providence. He became active in civil affairs, serving as moderator, deputy, and treasurer. He died in 1684 in Middletown, New Jersey, where he went to visit his children, and was buried there. Throggs Neck in The Bronx, New York City is named for him. Life John Throckmorton was almost certainly baptised in Norwich, county Norfolk, England on 9 May 1601, the son of grocer and Alderman Bassingburn Throckmorton. On 20 March 1621, he was apprenticed to a scrivener, but his whereabouts by 1638 had become unknown to his father, and the executors of his father's estate in 1640 could not find him. Several writers suggest that he was the "George Throckmorton" who arrived in New England aboard the Lyon and was made a freeman in May 1631. In 1995, Robert Charles Anderson argued that this was highly unlikely because a person of his stature would not be absent from the colonial records from 1631 to 1638, suggesting that George Throckmorton either died soon after his arrival or else returned to England, and John Throckmorton did not arrive in the colonies until closer to 1638. Twenty years later, however, Anderson had evidently changed his view, stating that John Throckmorton of Salem and Providence was in fact the 1631 passenger on the Lyon and listing his own 1995 remarks as "incorrect."