By John Booth of London¹

New Street Farm -The Old Farmhouse, Framlingham, Suffolk, 1635

This article was written originally published in the FRAM Journal². It was written in 2006, and references to the current time relate to 2006. The Ordnance Survey map extract below is from April 2025.

New Street Farm at Framlingham, England, has been identified, on sure and ample grounds, as the home of Nicholas Danforth, the Suffolk yeoman who went to America and settled in Massachusetts more than three hundred years ago. This identification is the result of painstaking enquiries conducted by Miss Constance Brunger, of Framlingham, which were begun after the finding, in 1951, by Mr. Summer Powell, then Teaching Fellow in History at Harvard University, of a seventeenth century deed in which Nicholas Danforth was twice mentioned by name.

The house is about a mile and a half from the centre of the town. It is situated to the South of the road from Framlingham to Saxtead, and at a distance of three fields from the road; and to the West of a country lane called New Street. It is approached from New Street by a drive about three furlongs in length which lies inside and along the Northern boundary of the farm. A footpath from Mount Pleasant leads across the fields to New Street, and across three fields from New Street to a point on the drive not far from the house. New Street descends the slope of a small valley with a mean gradient of about 1 in 30, to a lane which crosses it, and it then continues uphill towards Kettleburgh and Brandeston. The Eastern part of this cross lane is called The Brooks, or Brook Lane, and runs past some buildings known locally as Lincoln’s Barn and marked on the Ordnance Survey map as Lincoln’s Farm³. West of the crossing the lane is known as Earl Soham Lane. 

The house is thought to have been built not later than the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. It is a good example of the many sturdy farmhouses which have been the homes of English landowners and agriculturalists for generations, and are still, after four hundred years, fulfilling the purpose for which they were first constructed. A timber-framed building of two principal floors, its outer walls have been plastered, and interest is imparted to the surface by the plaster work being designed in panels decorated with simple patterns, and coloured cream, in a style of which Suffolk has many instances to shew. The walls have been strengthened in places with brick casing and massive brick buttresses. The high pitched roof may originally have been thatched with local reeds or wheat straw. Until recently it was of flat peg tiles; in 1949 they were replaced by the present red pantiles.

Mr. George Henry Fulcher has been the occupier of the farm since 1917. On Midsummer Day 1952 Miss Brunger, her brother, Mr. Valentine Brunger and the writer looked at New Street. Two days later, Mr. Cyril George Fulcher of Mount Pleasant, Framlingham, accompanied them to the farm and introduced them to his parents and his sister, Miss Hilda Fulcher. On this occasion they were joined by Mrs. Valentine Brunger. Mr. and Mrs. Fulcher and Miss Fulcher welcomed their visitors and shewed them the interior of the house.

The front door opens into a nineteenth-century brick porch with a slated roof. This leads into a large room with windows to the South and West. The other rooms on the ground floor are the old farmhouse kitchen now divided into a living room and a kitchen, and the dairy. In the living room is the brick oven that Mrs. Danforth no doubt used when she baked her bread and that Mrs. Fulcher uses now. A long-handled wooden peel is used for putting in the loaves and taking them out. The oven front has been modernised. It is in the wall to the right of the fireplace. To the left of the fireplace is what appears to have been another oven. It is now used as a cupboard. The floors in the ground floor rooms were all laid during the present century, and replace earner floors of Suffolk bricks.

The oak staircase leads to the four bedrooms. The fine timber work in the bedroom at the head of the stairs is an impressive feature, even where there is much else to admire.  AIl the bedrooms and the  attic above have the characteristic appearance of the sixteenth century. The planning of the room over the dairy for the farm servants is interesting; the men could reach the granary through a trap-door, and a door in the exterior wall of the room opened on the wooden steps (now taken away, but still extant) giving them access to and from the farmyard and the stables without passing through the house. The floors upstairs are of wide oak planks and are in specially good condition; here and there small replacements can be seen. Most of the timber in the house may be pronounced to be original. Old ship timbers are known to have been built into many Suffolk houses, and the form of some of the knee-timbers at New Street suggest that they may have had such an origin. Old wood of this kind acquires astonishing hardness and builders valued it for that reason. At least three of the doors in the house are considered to be coeval with the building and have wooden latches.

An attractive garden adjoins the house. This was full of flowers when Miss Brunger went to New Street, and a bowl of sweetpeas stood on the shining mahogany table in the big room where Nicholas Danforth entertained Puritan ministers when Charles the First was King.

New Street Farm – The Land

The area of New Street Farm is 84 acres 9 perches. It is recorded on Sheet XLVIII S. E., Suffolk [East], of the most recent edition, 2 ½  inches to one mile, of the Ordnance Survey⁴. The site on which the house, garden and the fields stand, make together a total of seventeen separate elements. There is evidence that in Framlingham many fields bear at the present day the names by which they were known in the seventeenth century. The names and acreages of the New Street fields as they are now, are set out:-

Number	Name	Cultivation	Acreage
1	Seven acres	Arable	7
2	Nine acres	Arable	8
3 & 11	Twelve acres	Arable	12
4	No name – called Parson’s pightle in 1870	Arable	3
5	White clover field – called Stackyard field in 1870	Arable	3
6	Back meadow – called Barn meado in 1870	Pasture	4
7	House, yards, garden and orchard	Pasture	1
8	Front meadow – called Kitchen neadow in 1870	Pasture	4
9	Home pightle	Pasture	1
10	Home field	Arable	4
12	Little field – called Little hill in 1870	Arable	2
13	Low meadow	Pasture	3
14	Low meadow	Pasture	3
15	Street field	Arable	6
16	Market hill	Arable	6
17	Little Wraggs	Arable	2
18	Great Wraggs	Arable	6
		Total:	845

The numbers are those on the plan to the conveyance of 1870, when the estate was purchased by the Rev. Frederic Tyrwhitt Drake, of Bedfield, Suffolk. There are a number of ponds and one arm of a considerable channel or watercourse .. of which the other arm lies to the South of Earl Soham Lane. The farm produces sugar beet, which during the present day has become the pivot on which a great deal of the agricultural system of East Anglia turns. Barley is grown, and is sold for use in brewing, and cattle are grazed and fattened.

 A flock of five hundred head of poultry is Miss Fulcher’s charge. The garden and orchard are her affair too; fruit and vegetables are grown for the family table and, of course, flowers.

The farmhouse stands about 162 feet above sea-level, which in this part of East Anglia is relatively high. From it can be seen the College along the Saxtead road, but not Framlingham church. The big vistas are characteristic of the East Anglian scene. If the house has changed little since Nicholas Danforth lived there, the fields. and the views are supposed to have changed even less. There are young partridges flying along the hedgerows in Summer, but they are few. Chattering magpies are at least as numerous. The lark, the blackbird, the thrush, and at night the nightingale and the clamorous owl, may be heard in the New Street fields. This is a part of the old country; Nicholas Danforth’s England.

How the Identification was made

How the identification of the Danforth property was made can be simply told.

The deed of 1635

The starting point, as has been stated already, was Mr. Powell’s discovery, among the muniments of East Suffolk County Council, of the indenture dated 28^th May 1635⁶.   The indenture recited that by deeds:

bearing date in Aprill last past from and by one Nicholas Danforth then of Framlingham in the County of Suffolke yeoman made to … Robert Holland [citizen and apothecary of London] .. All that the messuage or tenement with thappurtenances sytuate and being in Framlingham aforesaid wherein the said Nicholas Danforth then dwelt with all the edifices buildings bones stables gardens yards and orchards tbereunto belonging …

and also of ten inclosures of land meadow and pasture next the house amounting to about 60 acres; and of other pieces of land of which the boundaries were defined by reference to the property of other owners and occupiers. The whole amounted to more than 70 acres. The land had on it, besides the farmhouse, “one little tenement – uppon one of the said inclosures next unto the Kinge’s high way there called Lincolny’s way” ; “two small tenements” upon an acre of land between Popledike towards the East and Lincolny’s street towards the West; and “one other messuage or tenement”; and these four houses were all described as “late built”.

If the use of the expression “Aprill last past”, as the date when the property passed from Nicholas Danforth to Robert Holland, is to be read as meaning April 1635, it would seem that it was in 1635 that the Danforths left Framlingham for America, and not in 1634, as has usually been stated. 

There was in the deed a mention of the road from Framlingham to Earl Soham, and this, together with two mentions of “Lincolny’s way” and another of “Lincolny’s streete”, at once stood out as clues to the direction in which Nicholas Danforth’s property lay. Lincoln’s way and Lincoln’s street are not road names now in use, but they were seen to imply some affinity with the ban or farm which does now bear Lincoln’s name. As to Popledike, this field appears in a terrier of Framlingham glebe lands of 1770 as “Popple Ditche close”, and Mr. J. M. Martin has expressed the view that the name “may be taken as descriptive of an enclosure, the ditch or dyke of which was lined with poplar trees”.

Miss Brunger’s next step was to communicate with Mr. Cyril Fulcher of Mount Pleasant, Framlingham, and Mr. Edward Christian Tyrwhitt-Drake of London, who are the present owners of land in the direction under consideration, and they were so good as to produce their title deeds for inspection. Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake’s deeds proved to be a fine series of parchments and papers, no fewer than forty-five in number, and they enabled the history of what is now called New Street Farm to be  traced from the first quarter of the eighteenth century to the present day. Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake’s grandfather bought the farm in 1870, and it has since then remained in the family. 

It was in particular an indenture, technically known as a release, of the 21^st March 1718/9 which supplied the answer to the problem, as at that date the owner of the house and land now called New Street Farm was Thomas Revett of Framlingham, mercer, and he and Elizabeth wife, were releasing it to Samuel Baxter, described as of Ipswich … and Susama, his wife. The new owner was in fact a nonconformist minister who preached in private houses and other buildings in Framingham and afterwards at a meeting-house in St. Nicholas’ parish, Ipswich. h the release, the property was described in terms which follow so closely the description of Nicholas Danforth’s property in the deed the 28th May 1635 that there could be doubt that the two are essentially the same. It has, none the less, to be observed that the farm is a few acres larger now than it was when Nicholas Danforth was there, and that, though the identity of the farmhouse is perfectly obvious, there are questions of minor importance as to the meaning to be assigned to references to some of the boundaries of the land whi.ch at present are altogether free from difficulty. 

No deeds have been seen to prove change of ownership between 1635 and March 1718/9. The gap is more apparent than real as disclosed, whether wholly or in part, by the naming in the deed of 1718/9 of three successive occupiers of the farmhouse and the ten pieces adjoining it. They were “formerly” Edward Keer the elder; … Warner; and “now” Edmund Barker. 

One of the witnesses to the execution of the deed of 1718 for the receipt for the full consideration money, which was £680, was the notable Robert Hawes, 1665-1731. He was Steward of the Manor of Framlingham and Saxtead from 1712 to his death, and promoter of a history of Framingham which was completed and printed by Robert Loder of Woodbridge. He lies buried in Framingham churchyard.

When so much had been established, legal opinion was soon to have fully confined the identification. It stated:-

“To my mind it is clear beyond any reasonable doubt that Mr. Baxter’s New Street Farm is or comprises or is part of the site of Nicholas Danforth’s home”.

The account book kept by the Rev. Richard Golty, M. A., Rector of Framlingham in Nicholas Danforth’s time, shews Nicholas Danforth as one of the outdwellers towards Saxtead⁷, and  this is one more fact from a contemporary source supporting the identification.  The Danforth family’s association with Framlingham was not recorded by Hawes and Loder in their history of Framlingham, published in 1798⁸, or by Green in his history, published in 1834⁹, and only  brief reference was made to it in Booth’s history of Framlingham College, published in 1925¹⁰.  It was Mr. William Thomas Brunger, 1860-1937, a Justice for the County of East Suffolk, who directed to it the attention of his Suffolk neighbours. He took keen interest in the link between Framlingham and Framingham, and visited Framlingham as an official guest of the town in 1930. In the following year the departure of the Danforth family for America was the subject of one of the principal episodes in the Framlingham Castle Pageant, a historical spectacle which was presented at a series of open-air performances and was witnessed by thousands of spectators.

Captain Tyrwhitt-Drake, who lived for some years at New Street Farm, was a close friend of Mr. Brunger’s and it is one of those strange things that sometimes befall that, at a time when the Danforths’ association with New Street Farm had passed out of recollection and was quite unknown in Framlingham, Mr. Brunger was often a guest in the old farmhouse. His family recall that the pleasant lanes and footpaths leading to the house were for him a favourite walk, on which he was sometimes accompanied by one or more of his children and grandchildren. 

Miss Brunger and Mr. Valentine Brunger visited Framlingham in a representative capacity in 1950, and they have shared to the full in their father’s interest in the historic connection between England and New England.

Mr. James Mason Martin of Ipswich, and the present writer, have also been associated with Miss Brunger’s investigation. The co-operation of Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake and of members of the Fulcher family has been indicated; without it the identification could never have been achieved. The Rev. Martin William Bulstrode, M..A., Rector of Framlingham, has given every facility for the examination of the parish registers, and has kindly permitted copies of the Danforth family entries to be made. Mr. Derek Charman, M.A., archivist to the East Suffolk County Council and Ipswich County Borough Council, and Miss D. M. White, chief librarian of the County Borough of Ipswich, have kindly granted facilities for the examination of the Framlingham parish papers deposited in Ipswich and East Suffolk Joint Record Office … Mr. Jack Hazelwood and his son Mr. J. G. Hazelwood, of Mount Pleasant, Framlingham, have … [given assistance]. Enquiries have also been pursued in the Map Room of the Royal Geographical Society, and in the Library of the Society of Genealogists, by courtesy of the Societies concerned; and in the City of Westminster Central Reference Library and the Reference Department of Ipswich Public Library.

Nicholas Danforth -Yeoman

Robert Holland was evidently a London business man who invested a part of his trading profits in agricultural land. Nicholas Danforth’s rank, it has been seen, was that of a Suffolk yeoman. The word is taken now to mean a farmer who owns the land he farms. h years gone by, it meant more. The yeoman held a station in the country next after that of the gentleman who lived without manual labour, and immediately before that of the tradesman. lawyers still read with pleasure as well as profit the famous Commentaries on the Laws of England of Sir William Blackstone, eighteenth century Judge. Blackstone defined the yeoman in the following words:

A yeoman is he that hath free land of forty shillings by the year, who was antiently thereby qualified  to serve on juries, vote for Knights of the shire, and do any other act, where the law requires on that is probus et legalis homo¹¹. 

Some further indication of Nicholas Danforth’s standing in the parish is given by the fact that in 1622 he was Churchwarden. In the seventeenth century the office had a wider scope than is permitted to it now. Churchwardens performed duties relating to “the care of the ecclesiastical property of the parish” and “several other duties of a civil nature – imposed upon them by custom or by particular statutes”¹². On the ecclesiastical side, the responsibilities of the churchwardens were much reduced by the Parochial Church Councils (Powers) Measure 1921, which took away from them their powers, duties and liabilities relating to the financial affairs of the church and to the care and maintenance of the fabric of the church, and the churchyard, and transferred them to the Parochial Church Councils. On the civil side their responsibilities have been reduced by the creation and development of a highly organised local government system.

The parishioners were under a statutory obligation¹³ to attend the parish church on every Sunday “and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of the common prayer preaching or other service of God there to be used and ministered”; and the same on the holy days, which numbered twenty-seven in the course of the year, including the Monday and Tuesday in Easter week and the Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun week; and it was one of the statutory duties of the Bishop of Norwich, as it was of each of the diocesan bishops, “as they will answer before God”, to promote the execution of this law and to reform and punish offenders by censure. By this is implied their being put publicly to shame. But church going was not allowed to interfere with work on the farm, and it was made lawful for every husbandman labourer and other person to work if he wished to do so on the holy days, though not on Sundays, in harvest or at any other times in the year “when necessity shall require”. 

No return for Framlingham is to be found of the raising of what was called “the Selected Band”, a national defense unit of the period. The men were equipped with muskets and what are called “corsletts”. Miles Standish the Puritan Captain -in the poem -had “Cutlass and corselet of steel”. A corselet was a piece of armour to protect the body; in other words, a breast-plate. In some cases a parish, or town, would have a corselet or two as part of the public property. In other cases corselets were privately owned, and the people who had them brought them out and their names were entered on the return as the owners, and the names of the men to whom they were issued were also entered. Very often there were more corselets than muskets, or more muskets than corselets, some men had to go short. Looking at the returns for 1631 for a few of the parishes in the district, it is seen that at Badingham there were 6 corselets and 7 muskets; at Dennington, 1 town corselet and 5 others and 7 muskets; at Parham, 1 town corselet and 3 others and only 2 muskets; at Rendham, Edmund Parlmer “furnished” (that was the word always used in this connection) a corselet to Edward Danford. 

A number of entries in the Framlingham churchwardens’ accounts relate to the parish armour, and a payment to Nicholas Danforth for a repair may be an indication that he undertook duty in connection with its custody or maintenance. It consisted in 1631 of 4 corselets, of which only 1 was complete, and the others were all old ones, and 2 were listed as “serviceable”, and the fourth as “wanting the backpartes”; 2 muskets,1 caliver, 2 pikes,1 sword and 1 dagger.

His only known Signature

Nicholas Danforth can be shewn to have continued to interest himself in local government affairs during the period between his term of office as churchwarden and his sailing for America. It was the custom for the churchwardens to present an account annually and to have it “allowed”, at a meeting in the parish church, by representative inhabitants who signed a minute to that effect.  On the 12^th July 1631 Nicholas Danforth was one of six such signatories to the account “for the yeare last past made the 26tb of May 1631”. This is one of the original manuscripts now in Ipswich and East Suffolk Joint Record Office. The page measures 12 inches by 8 inches, and there is a 1 ¾ inch margin to the left. Nicholas Danforth’s signature upon it is the only signature of his that is known. The neat, controlled hand, as plain as print, reveals him as a man of education and a practised writer.

Of the landowners mentioned by name in the deed of 1635 whose land adjoined that of Nicholas Danforth, one was Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk 1584-1640, Knight of the Garter and a member of the Privy Council. He was Ilord hieutenant of Suffolk from 1626, High Steward of Ipswich from 1627, and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle from 1628. He was the last of the Howards to own Framlingham Castle and the rest of the great Framlingham estate of his predecessors, the Dukes of Norfolk, and he sold the property to Sir Robert Hitcham the year in which this deed was executed.

Another of the owners of land adjoining Nicholas Danforth’s was Richard Golty, the Rector, who held land there as part of the glebe. The other owners and occupiers were George Butcher, William Button, Hugh Dryver, gentleman, Thomas Girling, Jasper Gooding, Edward Lawnd alias Pallant, Robert Lawter, Robert Maydison, gentleman, Daniell Snow, Isaacke Woodcocke and Richard Younges.

By the deed of 1635, Robert Holland settled the property upon bis wife, Hester Holland, “in consideration of a marriage already had and solemnised” between them. Not a great deal is known of Robert Holland, the man who bought Nicholas Danforth’s estate and in so doing supplied the funds with which he and his family landed in America.  It does not appear that Holland ever became Master or Warden of the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries¹⁴.   It is suggested that he may be regarded as  one of the founders of Apothecaries’ Hall. In 1633 the Apothecaries acquired premises, including a hall, in Blackfriars, London, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, and an inscription over the main gate of the present building records the fitting up of the hall for their use in that year: “Aula hic sita prius aptata fuit in usum Societatis Pharmaceuticae Londiniensis. A.D. MDCXXXIII”. The haIl was almost entirely destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, and was afterwards rebuilt.

Nicholas and Elizabeth Danforth and their Children

The earliest volume of Framlingham parish registers was begun in 1560. It is a vellum bound book measuring 15 inches by 6 inches, and is 2 inches thick. It had at one time a pair of metal clasps to keep it closed; the clasps are not there now, and only the seating to which they were attached remains. The Danforth entries, transcribed in full [below] directly from the register, … comprise Nicholas Danforth’s baptism; the baptisms of his brother and sister; the baptisms of his seven children; and the burial of his wife…

	Nicholas Danforth’s Baptism
1589/90	Nicholas Danford the Sonnee of Thomas & Jane Dan ford his wife was baptized the first of March.
	His Brother and Sister
1592	Robert Danneforth sonne of Thomas Danforthe was baptized the sixteenth of Novr
1600/01	Jane Darnford daughter of Thomas Darnford & Jane his wife was baptized the 22 of Februarie
	His Marriage
	Nicholas Danforth’s marriage is entered in the parish register of [Stonham] Aspall, a Suffolk parish about ten miles from Framlingham.  The name appears there as “Damford”.  The bride was Elizabeth Barber and the date was the 11th Febreary 1617/8.  There is no entry of Elizabeth Barber’s baptism,  and the register lacks all baptisms between 1597 and 1605; thus the date of her birth must remain uncertain.
	His Children
	The eldest child was a girl, and to her was given her mother’s Christian name. Each of the seven children received in turn a name from the Bible
1619	Elizabeth Dar of Nicholas & Eliz Damford 3rd [August]
1621	Marie Dar of Nicholas and Elizabeth Dampforde 3rd [May]
1622	Anna Danforthe the Daughter of Nicholas Danforthe and Elizabeth his wyfe was baptized the 3rd day of September in the yeare of God 1622 and her father was Churchwarden that yeare.
1623	Thomas Sonne of Nicholas Danforth and of Elizab: his wife was baptized Nov. 20
1625	Lydia the daughter of Nicholas Danford and of Elizabeth his wife Baptized 24 May
1626	Samuel son of Nichol: & Eliza: Damford 17 [October]
1627/8	Jonathan the sonne of Nicholas & Elizabeth Danforth 2 March
	His Wife’s Burial
1628/9	Elizabeth Danford 22 [February]

The register has nothing to tell of where the Danforths lived. It is a probability that Nicholas Danforth’s parents owned and occupied the old house before him, and that he and their other children were born in it. When the parents died is unknown -the burials between 1612 and 1619 are not in the register.

Mr. Merriam has told us, in his study of John Joseph May’s Danforth Genealogy, that one of Nicholas Danforth’s children died in England before he and the rest of them went to America. It would be of interest to know what is the contemporary authority for this statement. From the context it appears that the child who did not reach the new world was Marie. The entry of her baptism, in 1621, is the only mention of her the register makes. Conning the pages of these ancient annals of the place one reflects that half a year before Marie was carried to the font in Framlingham church, the Mayflower was at sea on that hundred-and-one days ocean crossing which was to become a leading-mark in the history of the English-speaking peoples. The font is still in the church, and still in use, and so is the beautiful silver chalice which was made before Marie’s parents were born.

From Nicholas and Elizabeth Danforth of Framlingham, through their daughter Anna, James Abram Garfield¹⁵, 1831-1881, twentieth President of the United States, drew his English descent. Other members of their family are:-

Thomas Danforth¹⁶, 1623-1699, of Cambridge, Mass., a native of Framlingham; head of the Commissioners of the United Colonies, Deputy Governor of Massachusets 1679-1686, President of the Province of Maine 1680-1686, and from 1692 to his death a judge of the Superior Court; he was described as “the fearless denouncer and opponent of monarchical despotism”; he was named as Treasurer in the charter granted to Harvard in 1650 and after nineteen years in that office was Steward for thirteen years, and his kinsman Josiah Quincy wrote of him in his history of Harvard that he was “the earliest, most steadfast and faithful of its friends”; such was his ability as a man of business that he came to own ten thousand acres of land at Framingham besides property at Cambridge and in other parts of the Colony;

His brother, the Rev. Samuel Danforth, 1626-1674, a native of Framlingham; one of the first five Fellows of Harvard; minister and preacher at Roxbury, Mass., for twenty-four years, mathematician and poet;

Thomas Danforth¹⁷, 1703-1786, of Norwich, Mass., the noted pewterer; Josiah Quincy¹⁸, 1744-1775, o£ Boston, Mass., lawyer and patriot leader; he received a master’s degree at Harvard in 1766; he was sent to England in 1774 to confer with Lord North, First Lord of the Treasury, and present to him the case for the American colonists, and died at sea while on his way home;

His son, Josiah Quincy¹⁹, 1772-1864; he received a master’s degree at Harvald in 1796; Mayor of Boston 1823-1828 President of Harvard 1829-1845; his son Josiah was Mayor of Boston 1845- 1849, and his great-grandson Josiah was Mayor 1895-1899;

Charles Danforth²⁰, 1797-1876, of Paterson, New Jersey, inventor and manufacturer;

Edmund Quincy²¹, 1808-1877, President Quincy’s second son; he received a master’s degree at Harvard in 1830; a leading figure in the Anti-Slavery Society and editor of “The Anti-Slavery Standard” in the middle years of the nineteenth century;

Josiah Phillips Quincy²², 1829-1910, a grandson of President Quincy, of Boston and Quincy, Mass.; he received a master’s degree at Harvard in 1853; a poet and historian; in all, Mr Merriam²³  Has reminded us, “a long line of illustrious descendants” .

It matters little whether it was one year long ago, or the next, that Nicholas Danforth and his children left their English home. They sought a new horizon. On both sides of the ocean, after more than three centuries, they are remembered and honoured.

Footnotes

1. [John Booth’s classic account of one of Framlingham’s most distinguished forebears was originally published by the Framingham Historical and Natural History Society in 1954. It is reprinted here, with all due acknowledgement to that Society. For reasons of space, the contents list, illustrations and a few lines of text have here been omitted, and footnotes have been re-numbered and edited in accordance with the house-style of Fram. Additional footnote material is enclosed in square brackets] . ↩︎
2. FRAM Journal Series 5 Number3, April 2006 ↩︎
3. [The author refers here to an earlier edition of the Ordnance Survey map. Ordnance Survey Pathfinder 986 (TM26/36) (1988) records the property as Lincoln’s Bam]. ↩︎
4. [See footnote 2]. ↩︎
5. [The total is in fact 75 (acres). The most likely explanation of the discrepancy is that 13 is repeated in error at 14 and that 3 and 11 are 12 acres each]. ↩︎
6. [Booth transcribes the deed in full as an appendix to his account. It is not a muniment of East Suffolk County Council itself, but is held by them at the Suffolk County Record Office]. ↩︎
7. J. Booth, Nicholas Danforth and his neighbors: a paper presented at a meeting of the Framingham Historical Society, October 17, 1934 (1935). ↩︎
8. [R. Hawes, The History Of Framlingham … begun by the late Robert Hawes … with … additions and notes by Robert Loder (1798).] ↩︎
9. [R. Green, The History, topography, and antiquities, of Framlingham and Saxsted … (1834)]. ↩︎
10. [J. Booth, Framlingham College, the first sixty years (1925) p. 34]. ↩︎
11. W. BLackstone, Commentaries on the Laws Of England … Vol.10f the rights of persons. New edit. (1857) p. 412. ↩︎
12. H. W. Cripps, A Practical Treatise on the law relating to the Church and clergy. 8th edit. by K. M. MacMorran (1937). ↩︎
13. The Act of Uniformity 1551 [5 and 6 Edw 6 c.1] and the Holy Days and Fasting Days Act 1551 [5 and 6 Edw 6 c.3]. ↩︎
14. [Although Robert Holland was certainly involved with the Society in its early years (see inter alia H. C. Cameron, A History of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London. Volume 1 …  (1963) pp. 276-310 passim), the Editor has been unable directly to associate Holland with the building of the Society’s first Hall]. ↩︎
15. Dictionary Of American Biography [(DAB) … volume VII (1931) p. 145]. ↩︎
16. Ibid [volume V (1930) pp. 66-7]; “Notes on the Danforth family” in New England Genealogical and Antiquarian Register, “, 315. ↩︎
17. DAB [volume V (1930) p. 67]. ↩︎
18. Ibid [volume XV (1935) pp. 307-8]. ↩︎
19. Ibid [volume XV (1935) pp. 308-11]. ↩︎
20. Ibid [volume V (1930) pp. 65-6]. ↩︎
21. Ibid [volume XV (1935) pp. 306-7]. ↩︎
22. Ibid [volume XV (1935) pp. 311-2]. ↩︎
23. J. M. Merriam, The Contribution of Framlingham Suffolk, England to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay: a paper read at a meeting of the Framingham Historical Society, October 15, 1930 (1930). ↩︎