Tag Archives: Hampshire

The Bent Family From England to America

The Bent family of my 7th great-grandmother, Martha Bent (Howe) handed me a boxful of interesting stories.  I have been pursuing Martha’s family for a few weeks now. To help you read about Martha’s father John Bent (the pioneer) and his family and descendants, here is an index of those articles, starting with the oldest member of the Bent family–Martha’s grandmother Agnes Gosling Bent. Just click on a title to read

Great-great-great-great, etc.

Tragedy at Sea  talks  about the ill-fated voyage in 1639 of Agnes Gosling Bent (9th great- grandmother and her daughter Agnes Bent Barnes Blanchard (9th great-aunt). Other members of the extended Bent family mentioned are Richard Barnes, Elizabeth Plympton, Thomas Plympton, Robert Bent and Richard Barnes Sr.  (the latter two died before the trip) and Thomas Blanchard. Surprise sources were a footnote in a town history and the summary of a trial (that took place 13 years later) in a book of passenger lists.

John Bent Sr., Father of the Bent Family in America relates the story of this man born during the reign of Elizabeth in Penton-Grafton, Hampshire, England who founded the Bent family that spread across North America. One of the founders of Sudbury, John Bent, my 8th great-grandfather was a good friend of John Howe, another 8th great-grandfather and father-in-law of my 7th great-grandmother, Martha Howe Bent.

The 8th Great-Uncles

John Bent, Jr., Tithingman of Framingham, born in 1636, traveled with his family to America when he was only two-year-old. John Bent Jr. grew up to be a solid citizen and respected leader in Massachusetts. He was Martha’s older brother.

Peter Bent, Of Indian Attacks and Fatal Accidents. Peter Bent’s father named him for his friend Peter Noyes, who organized the group from Penton-Grafton to travel to America. Peter was an important pioneer in his own right, having arrived from England when he was eleven years old.  He seems to have been a successful business man, perhaps a trader, as he made more than one trip back to England. He joined other young men who left Sudbury and founded Marlborough. His family endured a violent Indian attack that injured a young son and killed an apprentice, he accidentally killed his younger brother Joe, and Peter died overseas.

The Short Life of Joseph Bent Poor Joseph Bent, the first of John and Martha Bent’s children to be born in Sudbury, Massachusetts, followed his older brother in the move to Marlborough and established his farm there. Joseph served as constable in Marlborough, but by 1672 , when his father died, he had moved back to Sudbury. He and his wife had five children, but he came to an untimely end at the age of 34.

I did not write about the oldest son Robert Bent, because his life was cut short at twenty-three years old, so there is very little information about him.  The second son, William Bent, leaves even fewer tracks. The Bent family history says he “probably died early.”

My 7X Great- Grandmother

Martha Bent, American Born was the youngest of John and Martha Bent’s children seven children. (Some sources claim they had ten children, but I have only been able to document seven.) She was born in Sudbury in 1643. In the small town of Sudbury, the marriage pool was limited. Martha married a member of one of the leading families, Samuel How(e) and they had seven children, including my ancestor David Howe the proprietor of the Howe Tavern which is known as Longfellow’s Wayside Inn.

Bent Brothers Building the Old West

Bent’s Fort tells the story of brothers William and Charles Bent, two key figures in the building of the American West in the early 19th century.  They carry on the dramatic and tragic story of the Bents in Colorado and New Mexico.

John Bent Sr.–Father of the Bent Family in America

 John Bent 1596-1672

Weyhill Church

The Weyhill church where John Bent’s family members were baptized, married and buried from the 16th century.

The Bent Family in England

John Bent’s father was Robert Bent of Penton-Grafton, Weyhill Parish in Hampshire County, England. His grandfather’s name: John Bent. The small village lies about seventy miles south of London. To put the history in perspective, when John Bent was born, Elizabeth I was still Queen. He had two older brothers, Richard and Robert, and an older sister, Jane. By the time he was six years old,  three younger sisters would be added to the family.

Names are important to John Bent’s story.  His aunt Joanne Bent married a William Noyes–a family closely intertwined with the Bents in both England and America.  John’s mother’s name was Agnes, as was one of his aunts.  The Bents favored the name Agnes sometimes written as  Annis or Ann and named a bewildering array of offspring by that name. The next person I’ll talk about is an Agnes with a daughter Agnes and a grand daughter Agnes. Naturally, the Bents also recycled the names Robert and John and Richard and Joseph.

John Bent’s Family

In 1624, John Bent married Martha, whose last name I have not proven.  According to one index she was Martha Blanchard and according to another, possibly Baker. Other relatives of John Bent are married to both Bakers and Blanchards. However both indices agree they were married in England in 1624. John would have been 28 years old.

In the following eleven years, the couple had five children. (For more details about the family, see the story about John Bent Jr., born in 1636. )

In 1631, John’s father, Robert, died leaving John and his older brother 40 shillings each. That is less than left to other children, but may indicate that they had received land from their father. According to Puritan Village, John had inherited 45 acres of land. Two of John’s sons and his daughter received two ewes each, the bequest for most of Robert’s grandchildren,  and John’s oldest son received a young cow.

Robert Bent named two neighbors as “overseers” of the will–Henry Tuncks and Peter Noyes, once again emphasizing the closeness of the Bent and Noyes families.

John was a successful farmer, as was his father, Robert.  The book “Puritan Village” discusses tax rolls of the Parish of Weyhill. “(Peter) Noyes and (John) Bent were 4th and 5th in land holdings of 44 landholders (there were also 40 landless men).”

The Great Puritan Migration

About the time that John Bent turned 40 years old, the people of the village were becoming increasingly unhappy with the reign of Charles I that started in 1625.  There must have been many long, soul-searching conversations, as they looked across the Atlantic at the possibilities of a better life in the new country where the first band of dissidents had landed in 1620. Unhappiness with both civic and religious constraints stimulated the Great Puritan Migration of the 17th century.

Peter Noyes, John’s friend, must have been one of the most adamant and outspoken about the necessity to leave England. John Bent, no longer a young man, had to decide whether to make the risky journey with young children, to leave familiar surroundings and a successful farm, to leave his widowed mother and his siblings, all for an unknown future.

Then King Charles decided to raise money. Ironically, these Englishmen whose grandsons would fight to separate America from England over tax issues, found tax issues pushing them to emigrate to America. As The Bent Family in America explains:

“A glance at affairs in England will show ample cause for a change of home at that time. The rule of Charles I had become almost unbearable, and it is not at all surprising that so many looked upon ‘the American wilderness as the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and spiritual freedom.’ The King, advised in affairs of state by Lord Wentworth (Earl of Stafford) and in religious affairs by William Land, Archibishop of Canterbury, wished to do for England what Richelieu was doing at that very moment for France. ‘put the estates and personal liberties of the whole people at the disposal of the crown and deprive the courts of law of all independent authority,’ as well as to break up all gatherings of religious dissenters. He had already ruled nine years without a Parliament and his despotism seemed nearly complete. But one thing was lacking, and that was a standing army.”

In order to fund the army, the King proposed heavy taxes on the counties along the coast that profited from shipping. Hampshire, the home of the Bents, was one of those counties.

“England, to the outward eye, verdant, calm, and peaceful, but in reality on the verge of a political and religious volcano (The explosion came with the Civil War in 1642).”

A Decision to Risk the Trip

In the end, John decided to take the risk. His elderly mother, Agnes Bent, promised that she would consider sailing to America if Peter Noyes and John decided the conditions were good.  She entrusted £ 80  to Peter to help him finance the voyage and to look for land for her.

“[Peter] Noyes sailed from Southhampton on April 12, 1638 in the ship Confidence, taking 3 servants, his eldest son and daughter, and his neighbor, John Bent.”[/plain]

John and Martha brought with them five children ranging from two years old to thirteen years old.  At that time period, they would have been traveling on a sailing ship and would have been responsible for bringing along their own food which they prepared on board. It was no pleasure cruise.

The Confidence held 110 people–a large percentage of whom were servants. Perhaps most of the servants had indentured themselves in order to pay for travel. They would pay off the debt in a few years and become regular citizens. These were not impoverished immigrants dependent upon plantation investors from the old country. They had been leaders in their English communities and were well suited for building new towns in New England. The families on board were headed for various Massachusetts Bay Colony towns, but the Bents and Noyes and a couple of other families were going to Sudbury.

The American Scene

Since the Pilgrims had arrived in Plymouth in 1620, small towns had sprung up progressively reaching westward from the seacoast, so in that eighteen-year-span other people had started to build villages. Nevertheless, Sudbury lay on the edge of civilization, connected to other towns only by Indian trails and rivers traversed by canoe. Far from their mother land where the parish church was already a century or more old, the Bent family  now lived in wilderness, surrounded by natives who while generally friendly did not always accept their presence.

John’s Family and Responsibilities Grow

The year after John and Martha Bent arrived in Sudbury, his mother and sister set sail to join him.  My next story will deal with the story of the two Agnes Bents, but suffice it to say here that in addition to the five children that the Bents brought from England, they cared for one of John Bent’s nephew, Richard Barnes, for several years. Martha also gave birth to two more children–Joseph in 1641 and her namesake, my 7x great grandmother Martha, in 1643.

Two years after John arrived, he received status of Freeman in his new community, giving him rights to vote and help rule the town.  He settled in a part of Sudbury that is now the town of Wayland, building a house on a six-acre lot 1/4 mile from the Sudbury River. The following year, he served on a committee to assign timber to citizens. In 1648, the town fathers appointed John Bent as one of three men to “end small business under twenty shillings”, a kind of small claims court. The same year, leaders chose him to lay out the highway from Watertown to Danforth Farms (later Framingham), following the old Connecticut Path. Not everything that happened in 1648 was as happy. John and Martha’s oldest son Robert, died at the age of twenty-three.

Sudbury Massachusetts

Colonial Sudbury–early 18th century–and the Wayside Inn after John Bent’s day.

As his sons grew to adulthood, John helped them settle in other places, joining the petition to form the town of Marlboro (Marlborough) for the benefit of his son Peter in 1656.

John Bent’s Will

In September 1672, at 76 years of age, John Bent Senior, wrote his will. He must have been proud of his life’s work, having accumulated wealth, mostly in the form of land, to pass on to his children and grandchildren.

John Bent Will

1672 will of John Bent, Sr., of Sudbury.

John Bent was buried in the Old Cemetery in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

John was spared the heartbreak of losing two of his sons later that decade. In 1675, as we learned in an earlier post, tragedy struck when Peter accidentally shot his brother Joseph, the youngest of the family. Three years later, Peter died while on a trip to England. And Martha Bent, John Bent Sr.’s wife, died in 1679.

John Bent’s Legacy

John Bent, by coming to America in 1638 had founded a family that would spread across the country and even to Nova Scotia. In 1760 David Bent of Sudbury moved to Annapolis County, Nova Scotia, taking advantage of land that became available when the British expelled French Acadians  out of Canada. Four years later two other Bent families followed.

John Bent’s descendants included several soldiers of the Revolutionary War.

One of those was Lt. Col. Matthias Bent of Framingham, later a Deacon.  His daughter Abigail Bent wrote The Happy Merchant and Other Tales for Sunday School teaching. (Not timeless literature, it seems to have disappeared.)

One of those soldiers of the Revolution, Lt. Col. Silas Bent of Rutland, went to Ohio as one of the first settlers–thus probably a friend and neighbor of my other ancestors who traveled with Rufus Putnam–the Israel Stone family. Silas kept on moving west, moving on to Missouri. A 3x great-grandson of John Bent, Silas Bent was a judge of the Missouri Supreme Court in the early 19th century.

The judge’s son, Charles Bent, served briefly as the first American Governor of the Territory of New Mexico.The National Park Service maintains a fur trading fort Charles Bent and his brother established on the Santa Fe Trail: Old Bent’s Fort.

Bent's Fort

Bents Old Fort, near La Junta, Colorado, founded by Charles Bent in 1833.

During the Mexican War, the fort served as a base for the troops of American General Kearney. General Kearney  appointed Charles Bent as Governor of New Mexico after the Mexican War. He served from September 1846 until soldiers of the Pueblo uprising killed him in January 1847. (For those keeping track, Charles is the 4x great grandchild of John Bent through Peter Bent. That makes Charles my 5th Cousin, 4x removed.)

Little did John Bent know when he left England, what a mark his family would make on America.

For a guide to all the stories I have written about the Bents, go here.

How I Am Related

  • Vera Marie Kaser Badertscher is the daughter of
  • Harriette Anderson Kaser, the daughter of
  • Vera Stout (Anderson),the daughter of
  • Hattie Morgan (Stout), the daughter of
  • Mary Bassett (Morgan),the daughter of
  • Elizabeth Stone (Bassett) the daughter of
  • Elizabeth Howe (Stone), the daughter of
  • Israel Howe, the son of
  • David How, the son of
  • Martha Bent How, the daughter of
  • John Bent, Sr.

Research Notes

  • The Bent family in America : being mainly a genealogy of the descendants of John Bent : who settled in Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 1638 : with notes upon the family in England and elsewhere. in North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000 at Ancestry.com, Allen H. Bent, 1900. Also available at Archives.org.
  • U. S. and Canada Passenger and Immigration Index, 1500s-1900s, Ancestry. Record for John Bent Sr. arrival 1638.This edition was privately printed in 75 quarto copies for W. Elliot Woodward. Same as the octavo edition of 1860 with an additional section, “The First Settlers of Plymouth,” pp. 115-122. Research originally done, 1858-1860, for The New England Historical Society.Source Bibliography:
    DRAKE, SAMUEL G. Result of Some Researches Among the British Archives for Information Relative to the Founders of New England …. 3rd ed. Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1865.
  • U.S. and Canada Passenger and Immigration Index, 1500s-1900s, Ancestry. Record for John Bent Sr.., arrival 1638
  • A History of Framingham, Massachusetts, including the plantation, from 1640 to the present time with an appendix containing a notice of Sudbury and its first proprietors. By William Barry, 1847, J. Munroe & Co., Boson. At the Library of Congress. Accessed through archive.org.
  • A History of Sudbury 1638-1889, Alfred S. Hudson 1889, R. H. Blodgett, Sudbury.  Available on archives.org
  • England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, Ancestry.com 2014 (John and Martha Bent parent of James and parent of Ann(Agnes).
  • Massachusetts Applications of Freemen, 1630-91, Ancestry.com 2010, John Bent 1640
  • Massachusetts, Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1790-1890, Ancestry.com 1999, John Bent 1639
  • Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, Roxbury, 1630-1867, Jay Mack Holbrook, 1985, John Bent Death 1672
  • Middlesex County, Massachusetts Probate Index, 1648-1870,Flint, James, compiler, Anestry.com 2000 John Bent, Sudbury, 1672.
  • In addition to this index, the book The Bent Family in America reprints the entire will (ref above).,
  • U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900, Source number: 76.000; Source type: Electronic Database; Number of Pages: 1; Submitter Code: CGF, John Bent and Martha Blanchard, 1624, Hampshire, Ancestry.com 2004
  • FindaGrave.com, John Bent 1596-1672
  • Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, Sumner Chilton Powell, Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Hanover NH 1970, read in Kindle Edition.

The Bent Family-Tugging on a New Family Line

Sometimes I follow an orderly path through my ancestors, carefully unravelling my mother’s side, or my father’s. I fully intended to get back to my father’s side in the early months of 2017. But sometimes, despite my best intentions, a family line presents itself that contains so many interesting stories, that I cannot resist stopping to visit a while.  Honestly, I had not intended to visit the maternal Puritan-era line of the Bent family.  After all, in 2014, I had pursued the wonderful early Colonial and Revolutionary period stories of the Howe family in Sudbury Massachusetts. I thought I had “done” New England Puritan villagers. But apparently not.

Bent family home town

Holy Trinity Church at Penton Grafton in Hampshire County, England where many Bent family members are buried. Photo by Colin Bates

A Howe relative on Facebook recently mentioned visiting a 14th century churchyard in the village of Penton-Grafton in Hampshire County, England.  She saw a gathering of graveyards for the Bent Family.  I recalled that although I had spent months poring over the Howes, I had never looked into the family of one of the Howe wives–Martha Bent. And I was off to the races.

When I wrote about Samuel Howe, the first How/Howe to settle in Sudbury Massachusetts, and the first tavern keeper in the family, this is all that I said about his wife:

At the age of 21, Samuel Howe married Martha Bent. Martha’s father was one of the early settlers in Sudbury– a fellow founder and good friend  with Samuel’s father, John How.  Mr. Bent gave Martha and Samuel 44 acres  of his land in Sudbury, incentive for the young couple to settle there.

Perhaps because it is March, Women’s History Month, I felt guided to write about a female ancestor and her roots. Perhaps I just discovered some “low-hanging fruit” in the family history search.

As I started looking for clues to Martha’s family, I found an amazing book. Published in 1900, “The Bent Family in Ameria, Being Mainly a Genealogy of the Desendants of John Bent Who Settled in Sudbury Massachusetts in 1648,” it grabbed my attention. The author, Allen Herbert Bent not only had a flair for telling a story and painting the backdrop of the Bents, he also carefully documented the facts about his (our) family. That careful sorting of truth from legend makes the book stand out among the multitude of family genealogies that were so popular around the turn of the century.

The Bents lived in interesting times–as did the Howes.  They escaped a native land in uproar, and arrived to work hard carving farms and civilized towns out of wilderness. John Bent, his wife and the five children who sailed to Boston in 1628, plus the two children who were born in Sudbury, lived through chaos. First the Indian Wars, while they were trying to invent government and organized religion on a new world. Their male grandchildren marched with local militias under the British. Their male great-grand children fought in the Revolution and later fought in the French and Indian War. From the time the family first arrived, members kept moving to new territory in order to have more room for their enterprises.

My 7x Great Grandmother, Martha Bent How, the baby of the family, started life in Sudbury. She gave birth to seven children there after her husband settled on the land gifted by her parents. Among them, David, my ancestor who founded the Howe Tavern (Longfellow’s Wayside Inn) next to youngest, was only six when his mother died.

Longfellow's Wayside Inn

 

Coming Attractions

After introducing Martha, I intend to talk about each of Martha’s brothers and sisters–as much as I can dig up about them, and then move back to her parents, and sketch the early ancestors from England. Stacks and stacks (virtual and concrete) of fuel the flow of stories.

  • I have wills to help undertand some of the people.
  • I’ll rely heavily on the History of the John Bent Family.
  • New England records provide great material.

A Few of the Stories to Come

  • There’s the woman who did not quite make it to America–dying on the boat.
  • There’s the man shot (accidentally) by his brother.
  • There’s the one who traveled back and forth frequently to England, making a will before one of those dangerous trips.
  • There are the ones killed by the rebelling Indians in King Phillips War.
  • There are the ones who went to Nova Scotia to take advantage of available land where Acadians had been forced to leave.
  • Farther down the line, we could find the first Governor of New Mexico Territory.

Oh yes, I think the Bent Family will keep us entertained for a good while, now.

Update: For a complete guide to all the articles I have written about the Bent family, go here.