THREE THEORIES ABOUT
ISAAC SHELDON
IN AMERICA

(I)

In a 1798 account of the settlement and history of the town of Windsor, Connecticut, the Rev. M’Clure lists sixteen people who came from Dorchester with Rev. John Warham in the migration of 1636, and who were “in full communication with the church.” He also lists thirty-five “other settlers of Windsor whose names are mentioned in records of the town, anno 1640.” Isaac Sheldon's name is on that list. This is one of the many records and speculations of a 13-page paper by Mrs. Charlotte Hunt. Included in the paper is a 1633-1650 Map of Windsor [Conn.]. I have a copy of this paper which is also available for sale from the Sheldon Family Association. The paper comes to no concrete conclusions leaving one frustrated; therefore is generally boring to all but serious genealogists.

“Isaac Sheldon of Windsor, Conn.” by Mrs. Charlotte Alling Hunt of Worcester, Mass (S#4760x3-2), published in The New England Historical & Genealogical Register, vol. 117, p. 82, April 1963. For a better copy of the map of Windsor, Connecticut, see Memorial History of Hartford County, ed. J. Hammond Trumbull (1886), Vol. II, p. 500.

(II)

George Sheldon, the historian of Deerfield, Mass., says in his 1896 History of Deerfield, that the entries being on a page headed “Jan. 10, 1640,” were really made at a later date, to utilize a blank page. It is on record that Isaac Sheldon testified before a court in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 25 March 1679, that he was then “about fifty years old.” This would settle the time of his birth at about 1629, and it is presumed that he was born in England. It is, of course, possible that he was a son of the Isaac Sheldon who seems to have been in Dorchester in 1634, and that he was brought to Windsor as a child by some other family.

Specifically he wrote:

[SHELDON, Isaac, of Dorchester 1634; rem. with part of the congregation of Rev. John Warham in Sept., 1635, to found a plantation at Wind., Ct. I copy fr. the original record at Wind. that: Isaac Sheldon owned there, Jan. 10, 1640, a home lot of 3 acres, with house, barn and orchard “purchaced of John Stiles;” another lot on the Street, “purchaced of Samuel Rockwell;” a meadow lot “by purchace of Richard Samwas,” and another lot “purchaced of Thomas Parsons.” One of these lots was bounded on two sides by “his own land,” which may have been given him in the original distribution. But these four lots were not original assignments, but were obtained by purchace. These particulars are given as evidence in a disputed case, and to prove that Isaac Sheldon was of full business age at this time. Some genealogists insist that this Isaac Sheldon was the same man who testified bef. a court in Nhn., [Northampton], Mar. 25, 1679, that he was “about 50 years old.” If this be true, then he was but 6 when he went to Wind., and but 11 when he heldc four pieces of real estate by purchace, and doubtless a large area by assignment. it is true that land was sometimes given to minors in the original division of plantations, but who ever heard of a boy of 11 buying house lots and meadow land? While being satisfied that Isaac of Windsor was of age, I can give no further account of him or his family. I assume that Isaac of Nhn. was his son, because in 1652 he is found in possession of this land at Wind. Not unlikely Isaac had other sons and went away to live with them; am still [1886] engaged with H. S. Sheldon of West Suff[ield], Ct., in an exhaustive search for the original Simon pure Isaac.]

1636 – Pocumtuck – 1886. A History of Deerfield, Massachusetts: The Times When and the People by Whom It was Settled, Unsettled and Resettled: with a Special Study of the Indian Wars in the Connecticut Valley. With Genealogies, by George Sheldon (Deerfield, Mass.: 1896) Vol. II, pp. 291-293.

(III)

Thirdly, Henry Stiles states that Isaac “was a young man, without family, who was permitted by the town of Windsor [Conn.] in 1652 to ‘keep house’ there with Samuel Rockwell. Sheldon had then recently bo’t the first Peter Tilton ho.” He continues, “In 1654, John Osborne bo’t the first Peter Tilton pl., and Sheldon disappears; rem. to Northampton.”

History of Ancient Windsor, by Dr. Henry Reed Stiles (orig. 1859; rev. and expanded 1892), Vol. 2, p. 680.