SIMON SACKETT
ORIGIN: St. John Margate, Isle of Thanet, Kent
MIGRATION: 1632
FIRST RESIDENCE: Cambridge
ESTATE: On 5 August 1633 "Symo[N] Sakt" was granted one-half an acre for a cowyard in Cambridge [CaTR 5]. "Sy. Saket" received a proportional share of one in the division of the meadow on 20 August 1635 [CaTR 13]. In the Cambridge land inventory, on 10 October 1635, [blank] Sackett [i.e., Simon's widow] held five parcels: in the town one house with backside, about half a rood; half an acre in Cowyard Row; five acres on Smalllot Hill; one acre and a rood in Long Marsh; and five acres in the Great Marsh [CaBOP 33].
On 3 November 1635 there was "administration granted to Isabell Sackett of the goods & chattels of her husband, lately deceased" [MBCR 1:155].
In the listing of houses in Cambridge on 8 February 1635/6, "Widow Sackett" was credited with one in town [CaTR 18].
BIRTH: About 1602 based on date of marriage.
DEATH: Cambridge between 5 and 10 October 1635 [TAG 63:179].
MARRIAGE: St. John Margate, Isle of Thanet, Kent, 6 August 1627 Isabel Pearce. She married (2) William Bloomfield of Cambridge and Hartford [CaBOP 59, 80, 84 show that William Bloomfield sold to Robert Stedman a lot that had belonged to Simon Sackett].
CHILDREN:
i SIMON, b. say 1628; m. about 1652 as her first husband Sarah Bloomfield (on 14 July 1659 administration on the estate of "Symon Sackett deceased" was granted to "William Blomefield of Hartford appearing to be assistant to his daughter wife of the said deceased party" [Pynchon Court 241]).
ii JOHN, b. say 1630; m. (1) Northampton 23 November 1659 Abigail Hannum [Pynchon VR 141]; m. (2) Westfield 14 January 1690[/1] or Springfield 15 January 1690[/1] Sarah (Stiles) Stewart [Pynchon VR 31, 61], daughter of John Stiles and widow of John Stewart [Windsor Hist 2:703].
COMMENTS: The account of grandson Joseph in Riker's The Annals of Newtown, in Queens County, New-York ... (New York 1852) says that Simon came from the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire [p. 344]; this is clearly wrong, but seems to preserve a foggy family tradition that Simon came from the Isle of "Something." This scrap of evidence and the unusual combination of the names Simon and Isabel are the basis for accepting the marriage above as that of the immigrant.
"Symon Sackett" appears in an undated list, but probably from 1632, which includes the earliest settlers of Cambridge [CaTR 2].
In 1907 Charles H. Weygant proposed the existence of a John Sackett who would be brother of Simon, and who was said to have resided in Plymouth and Providence and to have been the father of the John Sackett who married at New Haven in 1652 [The Sacketts of America[:] Their Ancestors and Descendants, 1630-1907 (Newburgh, New York, 1907), p. 14]. The records show a servant by the name of John "Seckett" in New Haven by 1641 [NHCR 1:56], who is probably the same as the man who married in 1652. The proposed elder John seems to be an imaginary construct, and there is no evidence of any relationship between the immigrant Simon and John of New Haven.