Timothy Winship, Peruke Maker of Boston

Yesterday I described how in October 1762 the Boston Overseers of the Poor indentured ten-year-old Joseph Akley to a man named Timothy Winship.

The Akley family was falling on hard times. In the following years Joseph’s parents would end up (separately) in the Boston almshouse, and most of his siblings would be bound out to other households across the province, from Springfield to Maine.

Joseph’s placement was unusual in several ways. He was the first Akley child to be apprenticed even though he wasn’t the oldest. He remained in Boston instead of being sent to a smaller town. And he was to learn a trade that catered to the genteel class rather than housework or making wheels and barrels.

Timothy Winship was a “peruke maker,” meaning he made wigs and shaved gentlemen so they looked good wearing them. In an eighteenth-century British seaport, that meant steady work.

There are two genealogical sources of information about Timothy Winship. One consists of the records of Boston and its Anglican churches. The other is the Barbour Collection’s index of vital records from Middletown, Connecticut, even though there’s no sign Timothy Winship ever lived in that town. I’m guessing that descendants settled there and inserted their family’s backstory into the local record.

According to the Barbour Collection, Timothy Winship was born on 3 May 1712 in Westminster, England. That’s close but not an exact match to the Boston report that he was fifty-seven years old in 1767. Not being from an old, Puritan New England family explains why he was an Anglican.

Boston records state that Winship married Margaret Mirick of Charlestown on 5 Aug 1731, with the Rev. Hull Abbott of that town presiding. The bride appears in the Connecticut data as Margaret Merrick. Their children listed in the Middletown records were:

• Samuel, born 3 May 1732
• Sarah, 20 Jan 1734
• Margaret, Nov 1735
• Timothy, 3 Dec 1737
• Joseph, 2 Oct 1739
• John, 30 Mar 1742
• Jacob, 6 Jan 1744
• Anna, 26 Apr 1746

Of those, King’s Chapel recorded baptisms of Timothy, Jr., on 30 Dec 1737; Joseph on 12 Oct 1739; and Jacob on 9 Feb 1744.

Timothy Winship never advertised in Boston’s newspapers, but there are signs that he became an established tradesman. He owned an enslaved man named Caesar, who on 23 Sept 1742 married a free black woman named Margaret Codner at Old South. That same year, Winship took in a couple as tenants from Cambridge, which we know because Boston cited him for not informing the selectmen. In 1748, the Boston town meeting elected Winship as one of the Scavengers responsible for keeping the streets clean.

The peruke maker also suffered losses. Margaret Winship died “about one hour after birth of Anna,” the couple’s youngest, according to the Barbour Collection. King’s Chapel records state that Timothy Winship’s wife was buried on 29 Apr 1746.

A little less than a year later, on 9 Apr 1747, Timothy Winship married Sarah Rogers at King’s Chapel. That was none too soon because the couple had a son, William, baptized less than eight months later on 28 November. A second son, Benjamin, was baptized on 1 Jan 1750.

Sadly, that new Winship family did not thrive. William died before age seven and was buried from the new King’s Chapel building on 1 June 1754. Timothy’s wife Sarah died on 23 Jan 1755 at age thirty-eight. Their surviving son Benjamin died on 10 Jan 1758 at age eight. (The Connecticut records say nothing about this family.)

This time, Timothy Winship found a new wife even more quickly. On 25 Aug 1755, seven months after becoming a widower again, he married Elizabeth Vila of Watertown at Christ Church in the North End. I see no sign of Timothy and Elizabeth having more children of their own.

Thus, when Timothy Winship took in Joseph Akley in 1762, the peruke maker was about fifty years old and thrice married. His youngest surviving child, Anna, was in her mid-teens. His oldest, Samuel, had married Sarah Miller of Glastonbury, Connecticut, in October 1758 and had twin girls with several more kids on the way.

We can see in the King’s Chapel records that Timothy Winship and his wives were in a network of other Boston Anglicans, sponsoring the baptism of each other’s babies. Notably, on 6 Sept 1765 Timothy, Elizabeth, and Timothy’s daughter Sarah all sponsored the baptism of a baby born to James and Mary Vila, probably from Elizabeth’s family.

That eventful year of 1765 brought big changes to the family. The brothers Timothy, John, and Jacob Winship all died in their twenties. On 28 October, Sarah Winship married Nicholas Butler, a twenty-seven-year-old barber, at King’s Chapel. As the eldest daughter, she had most likely shouldered the household and childrearing responsibilities after her mother had died. Now, at age thirty-one, she was leaving to start a family of her own.

On 3 Mar 1767, Timothy Winship wrote out his will. He declared that he was in good health but wanted to tend to his business and his soul. Owning no real estate, he left all his personal property “unto my Beloved Wife Elizabeth Winship,” to be shared after her death among his children Samuel, Joseph, and Anna Winship. For Sarah Butler, about to give birth to her first child, Winship left only five shillings, to be paid out after her stepmother’s death.

On 12 Nov 1767, Timothy Winship, “Peruke Maker,” was buried out of King’s Chapel.

TOMORROW: A wigmaker’s estate.

Isaac Royall and “the very Day the battle happen’d”

Like the Rev. David McClure, Isaac Royall of Medford was caught by surprise in Boston when the war began.

Earlier this week on Facebook the Royall House and Slave Quarters quoted Royall’s 29 May 1779 letter to his former tutor, the Rev. Samuel Cooke of Menotomy, on how he came to be there:

I packed up my Sea Stores and Cloathes for the passage and came to Boston after attending the public Worship on the Lord’s Day Evening before the Battle of Lexington [i.e., on 16 Apr 1775] to take leave of my children and Friends intending to have gone thence to Salem to embark for Antigua but unfortunately staid in Boston two or three Days and din’d with the Hon’ble Captain [George] Erving the very Day the battle happen’d after which it was impossible to get out of Town for Gen. [Thomas] Gage had issued Orders to prevent any one coming in or going out

Erving was Royall’s son-in-law.

The timing of Royall’s statement matches what Samuel Winship told the Medford committee of safety on 9 Apr 1778:

That, on Sunday before said battle, said Royal went in his coach to Boston, and took with him a pair of pistols and a carabine, but for what end he did not know, nor never heard; that, at the same time, he left in his house two firearms, which Mr. Poor, some days after, carried to Watertown.

However, Royall’s suggestion that Gen. Gage had prevented him from going home to Medford is disingenuous. Gage did make leaving town more difficult, but a lot of people got out. Royall had already planned to leave in the other direction, by sea, and within a few weeks he did.

Royall’s motives and loyalties had become a legal issue in 1778 because the state of Massachusetts was moving to confiscate the property of absentees who supported the British Crown. Royall insisted to some friends in Medford that he wasn’t in that category. Dr. Simon Tufts, for instance, testified:

he knew of nothing said Royal had said or done against the country; but, on the contrary, he believed him to be a friend of the American cause. That said Royal being in Boston at and before the battle of Lexington, the confusion which that battle occasioned in the country made him afraid at that time and afterwards to return home; and that said confusion, which prevailed in Boston, made him afraid to stay there; accordingly he went to Halifax, and from thence retired back into the country, and afterwards went to England.

However, Tufts had received Royall’s power of attorney, giving him every reason to keep the estate from being confiscated.

Peter Tufts testified:

That, about a fortnight before Lexington battle, Colonel Royal told him that it would not do for us to resist Great Britain, for they were too strong for us, and would send over ten thousand Russians, who would subdue us; and that, by his conversation, it appeared to him (the said Tufts) that said Royal was for surrendering up all to Great Britain, rather than make resistance.

Yet Isaac Hall said:

That, the winter before said battle, he went to settle accounts with said Royal, at his house; and that said Royal showed him his arms and accoutrements (which were in very good order), and told him that he determined to stand for his country, &c.

But which country would that be? In the end, Medford’s selectmen ruled that Royall had chosen the side of the Crown and was therefore a Loyalist, making his property vulnerable to confiscation.

Still, as of 1779, Royall was writing to Dr. Tufts to insist that he hoped “to return home as soon as my health will admit of.” He died in Britain two years later, but not from a disease his health was suffering from when he wrote that letter—instead, from smallpox.