English origins
Phineas Pratt was born in London, Middlesex, England around 1593. He was the son of the Reverend Henry Pratt and his wife Mary. Henry Pratt was a Puritan Nonconformist minister who was imprisoned in England for preaching the gospel contrary to the rule of the Church of England. Family legend has it that Henry communicated with his family by writing letters penned in his own blood. According to the book ''Phinehas Pratt and Some of His Descendants'', written by Eleazer Franklin Pratt and published posthumously in 1897: "Tradition relates that the father of Henry was John, and that either John or the father of John, was a Frenchman who bore the surname of Plat or Platt; having fled from France during some political excitement in that country, he became and "Armor-bearer" to the Monarch of England, and his name was subsequently changed to Pratt." However, according to more recent genealogists, his grandfather—John Henry Pratt—may have in fact been from Bishopworth, Somerset, England.Career
Phineas Pratt was by profession a joiner, or carpenter.The ill-fated Wessagusset settlement
Some time prior to 1622, at around the age of 29, Phineas Pratt and his brother Joshua Pratt joined the company of Thomas Weston, a London Merchant involved with the Leiden Separatists and Pilgrims who settledPratt's journey through the snow
According to the Pilgrim Hall Museum, the settlement at Wessagusset was problematic from the start. Greene soon died during a visit to Plymouth and was replaced by John Sanders. "They soon fell into difficulties through behaving, generally, in a very foolish and improvident fashion. They also severely angered the local Native Americans by stealing their corn." In his memoir of travels to the colony,Some time after this their Sachem came suddenly upon us with a great number of armed men; but their spies seeing us in readiness, he & some of his chief men turned into one of their houses a quarter of an hour. Then we met them outside the pale of our plantation & brought them it. Then said I to a young man that could best speak their language, "Ask Pecksuot why they come thus armed.‟ He answered, "Our Sachem is angry with you.‟ I said, "Tell him if he be angry with us, we be angry with him.‟ Then said their Sachem, "English men, when you came into the country, we gave you gifts and you gave us gifts; we bought and sold with you and we were friends; and now tell me if I or any of my men have done you wrong.‟ We answered, "First tell us if we have done you any wrong.‟ He answered, "Some of you steal our corn & I have sent you word times without number & yet our corn is stolen. I come to see what you will do.‟ We answered, "It is one man which has done it. Your men have seen us whip him divers time, besides other manner of punishments, & now hear he is, bound. We give him unto you to do with him what you please.‟ He answered, "That is not just dealing. If my men wrong my neighbor Sachem or his men, he sends me word & I beat or kill my men, according to the offense. If his men wrong me or my men, I send him word & he beats or kills his men according to the offense. All Sachems do justice by their own men. If not, we say they are all agreed & then we fight, & now I say you all steal my corn.The company did not turn over the man. Shortly thereafter, in March 1623,
Settlement in Plymouth
Sometime in late 1623, Weston ended his venture. Most of the remaining company returned home. Phineas Pratt and others joined the Plymouth settlement, where they were received with mixed feelings, and later listed as if they were passengers of the ''Anne''. According to John Winslow, "I would not be understood to think there were no well-deserving persons among them". Pratt was included in a division of land in Plymouth in 1623, where he and Joshua Pratt were assigned, jointly, two acres of land. In 1624 when Plymouth was divided into twelve companies, Phineas and Joshua were assigned toMarriage and later life
In 1630, Phineas Pratt married Mary Priest, daughter of Degory Priest and his wife Sarah (Allerton) Vincent. Mary was born in England around 1612. Degory Priest had left his wife and daughters Mary and Sarah behind in Leiden, intending to return for them, but died during the difficult first winter of the settlement. His widow married again in Holland (her third marriage) to Cuthbert Cuthbertson (aka Godbert Godbertson), and arrived with her daughters and baby son on the ship Anne, in 1623. Upon marrying Mary Priest (aka Marah Godbertson), Phineas became possessed of thirty acres of land on the high cliff, and they purchased thirty more at Winslow Stand near Phineas' land. On August 6, 1646, Phineas sold his estate in Plymouth to John Cooke and around May 20, 1648, Pratt purchased a house and garden in Charlestown, Massachusetts, purchased from George Bunker, somewhere between the "windmill hill and that way which goes into Elbow Lane."1662 and 1668 petitions to the General Court
In 1662, at the age of about 69, Pratt presented to the General Court of Massachusetts a request for financial assistance and to establish his status as a "First Comer" entitled to the benefits the earliest settlers of Massachusetts were afforded by law. To support this claim, Pratt submitted an extraordinary narrative of his early days in the settlement titled ''A declaration of the affaires of the Einglish People, that first inhabited New Eingland''. In response, the court granted him three hundred acres of land "laid out in the wilderness on the east of the Merrimack River, near the upper end of the 'Nacoke Brooke'." (This was in Dunstable, near present-dayTo the Honoured the Generall Court, holden at Boston this— October 1668 I acknowledg myself truly thankfull unto the Honoured Court for that they gave me at the time I presented an History called, A declaration of the affaires of the Einglish People, that first inhabited New Eingland. Yet my necessity causeth me farther to entreat you to consider what my service hath been unto my dread Soveraign Lord King James of famous memory. I am one of that litle number, ten men that arrived in the Massachusetts Bay for the setling of a Plantation, & am the remainder of the forlorn hope sixty men. We bought the south part of the Bay of Aberdecest their Sachem. Ten of our company died by famine. Then said ye Natives of the Countrey, "Let us kill them whist they are weak, or they will possesse our Countrey & drive us away." Three times we fought with them, thirty miles I was pursued for my life, in times of frost, and snow, as a deer chased with wolves. Two of our men were kill'd in warr, one shot in the shoulder. It was not by the wit of man nor by ye strength of the arme of flesh, that we prevailed against them. But God, that overrules all power, put fear in their hearts. And now, seeing God hath added a New England to Old Engl. and given both to our dread Soverig Lord King Charles the second, many thousand People enjoy the peace thereof; Now in times of prosperity, I beseech you consider the day of small things; for I was almost frozen in time of our weak beginnings, and now I am lame. My humble request is for that may be for my subsistaunce, the remaining time of my life.Pratt's 1668 request was not granted.
Death and burial
On April 19, 1680, Phineas Pratt died in Charlestown, Massachusetts. According to his gravestone, he was "about 90 years". The will of Phineas Pratt dates January 8, 1677. According to the records of the Pilgrim Hall Museum, the text is as follows:I, Phinias Pratt of Charlstown in the Countie of Midellsex Joyner being very aged and Crazye of body yett in my pfect memory and understanding doe make This my last will and Teastamoen. Item I give unto my belovid wife Mary Pratt all my movabl goods and fortie Shillings a year to be payed oute of my land in Charlstowne and the use of the gardon for term of hir life: this fortie Shillings is to be payed by my sonn Joseph Pratt for and in consideration of the having of my land and my wif is to have a convenient room of my sonn Joseph with a chimny in it to hir content to lie in for term of hir life. Wthout molestation or trubl; but If my sonn Joseph doeth not perform this will that then my wif Mary Prat shall have the one half of the land to hir Dispossing for his vest comfort: it is to be understod that the one half wch the new hous standeth one is given to Joseph upon the condistion of providing of a convenient room for me and my wife for term of our lives and this other half for the paying of the fortie Shillings a year paying it quartterly that is to say ten shllig a quarter in mony and fier wood at mony price and If ther be any thing left at the death of my wife it shalbe equally devided a mung all my children. this eight of Jeneary 1677 Phinehas Pratt Sealed and deliverd in the presents of Use Walter alen, the marke of Rebeack AlenThe total value of all Pratt's goods was 32 pounds, 16 shillings, 06 pence. His heirs were given as: John (deceased), Peter (deceased), Samuel, Daniel, and Mary (his other three living children, Mercy, Aaron and Joseph, having disposed of their shares).
References
{{reflistFurther reading
* Robert C. Anderson. The Great Migration Begins. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995. * Robert C. Anderson. The Pilgrim Migration. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004. * George Bowman. "Phineas Pratt of Charlestown." Mayflower Descendant 4(3): 129–140. 1902. * Jayne P. Lovelace. The Pratt Directory. Rev. ed. Chandler, Ariz.: Ancestor House, 1995. * Mayflower Families through Five Generations:Vol. 8: Degory Priest. * Eugene A. Stratton. Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, 1620–1691. Salt Lake City:Ancestry Publishing, 1986. * Robert S. Wakefield, ed. Plymouth: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1994.External links