User:HReuter/John Winthrop (1681-1747)

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography
Wait Still's son, John (1681-1747), was graduated at Harvard in 1700, served for some time as a magistrate of Connecticut, and was afterward a fellow of the Royal society of London, to whose “Transactions” he was a contributor, and one of whose volumes was dedicated to him.

A Short Account of the Winthrop Family
VII. John Winthrop, generally distinguished as "John Winthrop, F. R. S." (born in Boston, Aug. 26, 1681; died at Sydenham, near London, Aug. 1, 1747), Harvard College, 1700. He married Katharine, one of the daughters of Gov. Joseph Dudley, and, in 1711, removed from Boston to New London, in order to devote himself to the improvement of the family property in Connecticut. The occupation was ill-suited to his tastes and habits, and he gradually became involved in litigation with his tenants and neighbors, as well as in costly mining speculations, which ultimately proved disastrous. Believing himself wronged by certain decisions of the Courts and Legislature of Connecticut relative to the distribution of his father's estate, he went to England in 1727 and obtained redress from the Privy Council; but failing to receive the political preferment to which he conceived he had a sort of hereditary claim, he continued to reside abroad until his death, twenty years later, becoming an active member of the Royal Society, one of the volumes of whose Transactions is dedicated to him. 1 His wife survived him, and married Jeremiah Miller, of New London (Yale College, 1709), dying, in 1776, at the great age of ninety-two.

The five surviving daughters of John Winthrop, F. R. S., were: Mary, wife of Gov. Joseph Wanton of Rhode Island; Anne, who never married; Katharine, who married, 1st, Hon. Samuel Browne, of Salem, and 2d, Col. Epes Sargent; Rebecca, wife of Gurdon Saltonstall, son of Governor Saltonstall of Connecticut; and Margaret, wife of Jeremiah Miller, Jr., of New London.

1 His diary gives an interesting account of his visit to the old family seat at Groton in April, 1728, nearly a hundred years after Gov. John Winthrop the elder left it for New England. The manor-house, built by the second Adam Winthrop in 1551, has since been pulled down; but there is still standing an ancient house known as Groton Place, which by tradition is associated with the family. The church contains the brass of the second Adam Winthrop, and near by is the tomb of his son, the third Adam. There are also modern memorial windows to Gov. John Winthrop and his first and second wives, both of whom were buried in the chancel. Groton, since the decline of the Suffolk cloth-trade, has dwindled to a small agricultural village ; but it is within an easy drive of Sudbury, Melford, and Lavenham, — all three places of interest to the antiquarian traveller.