Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy

John Mills

Male Abt 1661 - 1706  (~ 45 years)


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  • Name John Mills 
    Born Abt 1661  Jamaica, Queens, New York, United States Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Male 
    Died 15 Apr 1706  Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, United States Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID I4758  Petersen-de Lanskoy
    Last Modified 27 May 2021 

    Father Samuel Mills,   b. Abt 1632, , , , United States Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 10/10 Mar 1726/7, Jamaica, Queens, New York, United States Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 95 years) 
    Mother Susannah Palmer,   b. Abt 1640, Yarmouth, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. Aft Mar 1727, Jamaica, Queens, New York, United States Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 87 years) 
    Married Abt 1657  of Jamaica, Queens, New York, United States Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Notes 
    • ACTION:
      1. Find all 16 children referenced in the obituary above.
    Family ID F417  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Mary 
    Married Abt 1681  of Jamaica, Queens, New York, United States Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Last Modified 28 May 2021 
    Family ID F2163  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • RESEARCH_NOTES:
      1. The obituary of Samuel Mills notes he had 16 children from one wife.
      Another source, Ancestry.com's "A Documentary history of the family of Mills: descended from George Mills of Hempstead and Jamaica...," by Lewis D. Cook, 1937 <https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/61157/46155_b290272-00011?pid=2876556&treeid=&personid=&rc=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=LNR57&_phstart=successSource#?imageId=46155_b290272-00016>, provides transcriptions of several deeds for Samuel and his wife Susannah. It states it is hard to determine who the 16 children, but the deeds help determine some children as follows:
      22 Jan 1682/3 to "son in law John Smith" inhabitant of Jamaica; 25 Feb 1685/6 to "son in law John Smith and his wife Elizabeth."
      6 Apr 1697 to Samuel Mills, Jr.; 23 Feb 1718 to Samuel Mills, Jun., sadler.
      6 Jul 1698 to "our son John Mills".
      8 May 1718, Samuel and Susannah with Ephraim Mills and Susannah his wife convey land.
      11 Jun 1705 to Hope Mills, both of Jamaica.
      This same Ancestry source lists the 16 children as follows:
      1. Samuel Mills, Jr., mar. Sarah Denton, rem. to Greenw.
      2. John Mills, mar. Susannah ____, rem. to Stamford.
      3. Andrew; 4. Martha; 5. Zebulon; 6. Ephraim.
      7. Alexander Mills of New York City and Jamaica, L.I.
      8. Rebecca (?)
      9. George (?)
      10. Clemence
      11. Elizabeth Mills, mar. bef. 22 Jan 1682/3, John Smith.
      12. Hope Mills, mar. Martha ___, d. 1737.
      13. Aurelius Mills (?) (Perhaps the Aurelius Mills of Flushing, L.I., "joiner" whose will dated 10 May 1758, pr. 18 Apr 1759, names daughter Elizabeth as legatee and appts. Thomas Thorne as exec. Abstract of this will published in "Calendar of Wills" at Albany, 1626-1836, pub. N.Y. 1896, p. 258.)
      14. Mills; 15. Mills; 16. Mills.

      2. FHL book 929.273 M625u "A Mills and Kendall Family History…," by Helen Schatvet Ullmann (Boston, 2002), pp. 3-9, provides the following obituary for the father Samuel Mills:
      "Mills, Jamaica, on Long Island, March 10 (1727). This day died Samuel Mills of this Place, yeoman, who was born in America, aged ninety-five years. He was always a very laborious, honest man, of a very Temperate Life, and was able to do a good day work but a few days before he died. He lived Sixty-eight years with one Wife, who is still alive, by whom he had sixteen children. He has left behind him Nine Children, Eighty Grand Children, and Fifty-four Great Grand Children, and several of his Great Grand children are marriageable. His wife was delivered of a child when she was one and fifty Years of Age.[34]
      ENDNOTES
      34. Cook, p. 10, from "Boston News Letter," 1727. No. 14; reprinted in "New England Historical and Genealogical Register," 14[1860]:106. Cook added by hand, "The original Gazette is dated from March 6 to Monday, Mar. 13th. 1726,' i.e. 1726/7 - examined in N.Y.C. Public Library, 5th Ave. & 42d St. L.D.C." A similar obituary notice in the "New York Gazette" as reprinted in Benjamin F. Thompson, "History of Long Island," 1st ed. (1839), 164; 2d. ed. (New York: Gould, Banks & Co., 1843), 1:272; 3rd ed. (1918), 2:48, reports, under date of March 15th, 1727 [i.e. 1726/7], "On Friday last, died at Jamaica, Queen's County, Samuel Mills, yeoman, (who was born in America,)" etc. as above."

      3. FHL book 929.273 M626u "Descendants of John Mills of Stamford," by Helen Schatvet Ullmann (Boston, 2010); unfortunately, the subject of the book is the wrong John Mills, but the following excerpt does deal with our John:
      "John was not the son of the Richard Mills who lived for a time in Stamford but left there in 1662 or perhaps a bit earlier. In her sketch of Richard Mills in her book on early Stamford, Jeanne Majdalany wrote, "It is presumed that John was his son." However, this author's own article on Richard Mills argues strongly against that possibility. [NEHGR 154:203] John was probably not at Stamford for very long before the 1687 record.
      Another theory of John's parentage relates him to the family of George1 Mills of Jamaica, Long Island, New York. Lewis D. Cook says that John Mills, son of Samuel and Susannah (Palmer) Mills and grandson of George1 Mills of Jamaica, went after 1698 with his wife Susannah to Stamford and had three sons and perhaps several daughters. But Cook gives no evidence of this move to Stamford, citing only a deed dated 6 July 1698 from Samuel and Susannah to their son John, all being of Jamaica.* A deed from John Mills of Jamaica is dated 27 February 1707/8.** Thus John of Jamaica remained in Jamaica, and we must look elsewhere for the origins of John Mills of Stamford.
      Notes:
      * Lewis D. Cook, "A Documentary History of the Family of Mills" (1939), 27. For other recent, documented work on this family, see Helen Schatvet Ullmann, "A Mills and Kendall Family History" (Boston: Newbury Street Press, 2002), and "Samuel3 Mills, Sadler, of Jamaica, New York, and Greenwich, Connecticut," "New England Historical and Genealogical Register" 156 (April 2002):112-20.
      ** Josephine C. Frost, ed., "Records of the Town of Jamaica, Long Island, New York, 1656-1751," 3 v. (Brooklyn: Long Island Historical Society, 1914), 2:294, 416."

      SOURCES_MISC:
      1. FHL book 929.273-K727kf: "Knapp's N' Kin, The Ancestral Lines of Frederick H Knapp and Others," compiled by: Frederick H Knapp, Rt. #2, Box 438C, AB Hwy, Richland, Missouri, 65556; 1987; Revised/Updated 1991. It notes the following sources, none of which I have yet reviewed:
      -NEGHR, v. 14, p. 106.
      -Typescript, Greenwich P.L., Greenwich, CT.
      -Samuel Mills and Descendants, by Samuel Mills IX.
      -Rundle Fam. of Amer. (1992).