Nicholas Easton - Massachusetts

Massachusetts

Easton's first residence in New England was the settlement of Ipswich where he was admitted to the church sometime before September 1634, and where he was appointed as overseer of powder and shot that month. His stay there was short, for in the spring of 1635 he was among the founding settlers of Agawam, later called Newbury, Massachusetts. During the Antinomian Controversy from 1636 to 1638, Easton became a supporter of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson, and on 20 November 1637 he and many other followers of these preachers, were disarmed, being ordered to deliver their guns, pistols, swords, shot, etc. to the authorities. He then went to Hampton where he built the town's first house on the north bank of the Merrimack River. Massachusetts authorities continued to pursue followers of Wheelwright and Hutchinson, and in March 1638 Easton was ordered to appear at the next court if he had not left the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Departing shortly thereafter, he joined many other followers of Hutchinson in Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island, also called Rhode Island from which the colony and state would later derive their names. In May 1638 he was allotted six acres in Portsmouth on the north side of Great Cove.