I674: John VARNUM (15 Oct 1669

John VARNUM

15 Oct 1669 - 23 Feb 1715

BIRTH: 15 Oct 1669, Chelmsford, Middlesex, MA
DEATH: 23 Feb 1715, Dracut, Middlesex, Ma
BURIAL: Clay Pit Burial Grounds

Father: Samuel VARNUM
Mother: Sarah LANGTON

Family 1 : Dorothy PRESCOTT

MARRIAGE: 13 Nov 1700, Groton, Middlesex, MA

                                     __
                  _George VARNUM ___|
                 |                  |__
 _Samuel VARNUM _|
|                |                   __
|                |_Hannah __________|
|                                   |__
|
|--John VARNUM 
|
|                                    __
|                 _Richard LANGTON _|
|                |                  |__
|_Sarah LANGTON _|
                 |                   __
                 |_Goodie __________|
                                    |__

[572] "Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699"
Roger Thompson
University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1986
(Thompson quotes extensively from the original court order books.)
pp48-53: "Susannah Coburn or Colburn, who gave birth in January 1696 to a bastard in Dracut, a
frontier settlement near Chelmsford, was a maidservant in the household of Samuel and Sarah
Varnum. At her confinement, as we have seen, she refused to name the father, but in her confession
to the court she charged her master's son John with paternity. The two families, who had been
neighbors in Ipswich and had pioneered the settlement north of the Merrimack River in the 1660s,
were related by the marriage of Hannah Varnum to Ezra Coburn, Susannah's uncle. John Varnum,
aged twenty-seven, denied the charge, and the failure to name him during travail denied the court
acceptable legal proof of paternity and opened the floodgates to a torrent of circumstantial evidence...
In the event, the court, sitting on 23 June 1696, "considering the circumstances and pleas then made
dismissed John Varnum with costs." Susannah Coburn was convicted of fornication and sentenced
to the standard penalty of a forty shilling fine or ten stripes."

"Vital Records of Dracut"
New England Historic Genealogical Society
in "Massachusetts Town Marriage Records"
http://ancestry.com/search/rectype/vital/massrecords/
"PRESCOUT (see Prescott), Dorathi of Groto[n], and John Varnum,
Nov. 13, 1700.Intention not recorded."
Also, an undated Chelmsford birth record:
"John VARNUM Birth Place: Chelmsford Mother's Name: Sarah Father's Name: Samuel"

"The Varnums of Dracutt"
John Marshall Varnum
Boston, 1907
p45: "John Varnum, born 25 Oct., 1669, died 23 Feb., 1715. "John Varnum of Dracutt and Dorothi
Prescout of Groton were lawfully mared in Nov., in the 13 day in the year 1700." Thus in the script
of John Varnum himself, the first town clerk, is the fact duly set forth. Dorothy, born 16 Dec., 1681,
was the daughter of Jonas and Mary (Loker) Prescott."

"New England Marriages Prior to 1700"
Clarence A. Torrey, Baltimore, MD, 1985
p. 766
VARNUM, John (1669-1715) & Dorothy PRESCOTT (1681-); 13 Nov 1700; Dracut

(Shattuck and associated family lines from a GEDCOM file
posted to RootsWeb by Robert Wylie [wyliecoyote1@comcast.net]).