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Original Colonial Ancestor Sweets of Massachusetts & Rhode Island
I have a family connection to the Sweet family which arrived in colonial America in the time of the pilgrims. In fact there is some record that in my ancestral family past “a Sweet married a Sweet”. It is unclear whether they were of the same related family or two separate families of Sweets. My pioneer Sweet ancestors travelled west from New York and or Canada, probably by way of the Erie Canal, to settle in the newly opened Ohio Territory in the 1830s. Tracing the Sweets back to a colonial arrival and an English ancestor has presented some mysteries and apparent long-lived debates of exactly who the Sweets were.
The surname of Sweet is also variously spelled Swett, and Sweete in early records. The Sweet and/or Swett families that came to colonial America originated primarily in the southwest of England. It is unclear whether only one Sweet or Swett arrived in Salem and settled in Rhode Island, or if there were two separate families. The passenger records on ships do not list members of this family, but Sweets and Swetts appear in the earliest records of Rhode Island and some remained in Massachusetts, especially Boston.
The noble line of family which had an estate in Modbury, Devonshire, England near Plymouth is of an old English lineage, with recorded distinguished members, but the documentary record of individual histories is imprecise whether it is this line which were the Sweets who came to America. (There is a Geni.com tree online that traces this family in detail, but whether the connection can be made is uncertain, as there are some name shifts in the record and later contemporaneous declarations were made of family legend that the Sweets were Welsh, but if this line is followed they would have been from London and Essex, East Anglia).
This connection was claimed a long time ago when Adrian Swete presented a large silver flagon to the city of Plymouth along with a chalice cup, according to the writings of a Mr. Leslie Hutchings, the former vicar of the Modbury Church of England, who claimed some members of the Swete family were buried underneath the floor of the Modbury Church. If this record is correct, Robert Sweet, son of John, was born about 1561 and married Johanna Rainham on May 7, 1578 in Essex, and they had a son John Sweet who was born in 1579 in Devonshire, at Modbury. He may have lived at the Traine estate and possibly married a Mary Wescott. There are lots of Johns and Marys and the effort to tie the exact right knot has been elusive.
There were a number of families of that name in the area of Southwest England, Devonshire, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire, at the precise time of the emigration when the noble estate of Traine fell into dissolution. There are currently no records found online in England of the family with marriage or christening which match the known names following the arrival. The family, at best indication from the records and history, likely arrived in Salem, Massachusetts sailing on the Lyon, captained by William Pierce from Bristol in late 1630 as part of the Roger Williams group of Pilgrims, arriving in Salem in 1631.
Original Colonial Ancestor John Sweet (or Swett)
This traveling emigrant family apparently consisted of John Sweet (or Swett), his wife (Mary possibly Westcott), sons, John (age 11, born 1620), James (age 9, born 1622), and daughter Meribah (no date), and renamed Renewed either aboard ship or sometime after arrival. They did not mix well with the religious tenants of the Massachusetts pilgrims, and separated to Rhode Island following Roger Williams. The arrivals of the first pilgrim Puritans on the Mayflower were more of the Presbyterian influence while the Roger Williams followers were influenced by the Baptists and did not believe in each other’s practices. They were called Puritans for a reason and so much for seeking religious freedom…
There is a record of a John Sweet or Swett who killed a “wolf dog” for Salem’s Governor, John Endicott. This brings the question of whether there were two families. One who spelled their name Sweet and another who used Swett? Or possibly this was the son and not the father. If there were indeed two separate families, genealogical records have been detailed regarding the Newport and Warwick family, while the other is less recorded. There are generations of Sweets in Rhode Island and in Massachusetts.
John Sweet, sometimes referred to as John "Newport" Sweet, for his arrival in Newport from Massachussetts, a follower of Roger Williams,left Salem in 1637 and settled in Newport, Rhode Island near Providence. He had a grant of land, but then died in that same year. His widow, only known in the documentary record as the “Widow Sweet” with no known first name, received another grant of land, with the fairly indicative letter from the Reverend Hugh Peters of Salem, written on July 1, 1639 demonstrating the differences between two faiths, suggesting that the widow and several others had "the great censure passed upon them in this our church, and that they wholly refused to hear the church, denying it and all churches in the (Massachusetts) Bay to be true churches."
After John Sweet’s death, his widow re-married to Ezekiel Holliman. In her will, dated July 31, 1681, she gave, among other bequests, all her interest in a house at Warwick to her son-in-law, John Gereardy, and to her daughter Renewed. The son, John Sweet died in 1677 and there are not a lot in the records for him, while younger brother, James (also sometimes James "Isaac" Sweet, also coloquially "Bonesetter" Sweet), seemed to prosper and appears in a number of records and served in community posts. He learned the art of bone setting supposedly in Wales, which is were the story of the family coming from there originates, though he was only a boy when they left England, so another mystery. The Rhode Island family had a few physicians going forward, noted as “bonesetters”. Later generationsspread to Massachusetts, New York and Vermont, and in the 1830s, some members of the Sweets headed west. Sweets appeared in St Johns, Nova Scotia about 1983, who may have been decendents of the Rhode Island Sweets. Some of these Sweets became western pioneers.
James Sweet died in Kingstown, Rhode Island in 1695. He had lived at Warwick and then Kingstown. He was admitted as an inhabitant of North Kingstown on June 5, 1648 and served as a Commissioner from 1653 to 1659. He was admitted as Freeman in 1655, and served as a juror in 1656. He deeded various parcels of land to his sons. He married Mary Greene, born 1633, daughter of John and Joan (Tattersall) Greene and his children born at North Kingstown were: Philip, July 15, 1655; James, May 28, 1657; Mary, February 2, 1660; Benoni, March 28; 1692, Valentine, February 14, 1665; Samuel, November 1, 1667; Jeremiah, January 6, 1669; Renewed, July 16, 1671 ; Sylvester, March 1, 1674.
These Sweets are for the most part buried in a graveyard in North Kingstown Rhode Island referred to as the Sweet-Austin lot. These are the markers still readable. Many other stones, perhaps over one hundred, are buried themselves under centuries of undergrowth and soil. The photograph above is of Samuel Sweet, son of James Sweet.