Seventeenth-century New Englanders were wary of strangers. In Springfield, Massachusetts, newcomers had to be approved by the town residents before they could stay for more than a month, but when John Bagg moved to Springfield around 1657, he not only stayed, he married the daughter of one of the town’s leading citizens.
John’s origins are obscure, but once he settled in Springfield, town records were thorough, and the life of my seven-times great-grandfather was well documented. The first record of John Bagg’s name there was his marriage to Hannah Burt, daughter of Henry Burt and Ulalia March, on Dec. 24, 1657.1 Soon after, he opened an account at John Pynchon’s general store. He also worked for Pynchon, earning several shillings a day for fetching hay and stones, felling timber, reaping wheat and trimming the orchard.2
In 1659, he was listed in the ninth of 10 rows in the meeting house (the church), where seating was assigned according to status in the community. Three years later, he had moved up a row.
In 1662, John and several friends appeared in court, charged with the illegal act of playing cards. He pleaded guilty and paid a fine.
Another incident, involving a breach of town regulations, seems trivial today. John had been named a fence-viewer, an important responsibility since escaped livestock could damage crops. When he and his fence-viewing partner Reice Bedortha observed defects in a neighbour’s fence, town officials fined the owner. At the same time, John complained there was a defect in Bedortha’s fence, but Bedortha countered that it wasn’t his fence. Both men were fined for not carrying out their fence-viewing duties properly.3
The inhabitants of Springfield all supported their families as subsistence farmers. No one became rich, but neither did they starve. They mainly acquired farmland as land grants from the town. John’s first grant, a six-acre parcel of land, was approved in 1660. In 1664, he purchased 20 acres on the Chicopee Plain and, in the same year, the town granted him 30 acres near the Agawam River (now the Westfield River).
In 1668, John and two friends leased another 40 acres. Cash was always in short supply, so they paid half the rent in “good merchantable wheate, and the other half in Pease and Indian corne, all good and merchantable.”4 The town later granted him several additional small pieces of land.
Springfield, the first town built in the western interior of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was founded beside the Connecticut River in 1636. The site was chosen primarily for commercial reasons. The Great River, as people called it, provided transportation, while meadows provided grazing for livestock and the soil was fertile. The town founders purchased land on both the east and west sides of the Connecticut River from the indigenous people. The town was on the east side and most of John’s property was on the other side, in what later became West Springfield.
The destruction of much of Springfield in 1675, during King Philip’s War, must have been the most terrifying event of John’s life. Town residents had been on good terms with many of the area’s indigenous people, but a bloody conflict erupted in 1675. Moe than 30 houses and 25 barns in Springfield were burned, as well as several mills and large quantities of corn that had been stored for the coming winter.
John’s and Hannah’s wedding was another milestone. When they married, she was 16; he may have been considerably older. Hannah was the ninth of Henry and Ulalia Burt’s 13 children, and the first member of the Burt family to be born in the colony.
John’s Obscure Origins
About 40 years ago, my mother wondered, who was the first member of the Bagg family to come to North America? She turned to Debrett’s, a company that specialized in researching British aristocratic families. Meanwhile, she told her friend Carol, from Boston, about her interest in the Bagg family history. Carol replied, “I’m descended from the Baggs too!” and she sent my mother an article about the family’s roots in colonial Massachusetts.6
With that information, Debrett’s prepared a report on four generations of the Bagg family in Springfield, Westfield and Pittsfield. Carol’s ancestor was Joseph Bagg (1740-1836) and ours was his brother Phineas (c. 1751-1823), who moved to Canada around 1795.3 Their great-grandfather, John Bagg (? – 1683), was the immigrant member of the family.
When John first appeared in Springfield records, 20 years had passed since the town was founded, and it was long after the Great Migration, the period between 1620 and 1640 when thousands of people emigrated from England to New England.
A book about the Burt family written in the 1890s said that John Bagg “is supposed to have emigrated from Plymouth, England.”9 My grandparents thought that we were descended from Sir James Bagge who was mayor of Plymouth in the early 1600s and lived in a mansion called Saltram, but the Debrett’s researcher concluded there was no evidence to connect him to my family.
Their report revealed that several individuals named John Bagg came to North America in the 17th century. The Original Lists of Persons of Quality, by John Camden Hotten, which listed emigrants, religious exiles, political rebels and others who went from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600-1700, listed a John Bagg who owned more than 10 acres of land in Barbados in 1638, but there is no evidence to suggest he relocated to Massachusetts 20 years later.
A better bet is the John Bagg, age 16, who was transported to Virginia aboard the ship Safety in August, 1635.10 In 1991, researcher W. Denis Hanley of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) replied to Mother’s query. He suggested that John Bagg may have gone to Virginia as an indentured servant, having promised to work the land for several years, but broke that promise and sailed to Barbados where he was granted land, then eventually moved to Massachusetts. Or he might have gone to Virginia as an indentured servant, stayed on the plantation for a number of years and moved to Massachusetts in the 1650s.
If John Bagg left England at age 16 in 1635, he would have been 38 when he got married. As for his motivation to leave Virginia, there were few single women on the plantations there, so perhaps he came to Massachusetts to look for a wife and picked Springfield, hoping to find employment as a day labourer until he could acquire land of his own.
I have not followed up with further research in Virginia. But even if I find John Bagg – or Bag, Bagge, Begg, Bigg or Biggs – in the records there, it would be hard to say with certainty that he was the man who settled in Springfield, and we still do not know his origins in England. I have not pursued further research to determine when or where he was born since it would be so difficult to prove.
My own theory – and again, I have no evidence – is that someone in John’s family knew members of the Burt family in England, so John made his way to Springfield, where he had connections.
What Springfield records do show is that John and Hannah had 10 children: Hannah (1658-1740) married Nathaniel Sikes; Mercy (1660-1738) m. Ebenezer Jones; Daniel (1663); John (1665-1740) m. Mercy Thomas; Daniel (1668-1738) m. Hannah Phelps (my direct ancestors); Jonathan (1670-1746) m. Mary Weller; Abigail (1675-1739) m. Benjamin Cooley; James (1675-1689), Sarah (1678-?) m. 1. Benoni Atchison, 2. Samuel Barnard; Abilene, (1680- 1750).5
Hannah died, age 39, on Aug. 1, 1680,11 several days after giving birth to Abilene. Three years later, on Sept. 5, 1683, John Bagg “was sicke and died”.12
John’s probate record shows that Samuel Marshfield became guardian of sons John and James, and of baby Abilene, but it is not clear what happened to the other children. The inventory of his estate listed the simple belongings of a farmer: a yoke of oxen, a horse, some cows and swine, a cart, plow, axe, kettle, bedding, two coats, a pair of britches, a hat and a pair of stockings. His house and adjoining land were evaluated at 16 pounds. His debts totalled 50 pounds.13
John may have had humble origins, but in 1893, Springfield historian Henry M. Burt wrote that John Bagg “appears to have been an industrious citizen and his descendants are among the most prosperous and intelligent people of recent times.”14
This story was previously posted in 2018 as two separate articles on my personal family history website Writing Up the Ancestors.
See also: Janice Hamilton, “Henry Burt, from Devon Clothier to Springfield Farmer”, Genealogy Ensemble, March 7, 2018. https://genealogyensemble.com/2018/03/07/henry-burt-from-devon-clothier-to-colonial-farmer/
Sources:
1. Massachusetts: Vital Records, 1621-1850 (Online Database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-2016), accessed Feb. 21, 2018
2. Henry M. Burt, Silas W. Burt. Early Days in New England. Life and Times of Henry Burt of Springfield and Some of His Descendants. Springfield: Clark W. Bryan, printers, 1893. Internet Archive, p. 252-253 https://archive.org/details/earlydaysinnewen00burt_0/page/252/mode/1up, accessed Oct 1, 2026.
3. Henry M. Burt, The First Century of the History of Springfield. The Official Records from 1636 to 1736, with an historical review and biographical mention of the founders. Volume 1 Springfield, Mass: Printed and Published by Henry M. Burt, 1898. Internet Archive, p. 56, accessed Sept. 26, 2026..
4. Burt, Early Days in New England, p. 251.
5. Thomas B. Warren, Springfield Families, Vol. 1 (A-E), copied by Mercy Warren Chapter, Springfield, Mass, 1934-1935, p. 22.
6. Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg “Autobiography 1846-1895. Forming a supplement to the “Obituary Notice of a Yale Graduate of ’69 written by himself in 1890.” New York: printed for private distribution by Karl Kron, publisher; reprinted from the Biographical Records of the Yale Class of 1869, vol. I, p 24-32.
7. Debrett, “The Bagg Family of Massachusetts, America and of Montreal, Canada. Research for Mrs. J.D. Hamilton, July, 1980.”
8. William A. Cooper, “The James Bagg of Lanesborough, Massachusetts” based on research made by John McIlvene. Conshohooken, Pa, 1918.
9. Henry M. Burt, Silas W. Burt. Early Days in New England. p.249.
10. Michael Tupper, editor. Passengers to America. A Consolidation of Ship Passenger Lists from The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1977, p. 98.
11. Massachusetts: Vital Records, 1621-1850 (Online Database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-2016), accessed Feb. 21, 2018.
12. Massachusetts: Vital Records, 1621-1850 (Online Database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-2016), accessed Feb. 20, 2018.
13. Hampshire County, Massachusetts probate records 1660-1916. index, 1660-1971 [microform].
14. Burt, Early Days in New England, p. 250.
Additional Reading:
Virginia DeJohn Anderson. New England’s Generation, The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg “Autobiography 1846-1895. Forming a supplement to the “Obituary Notice of a Yale Graduate of ’69 written by himself in 1890.” New York: printed for private distribution by Karl Kron, publisher; reprinted from the Biographical Records of the Yale Class of 1869, vol. I, p 24-32.
Patricia Law Hatcher. Researching Your Colonial New England Ancestors. Provo, Utah: Ancestry Publishing, 2006.
Nathaniel Philbrick. Mayflower. A story of courage, community and war. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
