John Tower
baptized 17 May 1609 – 13 Feb 1701-2 · Planter and farmer
An English immigrant who became a resident of Hingham, Massachusetts, by 1637 and, with his wife Margaret Ibrook, was the progenitor of the Tower family in America.
The stone is still there. South Hingham. View the burial record ↗
John Tower was baptized in Hingham, in the English county of Norfolk, on 17 May 1609, a son of Robert and Dorothy (Damon) Tower. He crossed to Massachusetts and was a resident of the daughter town of Hingham by 1637. On 13 March 1638-39 the 1893 History records that he was made a freeman, and earlier that same season, on 13 February 1638-39, he married Margaret, daughter of Richard Ibrook. The Tower Genealogy of 1891 places that marriage at Charlestown.
He came into land early. Upon his arrival the town granted him three acres for a house-lot on Bachelor Street, later Main Street, nearly opposite what is now Water Street, and other grants followed. In September 1657 he bought land at Great Lots and at Cooper’s Island, and in April 1661 he bought of Edward Wilder a dwelling-house, orchard, and several parcels, together with salt-marsh in the Conahasset marshes. The family seat that grew from these holdings stood on Main Street, next south of the garrison house near the crossing long called Tower’s Bridge, in South Hingham. That place stayed in the family name through several generations and was still known in the 1890s as “the old Tower estate.”
He was a working landholder, called “farmer” and, in conveyances, “planter,” and he took his turn in the town’s business. In 1645 he was one of seven men, “as well non-freeman as freeman,” chosen to order the prudential affairs of Hingham, and he served as a fence-viewer from 1669. A deposition of 9 January 1676-77, concerning a highway near the Foulsham and Hawke houses, gives his age as “about 69 years,” which the History notes agrees closely with the 1609 baptism.
The 1893 History enumerates ten children: John, Jonathan, Ibrook, Jeremiah, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hannah, Benjamin, Jemima, and Samuel. Elizabeth married William Roberts in 1667 and Hannah married David Whipple in 1677. Margaret died on 15 May 1700. John died on 13 February 1701-2, in his nineties. From this one household descended the large Tower progeny later gathered by Charlemagne Tower into the 1891 genealogy. The joint stone at High Street Cemetery names John and Margaret together as founders of the Tower family in America.
Family as recorded on Find a Grave
Relationships are as recorded on Find a Grave. A ✓ marks a tie the 1893 History of Hingham independently confirms. Distances are to relatives whose graves are also recorded here.