Tenth Generation

788. Deacon Philip WALKER was born about 1629 in Weymouth, Dorset, England. He died on 20 August 1679 at the age of 50 in Rehoboth, Bristol Co., MA. He was buried on 21 August 1679. Deacon was a Weaver, sawyer, farmer, poet. "In the manuscript collection of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, MA, is an unpublished eighteen page manuscript consisting of two poems and a prose article written in 1676 by Deacon Philip Walker of Rehoboth. This is his only extant literary work, and we now know that the versatile Walker, in addition to being a farmer, weaver, sawmill proprietor, deacon of the church, constable, and incidentally the second richest man in Rehoboth, was also a poet and writer of no mean ability." (Richard Lebaron Bowen, Early Rehoboth, Rehoboth: privately printed, 1948).

Here is a stanza of Philip's poem, which was about Captain Pierce in King Philip's War (1676):

Captan Perse and his coragio Company

It ffel unlucky yt thi march wos Soner
then thi apoynted time to yt meroner
in thy picaring thou Lacks thos muskitters
and his Experianc gayned mongst Buckaneers

Which are a Ruged cru of hunting rouers
much Like thes Sauage Sneking brutish grovers

Philip was not a very good speller, although that and changes in language are evident in most works of that period.

"Little or nothing is known about the early life of Philip Walker. He was the son of "Widow" Walker, who first appears in Seekonk at the founding of that township in 1643 when he was about 15 years of age. His name first appears in the Rehoboth records on September 9, 1652, at which date his mother was undoubtedly deceased. Two years later he married. Whatever formal education he may have had as a boy must have been obtained overseas before he emigrated to America.

The first name of his mother or that of her husband is not known. There is fairly conclusive evidence that she had two other children, Sarra, born 1618, and James, born 1620, both of whom came to American in 1635 with their uncle, John Browne, who for many years was a Plymouth Colony Assistant and one of the Plymouth Colony Commissioners of the United Colonies." (Bowen, ibid.)

Two days after Pierce's Fight (March 28, 1676), the Indians fell upon Rehoboth and burned most of the buildings, including Philip Walker's house. He built a new house on the foundation of the old house in old Rehoboth, finished in 1679. It was still standing in 1947 on Massasoit Avenue in East Providence. (In the 1600's, East Providence was part of Rehoboth, as were Seekonk and Swansea.) Mary Jane METCALF and Deacon Philip WALKER were married in 1654 in Dedham, Norfolk Co., MA.

789. Mary Jane METCALF was born on 24 March 1632 in St. Edmondsbury or Norwich, Norfolk, England. She died on 24 October 1710 at the age of 78 in Roxbury, Suffolk, MA.

Children were: