NICHOLAS UTTER OF WESTERLY, RHODE ISLAND ANDA FEW OF HIS DESCENDANTS By KATHARINE M. U'ITER WATERMAN of North Scituate, R. I. and GEORGE B. ,\:,fl) WII.FIU![) B. UTTER of Westerly, R. I. 'Wl!STl!a:&.T. a. 1. THE UTTl!a COMPANY. PJIJNTl!aS 19-41 THE Amu:"\1 UTIER ( Ij32-1813) Ho:"\1ESTE,\D AT HorI--1:-To:- CrrY. R. I. A FOREWORD This is a different book of genealogy. It contains the family tree more particularly for two lines, lines of ances­ tors which lead down through the brothers John and William Utter who left their home in Hopkinton City, R. I., about 1800. Most of the original research has been done by Mrs. Lewis A. Waterman, (Katharine M. Utter), of North Scit­ uate, R. I. She has followed the line down from John Utter, son of Abram, to her own immediate family and has told interesting things about the people in that line. George B. and Wilfred B. Utter, a later generation, have developed-die lamilies of William Utter and have told more or less (ully something of the lives of their grandparents, and great-grandparents. Both John and William, sons of Abram Utter, left Hopkinton, R. 1., for the Mohawk Valley. John set­ tled in Adams Center, N. Y., to the north. William settled near Utica and his family was reared in nearby towns to the south. Abram Utter is the fourth generation from Nicholas Utter, who may have been a soldier in the Army which came with the Swedes to the Delaware regions three hun­ dred years ago. He turned up somewhere in southern Rhode Island as early as 1678. The children of John and William have spread throughout the nation. But the two branches in which Mrs. \Vaterman :1nd the Utter brothers are interested returned to Rhode Island. Both families have some original material, and Mrs. Waterman's orig­ inal research should not be lost. Without waiting to publish all that may be known of the Utters, and run the danger of not publishing anything in the end, we have decided to make the Nicholas Utter book, incomplete as it is. Material has been used that perhaps is more or less of a very personal nature, but as the book has a very liin­ itcd distribution it has been used as a way to preserve it for future generations of the immediate families of the writers. The following pages contain a .more or less complete account of the first four generations of this family in New England with some items about later generations. One branch has been traced to the present day, and includes those of the name still living in Rhode Island. For a more complete account of this branch see Vol. iI of the Brown Gen. by the late Cyrus H. Brown of West­ crly, 1915, who was the grandfather of George B. and Wilfred B. Utter. Austin's Genealogical Dictionary (p. 211, 58, 125, 361) covers most of the first three ;;n1erations in concise form, but omits much that Mrs. \Vatcrman has found in the early public records of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Besides town records, tax and census lists, general court records, military papers, town and county histories, etc., have been consulted, but the work is by no means exhaustive, especially outside of Rhode Island. The Utter family, though not numerous, has repre­ sentatives in almost every section of the United States, and has included many professional men, notably clergymen and teachers. Katharine M. Utter Waterman North Scituate, R. I. George Benjamin Utter Wilfred Brown U ttcr W csterly, Rhode Island April 1941 Contents PART ONE Chptcr P:tse A FOREWORD 7 I OF SWEDISH ORIGIN? 13 II NICHOLAS UTTER APPEARS 16 III JABEZ UTTER OF KILLINGLY, CONN. 19 IV THOMAS, THE SECOND SoN 24 V NICHOLAS UTTER, JUNIOR 26 VI WILLIAM UITER OF WAR\'l!CK . 30 VII NICHOLAS UTTER'S DAUGHTERS 32 VIII MANY UNSOLVED PROBLEMS 34 IX JOHN UITER 45 X ABRAM UTTER • 48 XI JOHN, A SoN OF ABRAM 52 XII JOHN UTTER OF NEWPORT 56 XIII MILITARY RECORDS 61 XIV THE FAMILY TREE 63 PART TWO xv WILLIAM UTTER, A SoN OF ABRAM S3 XVI REUBEN WILCOX, FATHER OF DoLLY UITER 87 XVII GEORGE B. UITER, SoN OF WILLIAM • . 90 XVIII MRS. MARY STARR MAXSON, WIFE OF GEORGE B. UTTER • 106 XIX JOHN MAXSON, FATHER OF MARY STARR MAXSON UTTER 109 xx CALEB MAXSON • 112 XXI GEORGE H. UTTER, SoN OF GEORGE B. UTTER, A..1'\ID GoVERNOR • 115 XXII INTER FAMILY LINES • 130 XXIII THE IN-LAWS • . 133 XXIV LANDS AND RESIDENCE OF NICHOLAS UTTER 146 XXV IRA THE ADVENTURER • 152 XXVI STRAY Brrs 160 INDEX 167 ILLUSTRATIONS HOME OF ABRAM UTTER ( 1732-1819) ABRAM UTTER BURIAL PLACE THE SHANNOCK PURCHASE NICHOLAS UTTER AND DESCENDANTS CHART Part One By Katharine M. Utter Waterman CHAPTER I OF SWEDISH ORIGIN? "The name Utter," writes Amandus Johnson, Swedish historian, "is distinctly a Swedish name, being the name of an animal ( otter )-this spelling is found in no other lan­ guage-The name is not common in Sweden, but is found occasionally, and two or three of the name have been prom­ inent in Swedish history.-The famous Utter-who was really the founder and organizer of the Swedish archives and one of the first genealogists in the Scandinavian North -was not a nobleman but his family was later enobled un­ der the name of Utterhjalm--Several members of the noble families of Sweden have married women of the name of Utter." And again, he said, "There was a Nils or Nicholas Utter in the New Sweden colony who came here in 1654 and served for some time as a soldier, his trade being a sword cutler and blacksmith. This man must have be ~n born about 1630--or earlier. There is of course, a pos!:i­ bility that he migrated to Rhode Island and there went over to the Baptists, as t-e was a Lutheran ~hen he arrived in America." In Mr. Johnson's "The Swedish Settlement on the Delaware," 1911, Vol. 2, p 722, is a list of soldiers, sailors, etc., on which appears Nils Mat(t)son Utter, soldier, hired in Stockholm in 1653. The same book states that after the Swedish Governor, Rising, had arranged with the victorious Stuyvesant for the return of the Swedes to the Fatherland by way of New Amsterdam, many of them were persuaded by the Dutch to rema;n there. The rest sailed for Sweden 23 Oct. 1655. Perhaps Nils Utter was among those who remained. NICHOLAS UTTER In "Armorial General" par Riesstap II, 965, is a coat­ of-arms designated as "Utter, Swede," with shield, crest and mantle in colors. On the shield, which is "party per fess," is a swimming otter with a fish in his mouth done in blue and silver above the fess, and below it, a spray of three green lime leaves on a gold ground. The mantle is in silver, red, gold and blue, and the crest is an arrange­ ment of the otter and the lime leaves. It is not certain, however, that the Nicholas Utter who first appeared in R. I. records in 1678 had a coat-of­ arms, but he was not of the peasant class which at that time used only such surnames as Carlson, Johnson and the like, whereas Utter could be used only, I have been told, by members of the military caste. It is also not proved that he was identical with or a son of the Swedish soldier men­ tioned by Mr. Johnson, though it seems improbable that two unrelated persons of that unusual name and approx­ imately the same age should have come to America at that early date. Nicholas Utter of R. I. must have been born before 1640 and there is nothing on record to make 1630 an im­ probable birth date. According to his will he was a "first­ day Baptist" when he died, but Rhode Island was full of Baptists and he lived there at least thirty-six years. The name Utter, however, was not probably confined to Sweden in the seventeenth century any more than it is now, and Nicholas Utter could have come to America from Ger­ many, Holland, or even England, if he was not the soldier of New Sweden (Delaware) mentioned above, or, being that man, he could have migrated to New England during the period between 1655 and 1674, when the Dutch and English wrangled over the possession of the Swedish col­ ony, the English finally winning out at the latter date. Another puzzle is the connection, if any, of Nicholas Utter of R. I. with the Peter (Petter, Peeter) Uter who was paid by the town of Newbury, Mass., for his services OF SWEDISH ORIGIN? IS in King Philip's War, 24 Nov. 1676, and who later died in Newbury where an inventory of his estate was taken 14 Sept. 1683 by Nicholas Noyes. There is no record of his having owned land in Essex or Middlesex Counties but he is mentioned as a creditor in the settlement of another Newbury estate. He evidently sold goods or services, but had no farm of his own. There is no mention of a family. He must have been born in the sixteen-fifties or earlier and was, perhaps, a son or brother of Nicholas Utter. Evidence that some of the Swedes settled in eastern New England is the Scituate, Mass., record of Nicholas Alberson, "the Swede," whose house was burned by the Indians for which he asked aid of the town in Mar.