George Felt

George Felt arrived in Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, in late 1628, aboard the ship Abigail with John Endecott, regarded as one of the Fathers of Anglo-Saxon White Puritan New England.^[2] Felt was born at Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England, and is considered the first of the Felt family in America. He went to Charlestown, Massachusetts Bay Colony, the following year where he helped form a government with thirty-three other colonists in 1633. He erected a cabin at the original settlement, now Town Hill, near what is now Galvin Memorial Park. He then moved across the Mystic River, north to what is now Everett, Massachusetts. In 1643, he removed to what was then North Yarmouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Yarmouth, Maine).^[1] He purchased 300 acres of land at Broad Cove from John Phillips, a Welshman.^[1]

Felt later owned a lot at the foot of the northern end of Pleasant Street in Yarmouth, adjacent to Stony Brook, in an area that became known as Grantville.^[1][3]

In 1684, military officer and fellow Englishman Walter Gendall claimed to own all of Felt's two thousand acres beside Casco Bay. He had purchased one hundred acres from him in 1680.^[4]

Felt's family in Bedfordshire, England, went by the family name Felce. He called himself George Felch, however, when he moved to America. He began to be known as George Felt in his later years.^[1][5]

In 1630, Felt married 29-year-old Elizabeth Wilkinson (1601–1694), with whom he had six children: Elizabeth (born c. 1635), George Jr. (1638–1676), Mary (1639–1725), Moses I (1641–1650), Aaron and Moses II (1651–1733).^[1]

Around 1649, the family moved back to Malden, Massachusetts Bay Colony, just as it was being incorporated into a city. They returned to Casco Bay in 1667, shortly after which Felt bought 2,000 more acres of land from Phillips.^[6] He later lost most of the land in a deed dispute though his son, Moses II, and grandson George III, retained 300 acres.^[7]

Conflicts forged by King Philip's War caused the Felts to abandon their home.^[8] In 1676, Felt's son and Mussel Cove resident, George Jr., was killed on Peaks Island during the conflicts.^[9][10][11] The deceased's wife of fourteen years, Londoner Phillippa Andrews, moved to Salem Massachusetts Bay Colony, where she married twice (to Samuel Platt in 1682 and Thomas Nelson in 1690) before her death in 1709.^[5] She had emigrated to America with her parents in 1635.

 

Descendants of George Felt (Felt family) and Elizabeth Wilkinson include American architect John H. Felt; the LDS Church's Children's Organization President Louie B. Felt; American Politician Nathaniel H. Felt; Capt. John Felt, who repulsed the British just prior to the American Revolution during the Salem Gunpowder Raid; and the American inventor and industrialist Dorr Felt.

George Felt's grandson Joshua Felt (1691-1744), son of Moses II, married Ann Walcott, the younger half-sister of the famed Mary Walcott, one of the "afflicted" girls called as a witness at the Salem Witch Trials in 1692-93. Ann's grandmother was Ann Holyoke Putnam, whose family founded Holyoke, Massachusetts.^[7] These marriages joined the Felts with the noted Holyoke, Walcott and Putnam families of England and New England.

George Felt's great-great-grandson Capt. John Felt (1723-1785) was the "Hero of the British Repulse at North Field Bridge," or the Salem Gunpowder Raid, also known as "Leslie's Retreat" on February 26, 1775. It was the colonies' first armed resistance to British authority. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Leslie and 300 British soldiers from Boston faced Salem citizens to attempt to seize illegally held ammunition during which they were repulsed by citizens led by Capt. Felt in a bloodless confrontation.^[12] Felt was the great-grandson of George Felt, Jr., who was killed by Native Americans in a raid on Peaks Island, Maine, a century earlier, in 1675.^[7]

George Felt's great-great-grandson Peter Felt (1745-1817) was one of six Felt brothers who served in the American Revolution, including at the Battle of Lexington and Concord; all survived, though two were wounded. Peter was a sergeant at the Battles of Saratoga and afterward erected a commodious house in Temple, New Hampshire, which still stands. Peter's son and namesake, Peter Felt (1784–1866), was a New Hampshire State Representative in 1825 and again between 1828 and 1829.^[13] In 1830, he took his wife and young children by carriage, canalboat and steamboat up the Mississippi River to settle in Quincy, Illinois, where he helped found a church. His grandson Charles Davis Felt (1858-1949), a farmer, helped establish a new settlement at Mendon, Missouri, in about 1880.^[7]

 

In 1684, an aging George Felt moved back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He wrote to the town of Malden: "Some time after the late Indian war it was withheld from me by some of the inhabitants of said Town of Caskoe Bay and being by said war much impoverished I could not recover it out of their hands.  I also am now forced to suffer for want of convenient care taken of me in my present distresse being about eighty seaven year’s old and very crasy and weak."

He died in Malden in 1693, aged 92, with Elizabeth surviving him by one year. The couple had become the first citizens of Malden to receive town aid, such was their fall from wealth during the latter stages of their time in North Yarmouth.^[1][7]

• Mill Creek, a watercourse in today's Falmouth Foreside which was originally named Felt's Brook