Isaac Stearns

The bridge and the unbroken estate

In 1647 Watertown, just west of Boston in present-day Massachusetts, appointed Isaac Stearns and John Biscoe to decide how a bridge across the river should be built and to make arrangements with the workmen. Their commission required judgment about both the structure and the agreement under which it would be constructed.

Isaac had settled in Watertown after coming from England with his family. He and Mary Barker had married in 1622, and parish entries placed children in the area of Nayland, in Suffolk in eastern England, before the family’s Massachusetts life. In Watertown he became a freeman in May 1631 and later served as a selectman. His involvement with roads was not always official approval: in 1638 he and John Page were fined for altering a highway.

The property inventoried at his death included a house and twelve-acre homestead, numerous outlying parcels, oxen, cattle, sheep, horses and farming tools. Inside were beds, chests, spinning wheels, a cheese press, scales and measures. Corn, meal, malt, peas and other provisions were recorded alongside the equipment used to produce and store them.

His will of June 14, 1671, made Mary’s support the first substantial disposition. She was to enjoy the whole estate while she remained a widow. Most of it was to stay intact for that purpose, even though the will assigned eventual shares to children and other beneficiaries. His daughter Abigail’s five acres of meadow were the stated exception, available to her immediately.

Isaac appointed sons Isaac and Samuel as executors. He died five days after making the will. The inventory survives in a copy whose attestation explains that the earlier record had burned in a courthouse fire. Its list of land, livestock and household goods preserves the material basis of the support he intended for Mary.