John Barker of Stoke Nayland

Biography

John Barker worked as a clothier at Stoke-by-Nayland, in Suffolk in eastern England. He married Margaret Walter in June 1585, and their family included Mary, who later married Isaac Stearns. The household belonged to the same Suffolk communities in which the Barker and Walter families appear in parish records.

John's occupation and his relationship to Mary are preserved in a legal transaction made after his death. In 1640 Mary and Isaac, then living at Watertown, just west of Boston in Massachusetts, appointed Thomas Gilson, a baker at Sudbury in Suffolk, England, to recover £5 owed to her. The obligation arose from an agreement connected with her mother's second marriage. The document names John as Mary's deceased father and identifies his trade and English home.

John had died by 1617. Margaret remarried, while their daughter's household crossed the Atlantic. The £5 claim shows that migration did not end the family's financial connections with England.