William Stoughton Homestead, Site of

Israel Stoughton and his older brother Thomas, along with other members of the Stoughton family, sailed from England to the New World in the 1630s as part of John Winthrop’s fleet. Both men appear on the list of “Grantees of Dorchester lands” prior to 1636 (as do William Hathorne and Bray Wilkins). Israel Stoughton was granted the right to build the first water mill on the Neponset River in 1633. He was one of the largest landowners in the Dorchester plantation; upon his death in 1645, he would leave 300 acres to Harvard College.

Israel’s son William Stoughton was born in 1631, although it is unclear if he was born in England or Dorchester. He graduated from Harvard College with a degree in theology in 1650, and then continued his studies in England, earning another theology degree from Oxford in 1653. After religious and political upheaval in England, he returned to Massachusetts in 1662. Between 1665 and 1669, Stoughton was asked multiple times to join Richard Mather’s ministry but he declined. Although he originally intended to become a Puritan minister, he instead turned his attention to politics and land development.

In 1664 he listed property of 325 acres, much of which he purchased from people who had left town. He also inherited some portion of his father Israel’s 5,000 acres upon the senior Stoughton’s death in 1645. He owned so much land that, at one point, he and his business partner Joseph Dudley were part of a successful venture to acquire one million acres of land in the Merrimack Valley. William was also such an astute politician that he managed to obtain positions “on both sides,” from 1671 through his death in 1701. He served on the colony’s council of assistants from 1671-1686, remained part of the government during the unpopular rule of Royal Governor Edmund Andros in the late 1680s, and, largely thanks to his close friendship with the powerful Mathers, retained his government position during and after the Salem witch trials.

William Stoughton is best-remembered for his role as Chief Justice of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which heard the Salem witch cases in 1692. He also presided over the new Superior Court of Judicature (today the Supreme Court of Judicature), created in late 1692 and handling the remaining witchcraft cases in early 1693. The latter court no longer accepted spectral evidence, making it very difficult to convict the accused. Strict in his beliefs and fearful that the Puritan experiment would be lost if Massachusetts did not dispel its “witches,” Stoughton is said to have lamented the ending of the trials by Governor William Phips by storming out of the court, saying, “We were in a way to have cleared the land of these! Who it is obstructs the cause of Justice I know not, but thereby the Kingdom of Satan is advanced. The Lord have mercy on this country.”

William Stoughton held the office of Acting Governor of Massachusetts from 1694-1699, while still serving as Chief Justice. He was Lieutenant Governor for the brief governorship of the Earl of Bellomont, and then was Acting Governor again in 1700. In ill health by this time, William Stoughton died on July 7, 1701. He is buried in Dorchester’s North Burying Ground, marked by an ornate memorial “repaired by Harvard College,” where a £1,000 gift from Stoughton in 1698 created the first Stoughton Hall. The southwestern part of Dorchester was incorporated in 1726 as “Stoughton,” named after William.

According to a seventeenth-century map illustration, the approximate location of William Stoughton’s homestead is the northeast corner of Pleasant Street (formerly Green Lane) and Savin Hill. He owned 30 acres in this location alone, so it is difficult to picture the area as it appeared in the seventeenth century.