Isaac Allerton, Jr.

Col. Isaac Allerton Jr. ( 1627/1630 – December 30, 1702) was planter, military officer, politician and merchant in colonial America. Like his father, he first traded in New England, and after his father's death, in Virginia. There, he served on the Governor's Council (1687-1691) and for many years in the House of Burgesses, representing Northumberland County and later Westmoreland County. Early and family life Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, sometime after May 22, 1627, and before September 21, 1631 (since no birth record has been found), his father and grandfather were among the colony's leaders. His father Isaac Allerton Sr. had emigrated to what was then known as the Plymouth Colony on the ship Mayflower, as a Pilgrim. His father's first wife, Mary Norris, had died the following winter, on February 25, 1621. Thus the younger Isaac Allerton had 3 half-siblings (all born in Leiden, Holland): Bartholomew, Remember and Mary, the last surviving passenger of the Mayflower. His mother Fear Brewster, was the elder Allerton's second wife, and the daughter of Elder William Brewster. the colony's spiritual and political leader, who had also sailed aboard the Mayflower as well as signed the Mayflower Compact. Her mother was Mary Brewster, and Fear Brewster arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts on July 10, 1623, aboard the Anne. Another passenger on the Anne was this man's aunt Sarah Allerton, who had married Degory Priest who had also arrived on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower Compact. The widowed Sarah had married Priest in a dual wedding with Isaac Allerton Sr. and his first wife. Fear Brewster Allerton died sometime before December 12, 1634. Disagreements with fellow Plymouth Colonists concerning his commingling his own merchant accounts with the colony's payments to the Merchant Adventurers for funding the Mayflower voyage increased after his second wife's death. Also, he had previously established a trading post in Maine, which interfered with the colony's monopoly on the fur trade and later with a British treaty. Thus, the elder Allerton moved south to the New Haven Colony. However, young Isaac did not initially join him. Instead he was raised by his maternal grandfather William Brewster, and eventually joined the family of his uncle Love Brewster. Meanwhile, by 1644, when elder Brewster died, the elder Isaac Allerton had again remarried, to his third wife, Joanna Swinnerton.