My 9x great grandfather Richard Glass Sr. seems to had a run of bad luck. He arrived in Plymouth sometime in the early 1630's and was a servant of my ancestor John Barnes, Then for some reason he changed masters going to work for Thomas Prence. He left Prence in 1638, acquired 6 acres of land and married Amy Glass in 1639. And that's where the bad luck really kicked in.
Apparently Richard fell ill, and was unable to finish paying for a bed he had bought from a man named Richard Derby. To make matters worse, it appears he was taken advantage of by Derby. The case was taken to Plymouth Court in January, 1642/43:
Whereas Richard Willis is endebted vnto Richard Derby the sum of
fourty shillings for a bedd, the which bed not being seene by the said Willis,
but taken vpon the said Derbys word, and it now appeareing, by the oath of
Willm Nelson, that the said bed was not answerable to that goodness the
said Derby aflirmed it to be of, nor of such waight by sixteene pounds as he
aflirmed also it was, and that the tick of the said bed was full of patches, for
w°" the said Willis was to haue payd three pounds fiue shillings, whereof xxv‘
is payd,-—now, the Court doth order that twenty shillings more shalbe payd
in full satisfacéon for it, & no more. -p50
Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, in New England: Court orders [being the proceedings of the General Court and the Court of Assistants], 1633-1691 Vol 1, 1633-1640, from the Press of William White, Boston, 1855
But by September Richard was in bad health and the town went so far as to take up a collection for him. His wife Amy was pregnant with their first child, but I am not sure if he lived long enough to see it born, since Amy Glass Willis remarried in the following year. I am descended from their only child, Richard Willis, Jr.
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