John MacBean

Our ancestor John MacBean was brought up in Inverness, at the head of Moray Firth in northern Scotland. At the age of 18, he joined the Scottish forces of Charles Stuart, the 20-year-old Pretender to the British throne (who wanted to overthrow the new Puritan regime of Lord General Oliver Cromwell and avenge the beheading of his father, King Charles I). Unfortunately, Cromwell's army was superior in arms and discipline and smashed the Scottish forces in the 1651 Battle of Worcester. While the Pretender, with a bounty of £1,000 upon his head, hid for a day inside a hollow oak tree at Boscobel and escaped to France disguised as a servant, our John was taken prisoner.

He was free the following year, however, and he sailed aboard the Sarah and John to the New World. Paying for the voyage by contracting as an indentured servant, he worked for Nicholas Lissen in Exeter, Rockingham County, New Hampshire. During his indenture, he became engaged to his boss's daughter, Hannah, two years younger than he. They married in 1654, when he was 21 and she 19. After bearing three children, Hannah died in 1659 at the age of 24, probably as a result of bearing the third, a daughter named after her.

John married the following year at the age of 27 to our ancestor Margaret, who bore nine children over the next 20 years. Margaret died in 1714, when John was 81. John himself died in 1718 at the age of 85.

John and his two wives were part of the reactive, nomadic Cavalier Generation. His first nine children were part of the heroic, civic-minded Glorious Generation, and the other three children were part of the adaptive Enlightenment Generation.