John Lathrop
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The Reverend John Lathrop was born in Etton, Yorkshire, in 1584, the son of Thomas Lathrop (or Lowthroppe), (1536-1630) and Mary Howell (1540-1588). The founder of Barnstable, Massachusetts, Lathrop is most famous for his legions of famous descendents.
Lathrop's family, being somewhat well-to-do (possibly because his grandfather Robert Lathrop (1510-1556) married into the noble family of Thomas Aston (born 1480), educated young John in divinity school until he was ordained a minister in the Church of England.
Lathrop's ordination coincided with the end of the reign of King James I. As a consequence of the translation of the King James Bible and rising literacy in England, many people begin to dispute the biblical base of the state church, including the Puritans who sought to move the church closer back to its biblical roots. This led Charles I (successor of James I) to call on Archbishop William Laud of the state church to instruct all his ministers to seek out and purge the growing ranks of Puritans from the areas with which they were charged. Lathrop initially carried out these instructions with due diligence, but his 1610 marriage to Hannah Howse (1594-1634) and growing family brought him into closer contact with the Puritan movement. By the mid-1620s, he renounced his ordination into the Church of England and became a full-time Puritan minister.
While initially it appeared as if Charles I would revert to the tolerant ways of his father, the growth of the Puritan movement and growing opposition in Parliament convinced him to crack down anew. Archbishop Laud's agents were sent to arrest ministers of non-sanctioned churches (Puritans), disband the congregations, and imprison and even cut off ears or noses of those who persisted in meeting. Lathrop himself was arrested in one such sweep and imprisoned in London's notorious Clink Prison. While imprisoned, his wife died leaving seven children ranging in age from 8 to 18 years.
Shortly after his imprisonment, Lathrop was told that he would be pardoned upon acceptance of terms to permanently leave England with his family along with as many of his congregation members as he could take who would not accept the authority of the Church of England. Lathrop accepted this offer and left for Plymouth, Massachusetts. He married Anna Hammond (1616-1687) shortly before departure for the new world, arriving aboard the Griffin in 1634 or 1635. He proceeded to father an additional seven children by her, four of whom lived to adulthood.
Lathrop and his congregation first settled in Boston, but his tolerant attitude toward letting Baptists and other non-Puritans attend his services led to a majority of them voting him out of the office and ordering him to leave Boston in 1637. He moved his family and a few of his followers, numbering some 40 persons in total, down Cape Cod and founded the town of Barnstable. He continued his ministry until shortly before his death on November 8, 1653.
Lathrop's fame, more than his life, continues to this day. His direct descendants in America number more than 80,000, including U.S. Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Governors Mitt Romney, George W. Romney, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Benedict Arnold, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, among others.
