Thomas Wiggin

Captain Thomas Wiggin (1601–1666), often known as Governor Thomas Wiggin, was the first governor of the Upper Plantation of New Hampshire, a settlement that later became part of the Province of New Hampshire in 1679. He was the founder of Stratham, Rockingham, New Hampshire, which celebrated its 300th anniversary of incorporation in 2016. He was the son of a vicar in the Church of England with family ties to important and influential families of the era, and a highly respected man in his own right who left his stamp on what would become American values.

Biography

Wiggin first appears in colonial records as a signatory to the Wheelwright Deed in May 1629. This document, which some historians, in response to the American Civil War, have claimed is a forgery, lays out an alliance with the sagamores of the Algonquins for mutual defense and to transfer land along the seacoast of present-day New Hampshire from the local Indians to a group of English colonists led by Reverend John Wheelwright.

Wiggin arrived in New England on the Winthrop Fleet. By 1631, he had been appointed by the proprietors of the "Upper" or "Dover" Plantation (comprising modern-day Dover, Durham and Stratham) to be their chief agent or governor. He settled in what is now Stratham. He was also the holder of the large Squamscott patent, covering land east of the mouth of the Squamscott River, and was a close ally of Governor John Winthrop of the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In 1632, Wiggin traveled to England, and returned the following year with expanded powers and 30 Puritan settlers.