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William Aspinwall

Englishman who emigrated to Boston aboard the Winthrop Fleet in 1630/played an integral part in the early religious controversies of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 22, 2025
Entity authorityQ8004633
Source-derived summary

William Aspinwall (c. 1605 – c. 1662) was an Englishman who emigrated to Boston with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630. He played an integral part in the early religious controversies of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Life

Aspinwall as most of the Aspinwalls probably came from the County of Lancaster, England.

He arrived at Massachusetts Bay onboard Arbella, part of the Winthrop Fleet, on 17 June 1630. He was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth, who was sixteen at that time. Among with other settlers he came ashore at Charlestown on 1 July and was appointed a deacon. On 3 April 1632, Aspinwall took the oath of a freeman.

In 1633, he moved to Boston, where he was one of the leading figures of the new settlement, and in 1637 replaced Sir Henry Vane as a Deputy to the General Court.

Editorial summary

“William Aspinwall” enters the record as englishman who emigrated to Boston aboard the Winthrop Fleet in 1630/played an integral part in the early religious controversies of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Aspinwall and Englishman can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1605, 1662, 1630, 1632—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1605-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around William, Aspinwall and Englishman.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“William Aspinwall” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, William, Aspinwall and Englishman provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8004633. VIAF identifies the subject as 76661036. The Library of Congress control number is n83124671. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1605, 1662, 1630 and 1632.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from William Aspinwall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.