JAMES, Abraham

Abraham James attended Harvard, but left no trace in the college records. On 26 March 1651 Samuel Mather* wrote to Jonathan Mitchell about the circumstances of all the students who had already left New England. He worked his way through the list in order of seniority, by Harvard class. James appears with the class of 1642 or 1643: ‘Mr Brewster [Nathaniel Brewster*] is minister in Norfolk and hath a good report. And so is Abraham James too.’

JAMES, Thomas (1595–C.1683)

Thomas James, the son John James, rector of Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, was baptised at Boston on 5 October 1595. He attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and graduated BA in 1615, MA in 1618. He was ordained in 1617 and became a schoolteacher, first at Moulton near Spalding, then from 1619 as head of Boston grammar. James was cited to a church court in 1623 for complaining that anyone who held two church livings ‘was like to a woman which nursed two children, feeding th'one and pining th'other'.

He arrived in New England on 5 June 1632. With his wife Elizabeth, James initially joined the Boston church, but was soon dismissed with others to form a new church at Charlestown. On 14 October 1632, the Boston church recorded: ‘those of Charles towne, who had formerly been ioyned to Boston congregation, now in regarde of the difficultye of passage in the winter, & havinge opportuni-tye of a pastor, one Mr Iames, who came ouer at this tyme, were dismissed from the Congregation of Boston’.