Was Young John Related to the Bocking Whipples?
Some genealogists have speculated that young John was born in 1617. This tracks with the claim that he was between 14 and 16 when he arrived at Boston. That he was in New England in 1632 is unquestioned. Massachusetts Bay records of 3 October 1632 state that Alex Miller and John Whipple were ordered to pay fines to their master Israel Stoughton “for their wastful expence of powder and shot.”12 He was a carpenter apprentice to Stoughton, who also emigrated in 1632 and settled at Dorchester. Apprentices over 14 received meat, drink, clothes, and a wage if they had a special skill. Young John was granted land in Dorchester in 1637.13 While the surname Stoughton occasionally appears in the Bocking registers; Israel was not found. His father Thomas was vicar of Coggeshall, near Bocking, from 1600 to 1606, and Israel was baptized in Coggeshall on 18 February 1602/3. In 1988 and 1990, Dr. Charles M. Whipple, Jr. (a descendant of young John Whipple and author of the Whipple genealogy, Sons and
