RICHARD BELLINGHAM GOVERNOR
In 1635, Samuel Maverick sold all his Winnisimmet land holdings, except the land his home and farm occupied (Admiral's Hill), to Richard Bellingham one of the patentees of the Massachusetts Bay Company Charter. Richard Bellingham, up and coming and an extensive land owner in Boston, was bom in Boston, Lincolnshire, England in 1592. He migrated to Boston, Massachusetts in 1634. Bellingham lived in a town house on Tremont Street in Boston. During the summer he spent his time in a home believed to be near the Ferry on Marginal Street, Chelsea. Bellingham divided his land into four huge farms after the manorial estates in England. Each farm was leased to a tenant farmer. Each of these farms became known by the name of the tenant fanner with the name of the last tenant applied to four schools built in the nineteenth century. The Smith farm eventually became the Williams farm, the Eustis farm became the Shurtleff farm, and the Senter farm became the Carter farm. The earliest listing of a tenant for the largest farm was 1663 when Samuel Townsend took occupancy and in the eighteenth century it became the Cary farm. A large inland section of this farm was virtually wild and heavily forested, especially around the Powderhom Hill area. In 1659, Richard Bellingham built a house with a gambrel roof in the front and a leanto in the rear. It covered two front rooms and an L on the upper comer which was the style of that day. Bellingham used this as his hunting lodge and it exists today as the original part of the Governor Bellingharn-Cary House. Richard Bellingham - Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony 1641. He was the owner of nearly all of the present City of Chelsea to 1672. In 1635, Richard Bellingham was elected Deputy Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was the first of thirteen years he would serve in this position. In 1641, Richard Bellingham was elected for the first of ten various years as governor. He was appointed governor over adversary John Winthrop. Much of Bellingham's term of office were marked with disputes with other officials. After his first wife's death Bellingham married a woman betrothed to another man, performing the ceremony himself. Bellingham was prosecuted for a breach of law, but being a judge he refused to leave the bench instead trying and freeing himself of all charges. Preaching Quaker doctrines was an attack on Puritan theocratic ideas. Quakers received cruel and ruthless treatment in Boston, yet they insisted on sending missionaries to the area. In 1656, Anne Austin and Mary Fisher arrived in Boston from England as Quaker missionaries. Governor Endicott was away from Boston, Deputy Governor Bellingham was in charge. He had the two women arrested and put in jail. For fear that they would preach their heresies out the jail windows he had the windows boarded up. The books the women had with them were seized and burned. The women were kept in jail and half-starved for five weeks when they were put on a ship sailing to the Barbadoes. Governor Endicott stated that Bellingham was too easy; he (Endicott) would have had them flogged. As Governor, he defended the authority of the colonial charter against a royal commission sent from England. Governor Richard Bellingham died on December 7, 1672 at the age of eighty years. Governor Bellingham left a last will and testament leaving his whole estate for religious purposes. The will was contested in the courts for one hundred fourteen years, the longest case of litigation the country ever experienced. By tying up the property it retarded the growth and development of the town. Governor Bellingham is buried in Granary Burying Grounds in Boston. The Governor Bellingham-Cary House is the only house in existence built by one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.