Born: About 1593/location unknown
Died: April 19, 1680, Charlestown, Massachusetts

Phineas Pratt was a member of a company of men sent from England by Thomas Weston. They arrived in New England in 1622 on three ships : the Sparrow, the Charity and the Swan. Pratt was a passenger on the Sparrow, the first vessel to arrive that year. The approximately 67 men, many of them in ill health, arrived with no provisions. The Pilgrims supported them throughout the summer of 1622.

In the fall of 1622, the Weston men left to colonize an area north of Plymouth called Wessagusset. They soon fell into difficulties by failing to support themselves and behaving recklessly. They severely angered the local Indigenous people by stealing their corn.

Ousamequin, the Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoag, informed the Plymouth colonists that there was a conspiracy among the Massachusett to massacre the Wessagusset group and strike first at the Plymouth settlement to prevent retaliation.

The same message was also delivered by one of Weston’s men, who came to Plymouth in March of 1623 “from the Massachusetts with a small pack at his back.” This was Phineas Pratt. He had left the Wessagusset settlement secretly, traveling for several days without food through a snowy landscape on his 25-mile journey.

Myles Standish and a small contingent (minus Phineas, who was still recovering from his arduous journey) headed to Wessagusset to defend Weston’s men and pre-emptively attack the Massachusett ringleaders. Standish and his soldiers ambushed and killed seven young Native men, including leaders Witawamat and Pecksuot in a knife fight. Soon afterwards, Weston’s group abandoned Wessagusset.

In late 1623, Phineas Pratt joined the Plymouth settlement. Pratt was by profession a “joiner.” Joinery was the principal method of furniture construction during the 17th century. Joiners were highly skilled craftsmen whose specialized abilities were valued more highly than those of an ordinary carpenter.

At Plymouth, Phineas Pratt married Mary Priest, daughter of Degory and Sarah Allerton Vincent Priest. Mary’s mother was the sister of Mayflower passenger Isaac Allerton. Sarah Allerton had been married to Jan Vincent and widowed before she married her second husband, Degory Priest. Degory Priest had journeyed to Plymouth on the Mayflower, intending that his wife and two daughters would join him later, but died during the first winter. The widowed Sarah Allerton Vincent Priest married Godbert Godbertson (her third husband), who became Mary Priest’s stepfather. The family (mother, stepfather and two daughters) were among the passengers of the Anne and Little James, arriving in Plymouth in 1623.

Phineas was probably born about 1593. Mary was probably born about 1612. It seems likely, given the probably age of their oldest child at the time of her death, that they married about 1631 or 1632. Phineas and Mary Pratt had 8 children.

Sometime before May of 1648, when Phineas purchased a house and garden in Charlestown (now a part of Boston), the Pratt family left Plymouth.

In 1662, Pratt presented to the General Court of Massachusetts a narrative entitled “A declaration of the affairs of the English people that first inhabited New England” to support his request for financial assistance. The extraordinary document is Phineas Pratt’s own account of the Wessagusset settlement and its downfall.

According to his gravestone in the old Phipps Street Cemetery, in the Charlestown area of Boston: “Fugit Hora. Here lies the body of Phinehas Pratt, agd about 90 yrs, decd April ye 19 1680 & was one of ye first English inhabitants of ye Massachusetts Colony.” (See Mayflower Descendant, Vol. 6, p. 1-2).

Mary Pratt outlived her husband; the date of her death is not certain but she did receive stipends from the Town of Charlestown in 1683/4 and 1686/7 (See Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, Vol. 3, p. 1516).