Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

BASSET.
WILLIAM BASSET.
William Basset, one of the forefathers, came over in
the ship Fortune in 1621 ; settled first in Plymouth, then in
Duxhury, and finally in Bridgewater—of which town he was
an original proprietor. He died there in 1667. He was
comparatively wealthy, being a large land-holder, only four
in Plymouth paying a higher tax in the year 1633. He had
a large library, from which it is to be inferred that he was
an educated man. In 1648, he was fined five shillings for
neglecting "to mend guns in seasonable times"—an offence
of not a very heinious character—but it shows that he was
a mechanic as well as a planter. Many of his descendants
have been large land-holders, and even to this day a Basset
who has not a good landed estate, thinks that he is miserably
poor.
His name is on the earliest list of freemen, made in
1633 ; he was a volunteer in the company raised in 1637, to
assist Massachusetts and Connecticut in the Pequod war ; a
member of the committee of the town of Duxbury to lay out
bounds, and to decide on the fitness of persons applying to
become residents, and was representative to the Old Colony
Court six years. His son William settled in Sandwich
was there in 1651, and is the ancestor of the families of that
name in that town, and of some of the families in Barnstable
and Dennis. His son, Col. William Basset, was marshall
of Plymouth Colony at the time of the union with
Massachusetts, and in 1710, one of the Judges of the Inferior
Court, and afterwards Eegister of Probate. He was an
excellent penman, and wrote a very small, yet distinct and
beautiful hand, easily read. The records show that he was
a careful and correct man. He was the most distinguished
of any of the name in Massachusetts. He died in Sand-