Author: Shurtleff, James
Biography:
SHURTLEFF, James (1745-1832: ESTC)
He was a Mayflower descendant, born in Plymouth MA to Joanna (Tupper) and James Shurtleff. He was a farmer but he must have had at least basic schooling. In 1773 he married Priscilla Torrey in Plymouth but she died five years later in Litchfield ME after having borne two children. They were very poor: according to Taylor, in 1771 he owned "a workshop worth but one pound in annual rent, no livestock, and no improved land" (101). Shurtleff settled in Litchfield--some records say in 1783 but given the date of his wife's death it must have been earlier--where in time he served as an Elder in the town's Baptist Church, as a schoolteacher, and as a land surveyor. In 1798 he published a pamphlet putting the case for the settlers who improved the land not having to pay for title since only their labour made the land valuable. By 1810 he owned a frame house and barn, some livestock, nine acres of improved land and another 68 unimproved. He remained in Litchfield for the rest of his long life. (ancestry.com 20 Sept. 2020; Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors [1990] 101-3)