An American Family History

Sarah Bradstreet Wallis was born in 1638 in Ipswich (now Rowley), Essex County, Massachusetts. Her parents were Humphrey Bradstreet and Bridget Harris. 

In 1655 she received 30 pounds from her father's will. 

She married Ensign Nicholas Wallis on April 13, 1657 in Ipswich.  He was born in 1633 in Ipswich to Robert and Rebecca Wallis.

Their children Sarah Wallis (1658), Robert Wallis (1660), Hannah Wallis (1662) and Samuel Wallis (1664).

The History of Ipswich says that in 1687 “ Nicholas Wallis has leave for a mill.”

Sarah died before 1691 when he married widow Rebekah Somerby of Newburyport on April 28, 1691. 

In 1701 Nicholas and his two sons were granted liberty

to build a shed for their horses next to one to be built by Corn’t Matthew Whipple and others, of forty feet in length and not exceeding ten foot wide, about twenty feet from ye Watch House, southerly towards ye old Meeting-house. (the Hammatt Papers, p, 390)

Nicholas died on February 01, 1710/11.

A little lower down, where the stream narrows in the beautiful gorge between the hills, a bridge, probably of logs, was built by the farmers, whose land abutted on the river on both sides, about 1667. In that year John Adams, Nathaniel Adams, Samuel Adams, Joseph Saiford, Nicholas Wallis and Thomas Staco were "freed from working in the common highway for 7 years to come," "upon consideration of there building a bridge over the river at there own expense."

Sar. Nicholas Wallis, whose farm is now owned by the Brooks heirs, received permission in March, 1686-7 "to improve tho water by damming in the river against his own land not exceeding three foot for the building a fulling mill or mills, provided he do it within a year and a half." Sergeant Wallis did not improve his privilege and in March. 1696-7, John Adams, Sen., his son John, Jim. and Michael Farley Jun. petitioned the Town for permission to build a dam, and operate a grist mill and a fulling mill. After a little delay, they received the desired liberty, and built the dam, with a fulling mill on the north side and the grist mill on the south, in the year 1697. (from Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Thomas Franklin Waters, Sarah Goodhue, John Wise, Ipswich Historical Society)

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