Ancestors & Family

William was maybe not the most exemplary of my ancestors, but he was first to make it to this side of the Atlantic. He and his wife Dorothy had ten children including a son, Moses, who initiated my branch of the family tree.

My siblings and I are 11th generation descendants of William Pillsbury. William is said to be the common ancestor of most people in America bearing the name Pillsbury and its variations: Pilsbury, Pilsberry, Pillsberry, or Peelsbury to name just a few. William himself refused to be pinned down and signed documents with a mark.

He was born in 1605 in Staffordshire England’s Leek parish in Dove Valley. Across the valley was the hamlet of Pilsbury Grange, with which he had no apparent connection other than the last name.

In 1640, William, like many of his time, fled the tyranny of King Charles the First, ruler of  Great Britain and Ireland. The King’s reign and actions were said to have resulted in the English Civil War.

According to the family history, William “did not come with a Bible under his arm,” like the Pilgrims. Rather than seeking religious freedom, he was more likely avoiding a misdemeanor charge as well as a war, and looking for a fresh start.

A man of little means, William paid for his voyage across the Atlantic by signing up to be an indentured servant in a household in Dorchester (now a neighborhood of Boston), where he remained for ten years.

It wasn’t long before William began courting a Dorothy Crosbie, whose surname would long be connected to my Minnesota family. Among other entwinements, my father’s sister Ella married a Crosby whose family was a founder of the Pillsbury Flour company’s earliest rival, the Washburn-Crosby flour mill, and now its owner under its 20th century name, General Mills.

William and Dorothy’s courtship was not without scandal, caught as they were having pre-marital relations in their master's house.

There are different versions of the story. An 1898 family history by Emily A. Getchell and David B. Pilsbury gave their affair a more Victorian sensibility. His “courtship of a comely serving maiden in his own or a neighboring family does not appear to have been conducted with the stern decorum required by the customs of the settlement, and they received admonition at the hands of the law, which was a fashion of those days.” Or to quote another source, censured by the courts for their bad behavior.

William and Dorothy eventually moved to the more rural, ocean-side town of Newbury to the northeast of Boston. There William became a farmer, also referred to as a yeoman, husbandman or planter. His name appears on a town statue, listed among Newbury’s first settlers on land historically connected to the Pawtucket tribe.