As far as I can tell, and it's reasonable to assume, that Broderbund OCR'd this text to digitize it.  OCR-ing is far from perfect, so I cannot be certain the text below accurately represents the original.  As soon as I can get a copy of Pope, I'll proof read it against the text below.  "(???)" seems to be this OCR software's way of alerting you it did not recognize a portion of text.  Graphics were not digitized.

JOHN CHENEY, the head of the Newbury line, is introduced to us by no less a person than the noble man who earned the title "Apostle to the Indians" -- Rev. John Eliot.  The first parish of Mr. Eliot was Roxbury; and in his record of the church he gives the following very interesting minute respecting a couple who were associated with him in fellowship for a short time. 
 

There is no record of John Cheny's buying property or having land assigned to him in Roxbury.  A natural question rises, where did he live during that year?  One explanation has occurred to every mind acquainted with the names of the early citizens of Roxbury, and that is this:  he may have had a temporary home with that pioneer who bore the same surname, William Cheney.  This theory may be turned either way.  If John and William were near relatives, -- father and son or brothers, -- the Roxbury man would gladly share all his "housings and lands" with the other; or, if the one was lodged in the other's home, we may infer that they were closely related.  Theories are easy to handle; but they are of little historic weight.  The name John is repeated in both families down to the present day; the name, William, was of rare occurrence in the line of John for several generations. 

The plantation of Newbury was in its infancy when John and Martha Cheney entered into it.  An excellent group of people were at the fore moulding its social and ecclesiastical shape after the most approved methods of the (then) new way.  Regulations and agreements, conveniences and schemes, worship and study, business, morals and religion, -- they gave to all the best dictates of "established" English thought, quickened and improved by those fresh Bible studies and free Christian practices which characterized the Puritan movement.  Newbury had certain erratic and dissonant elements, which engraved some unworthy lines on its record; but it was, on the whole, a very upright, manly set of people who wrought and fellowshipped there.  And this Cheney family took good rank from the first in that community of intelligent, earnest people.  They intermarried with the leading households and were respected and beloved at large.  As Rev. John Eliot shows, they were members of the Roxbury church and were received at once to the communion of the Newbury church on arriving there; and their children joined in the same fellowship in due time.  Mr. Cheney took no part in the conflicts of citizens about local organization, and his name does not appear on either of the partisan and factious petitions. 

He was very industrious in attention to his own affairs, so that he failed to show his face among the citizens at the annual town meeting April 21, 1638; a hasty judgment condemned him with other absentees and voted that he should pay a fine of two shillings and sixpence, which the constable was ordered to collect before the next Tuesday night!  But the record states later that his fine was "remitted on account of his having a sufficient excuse"! 

His allotments of land were large.  He had a good stand in the "old town" and on shore and stream elsewhere.  June 19, 1638, he had 3 acres of meadow at the westerly end of the great swamp behind the great hill; Aug. 25, 6 acres of salt "marish."  "A parcel of marsh with little islands of upland in it", about 20 acres in all, "Little River on the

John Cheney, senior, we learn from the historian, Coffin, took great interest in Governor Winthrop's campaign for the governorship against Sir Harry Vane, as the close of the latter's term drew near.  So Mr. Cheney, with nine others, made the journey of forty miles from Newbury to Cambridge on foot to take the "freeman's oath" and qualify themselves to vote in the election which was soon to take place.  They were admitted freemen May 17, 1637.  It was by such prompt movements that Winthrop was elected and the conservative party triumphed.

The following extract from the town records gives us some data for a plan of the new town of Newbury.
 

John Cheney was elected to the board of selectmen more than once.  The following document, on file at Salem, would naturally lead us to think he had been on the board before 1652, or at the time when Mr. Kent gave up his lot; the paper is wholly in his hand, except the clerk's note.

Mr. Cheney was a member of a committee to "lay out the way to the neck and through the neck to the marshes on the east side of the old Towne" Nov. 29, 1654.  The town records show that he was one of the selectmen in 1661 and in 1664. 

In March, 1657, some charges were brought in the Ipswich Court against a very worthy citizen of Newbury; and 

sgned his name, with nineteen others, to a petition, addressed to the Court, protesting that, having had long acquaintance with the accused, they felt certain he was innocent. 

A number of residents of Dover, Newbury, etc. petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts Bay for a grant of land at Pennacook (now Concord, N.H.) which was granted May 18, 1659.

is one of the names which differs from the accredited autographs of John Cheney, Senior.  It may have been put down on verbal permission by some misspelling friend, or forged; or the good man may, possibly, have varied his own spelling.  Nothing was done about a settlement at Concord until after our man had gone to "a better country."  He d. July 28, 1666; and left, in his clear chirography, 

It is very important to notice that this will was written as well as signed by the testator.
 

Transcriber's Comment:  Why is it important to know that the will was written as well as signed by the testator?  I can't see that it matters.  And as all wills are voiced in the first person, whether written by the testator or dictated to someone else, how can Pope know John Cheney wrote his will himself?  Pope should have given his reasons for the above statement because, without explanation, it seems to me to be a rather peculiar thing to have said.

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      I. MARY,2 b. in England, about 1627; m. Sept. 3, 1645, William  Lawes of Rowley; Children: (1) Rebecca Lawes, b. June 1, 1655; (2) Mary Lawes, b. Oct. 15, 1657; and (3) Priscilla Lawes, b. Nov. 9, 1662; whom their grandfather remembered in his will.  William Lawes was buried March 30, 1668.

     II. MARTHA,2 b. in England, about 1629; m. 1st, Anthony Sadler; Child: Abiel Sadler, b. Nov. 2, 1650.  The father died a little before the birth of the boy.  Mr. Cheney was appointed guardian of the child Oct. 5, 1652, and remembered him in his will, very particularly.  She m. 2nd, Thomas Burkby, of Ipswich; Children: several who died in infancy, and Hannah Burkby, b. in March, 1655, mentioned in her grandfather's will.  Martha (Cheney) Burkby was buried Jan. 24, 1658.

2.  III. JOHN,2 b. in England, about 1631.

3.   IV. DANIEL,2 b. in England, about 1633.

      V. SARAH,2 b. in Roxbury, Mass., February, 1635-6; m. Dec. 23, 1652, Joseph Plumer, of Newbury; Children: (1) Joseph Plumer, b. Sept., 1654; (2) Benjamin Plumer, b. Oct. 23, 1656; (3) Sarah Plumer, b. May 13, 1660; (4) Francis Plumer, b. April 23, 1662; (5) Nathaniel Plumer, b. Jan. 31, 1665; (6) Jonathan Plumer, b. May 23, 1668.

4.   VI. PETER,2 b. Newbury, 1638.

    VII. LYDIA,2 b. Newbury, 1640; m. Nov. 12, 1657, John Kenrick, of Ipswich. 

     IX. NATHANIEL,2 b. in Newbury, Jan. 12, 1644; he does not appear to have married.  Before his death, which occurred April 4, 1684, he made a will, in which he bequeathed one third of his  estate (including what was yet to fall to him from his father's  estate).  He gave it to his brother Peter and his sisters, Lydia  Kenrick and Elizabeth Cross; but devised a few things to others.  His great Bible, after the death of his mother, was to go to his sister Elizabeth, or, in the event of her death, to her son Daniel Smith; his "skillet" to Sarah, eldest daughter of his brother Daniel, or to "his cousin," her sister Hannah; he requested his friends and brothers in the Lord, George Little and Cutting Noyes, to act as executors. In his inventory we note "a parcel of meadow at haverhill" appraised at oe25, which shows how he had been looking westward.  The records of Suffield in the Connecticut valley show that he had travelled much further, for he had lands assigned him there Dec. 1, 1680.  He deeded this to his nephew John, son of Peter, April 1, 1684, just before making his will. His name occurs in the list of the members of the First Baptist church of Newbury, in 1681. George Little, one of those he asked to attend to his estate, was a "brother" in that particular church.

      X. ELIZABETH,2 b. in Newbury Jan. 12, 1647; m. Stephen Cross, of Ipswich.  After this marriage questions arose respecting property, and John Perkins gave testimony (in 1672) that he was present when the "widow Cheney" and Robert Cross, senior, made a "treaty, when Robert's son Steven was a suitor to Elizabeth, daughter of the widow."  Stephen Cross died and his son John, "a minor seventeen years of age," had guardian appointed Jan. 22, 1704-5.