On 28 Dec 1670 when Apphia was 19, she first married
John Knowles (3242) , son of
Richard Knowles (17 Sep 1614-prob. between 1670 and 1675) &
Ruth Bowers (1322) (1616-1687), in Eastham, MA.
148,62 Born 1640s in Plymouth, MA. John died on 3 Jun 1675.26
From Libby’s Knowles genealogy:26
“The earliest appearance of the name of this John Knowles may have been while he was still a minor. In the court held 3 mar. 1662/3 Ephraim doane, Thomas Ridman, John Knowles, and John Wilson were tried and were fined 25s. each for trading of liquors with the Indians at Cape Cod. In the same court Ephraim doane and John Knowles were bound over under heavy bonds, pending investigations into the circumstances of the death of Josiah, the Indian sachem at Eastham. This matter was dropped. soon after his marriage his name appears at the head of a cattle page, the entry reading “John Knowles 1 mare colt 4 Aug. 1671.” His earmark was transferred to his grandson, Williard Knowles, 28 Jun 1737.
“In June 1675 Taunton suffered an attack by Indians, in which the houses of James Walker and John Tisdell were burned and the latter was killed. At the same time two soldiers from Eastham, who were on duty there, were killed. Capt. John Freeman, whose daughter Samuel^2 Knowles afterwards married, was in command of the Barnstable County company, and in his report to Governor Winslow, under date of Taunton, 3 Jun 1675, said:
“‘This morning three of our men are slain close by one of our courts of guard, (two of them, Samuel Atkins and John Knowles, of Eastham); housews are burned in our sight; our men are picked off at every bush.’
“Three Indians were tried, 6 Mar. 1676/7, for the murder of John Knowles, John Tisdell, Sr., and Samuel Atkins. The jury found grounds of suspicion against two and acquitted one, but all three were sold into slavery as ‘prisoners of war.’ The sum of £10 waas presented by the Colony to ‘Apthya widow of John Knowles lately slain in the service.’ In 1676 Lieut. Jonathan Sparrow and Jonathan Bangs were delegated by the Court to asssist the yound widow in settleing her husband’s affairs.
“The inventory of his estate, taken 8 Mar. 1676, included ‘one dwellinghouse and three or four acres of land, and a small parcel of broked sedge and meadow.’ His house must have stood on the southern slop of the high land north of the road recently built form the State Road to the Town Landing. At a town meeting held 15 Mar. 1724/5 it was
“‘Voted, to allow Samuel Knowles to fence in the land on the northwest side of his field or land which was formerly his brother John Knowles so far as the fence & ditch which did formerly enclose the said land did formerly stnad and no further.’
“John Knowles’s brother afterwards had his land, and two town records refer to the road dividing Samuel Knowles’s ‘original land,’ on the east of the road, from the land that was of John Knowles, deceased, on the west of the road.”