ars under the various spellings of Langfellay,
Langfellowe, Langfellow, and Longfellow. The first of the name is James
Langfellay, of Otley. In 1510 Sir Peter Langfellowe is vicar of
Calverley. In the neighboring towns of Ilkley, Guiseley, and Horsforth
lived many Longfellows, mostly yeomen: some of them well-to-do, others a
charge on the parish; some getting into the courts and fined for such
offences as "cutting green wode," or "greenhow," or "carrying away the
Lord's wood,"--wood from the yew-trees of the lord of the manor, to
which they thought they had a right for their bows. One of the name was
overseer of highways, and one was churchwarden in Ilkley.

It is well established, by tradition and by documents, that the poet's
ancestors were in Horsforth. In 1625 we find Edward Longfellow (perhaps
from Ilkley) purchasing "Upper House," in Horsforth; and in 1647 he
makes over his house and lands to his son William. This William was a
well-to-do clothier who lived in Upper House, and, besides, possessed
three other houses or cottages (being taxed for "4 hearths"), with
gardens, closes, crofts, etc. He had two sons, Nathan and William, and
four or five daughters. William was baptized at Guiseley (the parish
church of Horsforth), October 20, 1650.

The first of the name in America was this William, son of William of
Horsforth. He came over, a young man, to Newbury, Massachusetts, about
1676. Soon after, he married Anne Sewall, daughter of Henry Sewall, of
Newbury, and sister of Samuel Sewall, afterward the first chief justice
of Massachusetts. He received from his father-in-law a farm in the
parish of Byfield, on the Parker River.{109} He is spoken of as "well
educated, but a little wild," or, as another puts it, "not so much of a
Puritan as some." In 1690, as ensign of the Newbury company in the Essex
regiment, he joined the ill-fated expedition of Sir William Phipps
against Quebec, which on its return encountered a severe storm in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence. One of the ships was wrecked on the island of
Anticosti, and William Longfellow, with nine of his comrades, was
drowned. He left five children. The fourth of these, Stephen (1), left
to shift for himself, became a blacksmith. He married Abigail, daughter
of Rev. Edward Tompson, of Newbury, afterward of Marshfield. Their fifth
child, Stephen (2), born in 1723, being a bright boy, was sent to
Harvard College, where he took his first degree in 1742, and his second
in 174