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Isaac Mixer, Jr. & Sarah Thurston § Isaac Mixer and Rebecca Garfield § Joseph Mixer & Anna Jones § Major Joseph Mixer & Mary Ball
The Mixer family represents another group of Great Migration Puritans. This familial line eventually merged with the Tuckers in 1763. The most distant traceable relative is Isaac Mixer (1569-1642). Isaac was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, England. He was a weaver by trade. He married three times: Frances, Susan, and Anna Gaseard; and fathered ten children. His second wife, Susan, may have died in childbirth; in some accounts her death date corresponds to that of the birth of daughter, Mary: April 26, 1628, just days after the infant was born
The Mixer colonists were much involved in the Revolutionary War. Although no individual in the direct line to Bonita Jackson was a Revolution-era soldier, more than twenty Mixers appear on Revolutionary War rosters.[1]
Isaac Mixer, Jr. & Sarah Thurston
Bonnie Jackson’s 8th great-grandparents, Isaac Mixer and Sarah Thurston, have their familial roots in the county of Suffolk, about 100 miles north-east of London. The port in Ipswich was a major point of embarkation for Puritans of “The Great Migration” era (see Puritan Heritage.}
Isaac Mixer, Jr (1602-1655) departed Ipswich, England on April 10, 1634 aboard the Elizabeth, accompanied by wife Sarah Thurston (1601-1681), and toddler son, Isaac (age 4). This was the maiden voyage for the ship and their passage has been described as a particularly unpleasant one, lasting almost three months.[2] They settled in Watertown, where Isaac, apparently a man of great energy, prospered. He amassed 180 acres of property and served in numerous civic positions in the town. After their arrival in New England, the couple had another child, Sarah Mixer Stearns (1636-1656), born in 1636. Isaac died in 1655, at age 53.
Isaac Mixer & Rebecca Garfield
Bonnie Jackson’s 7th great-grandparents.
Few details survive regarding the life of Isaac and Sarah’s son, Isaac Mixer, III (1629/30-1716), save his three marriages and fifteen children. Isaac married his first wife, Mary Coolidge (1637-1660), in September 1655 in Watertown. They had two daughters: Mary (1656-1657), and Sarah (1657-1745). Mary passed away in 1660 at age 23.
Only four months after wife Mary’s death, Isaac remarried to Rebecca Garfield (1636-1684); their nuptials took place on January 10, 1660, in Watertown. Isaac and Rebecca had thirteen children between 1662 and 1683. The last child, David, was born when Rebecca was about 42 years old and Isaac nearly 53; this infant appears to have died immediately and one suspects that his mother Rebecca may have perished at the same time.[3] One other child seems to have died in infancy: daughter Mehitable, in December 1677, just one month old. Mehitable, a variant of Mehetabel, is a rare name even in Puritan times; she was the wife of Hadad, King of Edom in Genesis.[4]
In June of 1687, Isaac married widow Mary Lothrop Stearns[5] (1640- ?), her third marriage as well.
There is an improbable historical connection between Isaac’s first and second wives. Mary Coolidge was a distant relative of future President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) and Rebecca Garfield, an ancestor of 20th U.S. President, James A. Garfield (1831-1881).
Isaac lived another twenty-nine years, passing away in November of 1716 at age 87.
Joseph Mixer & Anna Jones
It’s the eighth child of Isaac and Rebecca Garfield who passes the Mixer name on into the Jackson lineage.
1674 Record of Joseph Mixer’s Birth
Joseph Mixer (1674-1723) was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, on August 7, 1674.[6] He had the title of Deacon but otherwise nothing is known of his life. In 1704, he married Anna Jones (1684-1736), daughter of a prominent Watertown landowner, Josiah Jones (1643-1714), and wife, Lydia Treadway (1649-1743). Little is known of Joseph and Anna’s biographies. They spent their entire lives in Waltham and had nine children. He passed away on December 19, 1723; and she died in 1736.
Major Joseph Mixer & Mary Ball
Bonnie Jackson’s 5th great-grandparents.
Joseph and Anna’s eldest son, Major Joseph Mixer (1705-1794),[7] was born in Watertown on December 14, 1705. Joseph received his military title for service in one or more of the so-called Colonial Wars, most probably King George’s War (1744-1748), and/or the French and Indian War (1754-1763). [8] He may also have served in the Revolutionary War in 1776. Joseph moved to Shrewsbury and married Mary Ball (1709-ca. 1783) in December 1726.[9] They had nine children in twenty-one years.
Three of Joseph’s sons carried on the military legacy, serving in the Colonial Militias and Continental Army. Timothy Mixer (1748-1819) was a member of the 16th Massachusetts Infantry during the Revolutionary conflict from 1775 until the end of the War, around 1783. Sons Asa Mixer (1746-1849) and Joseph Mixer (1732-1810) were also Revolutionary War soldiers although their records are not so well documented.
Joseph Mixer died in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts in 1794 at the age of 89.
Joseph and Elizabeth’s daughter, Lucy Mixer (1739-1824), married Jedediah Tucker, Jr., in 1763, marking the end of the Mixer line in the Jackson family tree. Their union is described(see “Jedediah Tucker, Jr. & Lucy Mixer” on the Union of the Tuckers and Billings Lines page).
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Notes
[1] Some have the surname “Mixter,” which some of the family began to use just at this time.
[2] Louis C. Mixter, Mixter Genealogy. Self-published 1934. P. 1.
[3] Rebecca’s date of death is ambiguous. Many sources cite March 16, 1682; others say just 1683. Given that infant David died on August 6, 1683 one might suspect they died at the same time.
[4] Interestingly, this name appears again in the Mixer family line a couple of generations later via marriage. Charles Mixer married one Mehitable Smith in 1814.
[5] There is no agreement about Mary’s date of death.
[6] Some sources cite a birth date of August 9 or September 9.
[7] Sometimes referred to Joseph Mixer, II.
[8] One is inclined to think he was involved in the first of these. King George’s War was the third of the four French and Indian Wars. It took place primarily in the British provinces of New York, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia. Sadly, no official military records could be located documenting the details of Joseph’s service.
[9] Many records put the marriage date as 1777 but this seems to be a mistake and a confusion with her year of death. 1726 seems likely, given the birth year of their first daughter was 1727. She is sometimes referred to as Mary or Mary Elizabeth.
{last update: 14-Nov-2021)