Simon Willard 1600's

Simon Willard was living in Cambridge [New Town] 1634. His house was on the south-east corner of what is now Winthrop and Dunster Streets. He moved to Concord in 1635. In the summer of 1635 Rev. Peter Bulkeley, " a man of great learning, of large heart, of noble family, possessed of wealth, and distinguished as a divine, arrived in Cambridge, and to him Willard attached himself with affectionate regard." This alliance with Bulkeley shows that Willard had no disposition to follow the Hooker congregation to Hartford, and that his mind was so constructed as not to become a recipient of those somewhat mystical dogmas which became rife the following year in the Antinomian controversy. In describing this emigration from Cambridge to Concord in 1635, Johnson in his Wonder Working Providence [second edition, p. 5] says, "The band of Concord is led by Capt. Simon Willard, being a Kentish souldier."