Wickham, Isaac , 1761 - 1842
Isaac Wickham was born April 4, 1761. As a teenager in 1777, he enlisted and served in the Continental Army in Captain Nehemiah Emerson's Company under Colonel Tupper, 10th Regiment, Massachusetts Line. Wickham was eventually transferred to the Light Infantry under the Marquis de Lafayette and was present at the capture of Cornwallis in Virginia. In 1783, he mustered out of Major Knapp's 5th Regiment at Newburgh, New York, near West Point. What had begun as a 9-month enlistment, had stretched into almost five years of military service.
Upon his return to Mashpee territory, Wickham became involved in political affairs. He was one of 23 community members to sign an October 31, 1788 statement in support of the appointment of Reuben Fish and John Percival as guardians to the Mashpee, thereby inserting himself into the middle of a long-standing dispute between the tribe and the Rev. Gideon Hawley. Hawley, in a response to the petition, questioned Wickham's standing in the community and suggested that Wickham's signature was suspect because he was supposedly " gone to sea on a foreign voyage several weeks before it (the petition) is said to be signed".
At some point after Isaac's return from the war, he married Susannah Nautumpum, the daughter of Gideon and Deliverance Nautumpum.
Wickham and his wife were signatories on a December 1807 petition remonstrating against the recent request for an alteration in the form of government at Mashpee. The couple and two children (one of whom may have been Abigail Wickham) resided on Mashpee lands and were enumerated in an 1808 census of the community. Several years later they signed additional petitions, with others from the community, asking for the removal of their overseers and the right to choose their own.
By the spring of 1818, at the age of 57, Wickham had submitted an application for a military pension. These efforts continued for a number of years. Wickham supplied supplemental documentation in August 1820 in which he provided a brief description of his condition and estate:
one old house 10 by 14 feet one story, one cow purchased last fall with my pension money, one pig four old chains, one iron pot, one dish kettle, one small table, one tin kettle, 1 spider, 1 chest, 1 wife - 42 years old, own no land and have nothing due to me, but owe some small debts; and that I pursue the occupation of a farmer. Through chronic lameness I am not able to do any labor.
On December 31, 1830, Wickham and fellow Mashpee, Nathan Pocknet, provided affidavits in support of the heirs of other veterans (Job Tobias, Jabez Jolly, Jacob Keeter, Isaac Swift, Simon Popmonet, and James Keeter) in their efforts to obtain some pension or bounty funds from the United States government. All except James Keeter had died prior to the establishment of the Revolutionary War Pension Records and Bounty Land Warrants Act.
As a Mashpee resident Isaac Wickham was a signatory to a January 1834 Mashpee petition written by William Apes. Wickham's name was added to that of 288 other Mashpee residents and community members complaining of a number of longstanding grievances against the overseers and the Congregational missionary to the tribe. A compilation of Mashpee vital records later that same year described Wickham as "an Indian from Pembroke, a petitioner".
Interestingly, Wickham also signed two petitions in support of the Rev. Phineas Fish and in direct opposition to the above-mentioned Apes' petition that he signed. He was among 11 other community members who signed both. Whether this represented a change of heart, an ignorance to the content of the petition, or an unauthorized signature, one can only speculate.
However, Isaac Wickham was listed among 40 other voters at Mashpee in a December 1835 report of Daniel B. Amos in opposition to the Congregational minister Phineas Fish.
By 1840, the household of Isaac Wickham consisted of himself, his wife and a young girl under the age of ten, possibly a granddaughter. Neighbors to the families of Joseph Tobias and Joseph Gardner, Jr., Isaac was enumerated in the Federal Census as the head of a household, 78-year-old pensioner. Isaac Wickham died December 14, 1842. His last pension payment was made during the first quarter of 1843, ostensibly to his widow or heirs.
Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988, Vol. 1, Ancestry; Revolutionary War Pensions, Massachusetts, Isaac Wickham, Fold3; Remonstrance of Mashpee Proprietors and Others to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1788.10.31.00; Petition of Gideon Hawley to the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1789.01.00.00; Petition of Gideon Nautumpum and Other Mashpee Indians to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1807.00.00.00; Misc. Bound Docs. 1808, MHS, Boston, MA; Petition of Moses Pocknet and Other Mashpee Indians to the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1811.01.28.00; Revolutionary War Pensions, Massachusetts, Job Tobias, Fold3; Memorial of Phineas Fish to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1833.12.30.00; Petition of Nathan Pocknet and Other Mashpee Indians to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1834.01.01.00; Petition of the Mashpee Indians to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1834.01.29.00; Harvard University. Corporation. Papers relating to the Marshpee Indians, 1811-1841: Harvard University Archives; 1840 United States Federal Census, Marshpee, Barnstable, Massachusetts, Ancestry; Final Payment Vouchers Index for Military Pensions, 1818-1864, Massachusetts, Isaac Wickham, Fold3