John Hutchins was born in 1611 and died in 1686 at My Ladys Manor, Maryland, (United States). He was born, probably at Wood Burcotte near Towcester, Northamptonshire, England. He married Polly Strangeman in Virginia about 1650 (he would have been about 39 years old, a late marriage, for that era). John and his brother William are believed to be the first of four brothers to come to Virginia. John came in 1634 on the ship BONAVENTURE and settled in what is now Lancaster County, VA. The passenger manifest for the MV Bonaventure lists the name as John Hutchinson; he would have been about 23 years old.
Lieutenant Colonel Giles Brent paid for John’s passage from England. People who paid the passage for immigrants received land grants; so, presumably this was the reason Brent paid John’s passage. It is assumed that William Hutchins, who arrived in the Virginia Colony on the ship DIANA in 1618 at the age of twenty-one, was a brother of John. William was in Elizabeth Citie in 1624 and in the Census of Living in Virginia in 1623, as given in Hotten's Lists of Emigrants to America, 1600-1700.
Colonel Brent seemingly took some interest in the welfare of John and must have given him advice in settling, for in the next generation John's son William and Hugh Brent, presumably the Colonel's son, were settled not far apart in Lancaster County on a branch of the Corrotoman River (Nugetts CAVALIERS & PIONEERS, p. 224, 435-436.
The movement of these Hutchins to Virginia is documented by the records of the granting of land by "headrights". In the early days of the colony of Virginia anyone paying transportation for persons going to the colony "at his owne cost" was awarded for each person whose passage he paid a "headright" of fifty acres of land. Since passage costs were usually between five and six pounds it was quite a bargain for the one who advanced the money.
Colonists with the financial means listed for transportation themselves, members of their family, friends and servants. Among the headrights claimed are found persons of all social classes — nobility and gentry, yeomanry, indentured servants and negroes. But, the act of accepting transportation did not, apparently, in any way seem to burden the one transported with indenture unless it already existed or was entered voluntarily.
Some who came to the New World, with inadequate or limited funds to maintain themselves in the new country, entered into a state of indenture willingly to help get established. It was, in a way, a most convenient method of putting down roots in a new land. About 70% of migrants from England who came between 1630-1660 were indentured servants.
The claim for land by those paying passage across the Atlantic for others was not always made at once and the person transported may have arrived quite some years before; so the records of land grants cannot be used with any surety to date the coming from England. John and William were not the only Hutchins in the Virginia Colony when they arrived for by 1618 Robert Hutchins was in James Town and soon after his assumed brother Isaac Hutchins came to Virginia. It is possible that Robert and Isaac were cousins of John and William.
John most probably married shortly after he arrived but this wife's name is not known. This information is ambiguous and contradictory because John is recorded as marrying Polly Strangeman in 1650; so this earlier wife probably died young. He was the father of several sons including Nicholas, William, John Enoch, Thomas, Nicholas “The Quaker”, Thomas, Thomas, William, Zachariah, and Matthew Peter. The duplication of names might be erroneous or might be the re-use of names of infants who didn’t survive. Whether these offspring were by a first wife in the 1630s or by Polly Strangeman is not not known. In later generations a male Hutchins would be given the name Strangeman, probably after Polly’s surname. Of the daughters of John Hutchins (Polly, Elizabeth, Katherine), nothing is known.