Peregrine White, Woodstock, Connecticut.

Peregrine White was born the son of Joseph White (1713-1794) and Martha (Sawyer) White (1719-1804) in Sutton, Massachusetts on August 10, 1747, and died in East Woodstock, Connecticut on August 23, 1834. He was a namesake and direct descendent of the first English child born to the Pilgrims in the New World in Cape Cod Harbor in 1620. Peregrine's name means "one who journeys to foreign lands," or, more simply, it is a French and Middle English word for "pilgrim." Peregrine also had a younger brother, Joel (1751-1836), who worked as a clockmaker. Peregrin is first listed as a silversmith and clockmaker, working in Boston from 1764 until 1774, when he moved to North Woodstock, Connecticut, where he established his shop west of Muddy Brook Village just East of the Village Corners where the Norwich and Woodstock Turnpike began. He purchased "a shop on the road from Nathaniel Child to Sturbridge with all manner of tools and implements" for working on metals. He had a partner early on by the name of William Morris. This early silversmith and metal shop developed into an institution for manufacturing tall clocks with full moons and elaborate appurtenances, highly esteemed and patronized for many years by all the surrounding country. On March 1, 1787, he married Rebekah Bacon of Woodstock. About 1779, he trained Asa Sibley and possibly Jacob Sargeant. He joined the Universalist Church in Oxford in 1793. Peregrine stayed active as a clockmaker until about 1810. In 1831, Peregrine was a member of the Putnam Masonic Lodge. A surveyor's compass dated about 1790 was made by him and is now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institute.