Famous Unrelated Petelles.

John Petell of Boston.

A bronze plaque inscribed "John Petell – 1724" is fastened to box pew #51 in the Old North Church (Christ Church) on Salem Street in Boston, Massachusetts. It led to a playful assertion that an ancestor stole a horse and loaned it to Paul Revere for his famous ride.

While many of us have made the pilgrimage to the church, there is no evidence of a relationship (or the validity of the "loaned" horse). This John Petell would have been a centenarian during the American Revolution, an unlikely prospect.

Several extracted records point to John Petell coming from the Channel Islands just off of Normandy, France. Considering his date of emigration and the births of his children, he was likely born around 1670. He and wife Rachel had several children including John (1702), Rachel (1703), Susanna (1704), Elias (1712), Noah (1714), Peter (1716) and Martha. Uncle Wally found information about this line while researching in a local library, perhaps from Marion Turk's The Quiet Adventurers in North America.

From Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society we learn that in 1723 he purchased a pew to support the Second Episcopal society which worshipped in North Church. He was one of a group of French Protestants who petitioned the crown of Great Britain to become British subjects. They had been forced out of Catholic France for practicing the Protestant religion and while in the British colony had paid all rate and taxes for over 40 years. The petition was made in 1731 which suggests he emigrated as early as 1690.