John McConihe (d. 1760), Nutfield Settler

A guest sketch by James H. McConihe, a direct descendantThe reason this sketch did not get written sooner is that John McConihe is hard to find in the records — not because he wasn't there, but because the early Londonderry clerks could not agree on how to spell his name.The name twelve clerks could not agree onAcross the Early Records of the Town of Londonderry, Windham and Derry, N.H., 1719–1745, edited by George Waldo Browne (Manchester Historic Association, Vol. I 1908, Vol. II 1911), the early town clerks took roughly nine separate runs at John's surname and produced roughly nine separate spellings: Conoghy, Conehey, Conechy, Conochey, Conachey, Conahie, Mckonoihy, McConihe, and — when he signed the Provincial Oaths of Allegiance with his X mark — simply Conihe. The Willey map of Nutfield adds a tenth, "McConoghy," and a 1729 laying-out throws in "MacConechy" for good measure. Even Rev. Edward L. Parker himself, recording the official Schedule of Proprietors of the Royal Charter…