From Barbara Bartels’ notes:130
As a young man, he spent a year in Bermuda with a friend (Michael Wigglesworth) who was trying to regain his health. Sounds like a real holiday, but it probably wasn’t then.

…He removed to Hadley about 1675, having preached in North Brookfield a year or two with no great satisfaction. He was probably not an ordained minister, though the prefix Rev is sometimes found in the church records. He then taught school at Hadley and became a freeman there in 1676.

He was induced to move to Suffield in 1680 to serve as the community’s first minister. He was granted 80 acres of land and a house “forty feet in length by 20 feet in width, and ten foot between Joynts, and to shingle, and c;apboard the same and to set up a stack of chimneys: either of brick or stone as shall be judged more easy to accomplish, in exchange for £10 of the 30 we engaged for the present year, and to find all nailes for the shingling, and clapboarding ye same.”

In 1686 one acre of Steven Taylor’s meadow land was “taken by distress” and conveyed to John for unpaid minister rates due him. He must have had financial troubles, as in that year he spent 6 months of the year as a teacher at Hadley Grammar School.

But his old misfortune followed him. He antagonized his congregation and seems to have been in constant conflict with them. One opinion was “He may have had an unhappy temper, but it is not unlikely that the temper of the people was worse than his.” On 18 Apr 1690, the town finally voted to petition the General Court “against Mr Younglove’s preaching any longer amongst us.” His temper is said to have impaired his usefulness.

Worn out by his long struggle to support a large family, and broken-hearted at his failure in Suffield, he died 3 Jun 1690, just two months after the petition was made.

Sarah survived him by 20 years, caring for her children. It may be to the credit ofthe town that it provided for “widow Sarah Younglove” for many years after her husband’s decease.130
SOURCES ON FILE