In December 1699, John Walker brought a servant boy named William Simpson into Kent County court without an indenture. The court judged the boy to be about thirteen years and six months old and ordered him to serve Walker, or Walker’s assigns, until age twenty-one.

This is the starting point for William Simson’s identity argument. If the servant boy is the later Mispillion Hundred landholder, the age estimate points to a birth about June 1686. The record does not directly name his parents or state his later identity.