Arrived in the first Winthrop Fleet in 1630. The passenger list includes wife Sarah and children: John, Josiah, James and a Phineas Converse.

He was a ferryman. He was granted a charter to operate a ferry between Charlestown and Boston.

He was one of the founders of Woburn, MA in spite of strong pressure:
“... Winthrop also looked upon the departure of Puritan families to Rhode Island, Connecticut and other places as an attack upon the ‘liberty’ of the community, and he assailed the inhabitants of certain townships for their lack of moral obigation to remain and support their communities. ... At the town level, selectmen and church leaders also expressed the same fear of sudden and unplanned departures of families. They protested the hasty decision of more than thirty Charlestown families to create in 1641 the township of Woburn. Although it was only a few miles northwest of Charlestown, it founding brought a strong reaction from civic and church leaders who delcared that such a large migration would ‘depopulate’ the peninsula. While their fears were exaggerated, still the loss of such substantial figures as Captain Edward Johnson, the author of Wonder-Working Providence, and Edward Converse, a selectman in Charlestown from 1634 until his departure, weakened the leardership fo the town.”1270