Sears (John Winthrop) is born in Boston.

The son of Richard Jr. and Frederica (Leser) Sears, John Sears graduates from Harvard College and Law School and Oxford University, serves in the U.S. Navy, and marries Catherine Coolidge in 1965. He serves in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1965-68), as Suffolk County Sheriff (1968), chairman of the Metropolitan District Commission, and on the Boston City Council (1980-84). He lives at 7 Acorn Street. A descendant of John Winthrop and scholar of Massachusetts history, he runs unsuccessfully for mayor in 1967,* and governor in 1982,* when Boston Globe columnist Robert Turner writes, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether John Winthrop Sears is running for governor of the Commonwealth or . . . of Massachusetts Bay Colony.” Sears dies in Boston on November 3, 2014, and is buried in the family crypt in the Sears Church in Brookline.