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Jeromey,
I believe your information is in error. John was the first Balch to arrive in America in 1623 and was one of the original settlers at Salem. The following is taken from one of the histories of Salem (my references are at home).
"John Balch was born in 1578/9 at Bridgewater, Eng, Somerset Cty . He landed at Wesseguset, Sept 1623. He came to New England in the company of Capt. Robert Georges, son of Sir Fernandes Georges of Somersetshire, who with others had obtained a generous grant covering a large part of the New England coast. Capt. Robert Georges was a gentlemen adventurer, (a man of the court) of the Church of England and a soldier, not an earnest Puritan seeking religious freedom in the new world. He hoped to establish a little aristocratic England with English customs & form on the rough coast of the New World. The colonists who were farmers, mechanics and traders as well as "gentlemen" & "divines" arrived in Wessegusset, (now Weymouth) in late Sept . But the following spring, Georges with some of his folowers returned to England, "having found the state of things here," wrote Gov Bradford of Plymouth, "not to answer his qualities & conditions, having scarcely saluted the countire in his Governmente." Perhaps John Balch returned with him as there is an entry in the register at Cuthbert-at-Welles that he returned for a wife in 1625. He and his wife Margery Lovell made their way to the settlement on Cape Ann near the site of Gloucester.
Joined there by Roger Conant, a disaffected member of the Plymouth colony of Independents, after his enterprise at Cape Ann also went to pieces, four men were left to carry on, Balch, Conant, Peter Palfrey and John Woodbury. Led by Conant they went S & W to a place called "Naumkeg" by the Indians. (It was here that his son Benjamin was born.) Here they cleared the woods to plant an agricultural settlement and so became the founders of Salem, MA. These "old planters" as they were called, showed a religious tolerance unusual for the time . No one of these was said to take part in persecution of Baptists, Quakers and Witches. Balch and his wife, encouraged by White the first minister at Dorchester, helped Conant found the first Salem church in 1629. He took the oath of freeman in 1631. (only church members were freemen, which meant the church practically governed the town.) His third son was born at that time and named Freeborn."
Your George was likely his brother and may have arrived circa 1630 as you stated but I have no references to support that. As far as I know, John is the ancestor of all those claiming descendancy from the New England Balch line.
Mike
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