The next new Early New England Families Study Project sketch to be uploaded will be for Roger Goodspeed of Barnstable. Roger is a first-generation immigrant who arrived in New England sometime before December 1641, when he was married in Barnstable to Alice/Allis Layton.
Roger and Alice settled and lived in Barnstable for the rest of their lives; they had twelve children. Their daughter Ruth has a cross connection to Early New England Families subject Nathaniel Bacon through Nathaniel’s second wife, Hannah Lambert/Lumbert?, who became the third wife of Ruth’s widower, John Davis! Roger and Alice’s granddaughter, Alice Goodspeed, married Benjamin Shelley, son of Robert Shelley.
Cross connections among the Early New England Families will be popping up frequently as we complete more sketches, and it will be a challenge to keep track of them. Here are a few that have already popped.
Nathaniel Bacon’s daughter Mary Bacon married George Lane’s son Josiah Lane.
John Winthrop the Younger was brother of Henry Winthrop and brother-in-law of Elizabeth (Fones) (Winthrop) (Feake) Hallett. John and Henry’s sister Mary Winthrop was the first wife of Samuel Dudley. Samuel’s sister Patience Dudley married Daniel Denison, and his half-brother Paul Dudley married Mary, daughter of John Leverett.
Cross connections among the Early New England Families will be popping up frequently…
Elizabeth Weld, wife of Edward Denison (Daniel’s brother), was a half-sister to the wife of a son of Thomas Starr. Rev. Peter Hobart’s daughter Rebecca Hobart married Daniel Mason, widower of Edward Denison’s daughter Margaret. Dorothy (Weld) Denison, widow of Edward’s son William Denison, married second to Samuel Williams, whose second wife, Mary (Payson) Capen, was the widow of John Capen. John and Mary (Payson) Capen’s daughter, Mary, married Hopestill Foster, who was a cousin of Thomas Stowe, whose son Samuel Stowe married Elizabeth, daughter of John Stone.
Brothers Edward and Thomas Bulkeley were first cousins to Oliver Mellowes. Jonas Clark’s son Thomas Clark married Edward Bulkeley’s daughter, Mary. The widow of Oliver’s son John Mellowes married Deane Winthrop, half-brother of John and Henry.
Joshua Holgrave and Hilliard Veren married sisters, Jane and Mary Conant. Thomas Dibble’s son Israel married Josiah Hull’s daughter Mary. Daniel Morse’s son Obadiah married Martha, daughter of Humphrey Johnson. Samuel Sherman’s daughter Sarah married Josiah Rossiter, son of Bray Rossiter.
I think those relationships are correct, but one does get a bit bleary trying to pick them all out.
Oh, what a tangled web… I ended up having to make a flow chart for some of my family connections spanning several generations. Cousins, however distant in relation and residence, seemed to have an affinity for one another.
Carolyn, My grandmother discovered she and my grandfather were 6th cousins.
Who else would we expect them to marry? There were only so many people in that era.
It is certainly true when some families settled in rural areas, there were fewer “candidates” available for marriage and cousins frequently married each other.
In tracing my family’s connections, it appeared that some of the cousin marriages were strategic. The most intricate ones solidified merchant families up and down the eastern seaboard.
I haven’t put the time into studying early Jewish families, but they certainly relied upon family connections for trade, too. There were interesting family and trading alliances because the Jews in Newport, RI and Charleston, SC were mainly Sephardic, while the communities in Baltimore, MD and Savannah, GA tended to be Ashkenazi.
Bruce, true, but social status, education, financial status, political status all played a part in certain families intermarrying. If you were a daughter of a governor, you were high on the list to marry the son of a governor, etc., and once the family connection is made, it gets reinforced by more connections.
Not as early as the Colonials in my families, but in neighborhoods of big families of 12 or more, brothers of one family married sisters of another family. This has happened in both my husbands and my family in the late 1700s into the 1800s & early 1900s. And I discovered well after my maternal Grandparents were long gone that they were 6th cousins once removed, I don’t think either of them knew it certainly it was never mentioned.
You mention the much married Elizabeth Fones who married Henry Winthrop. Her mother was the first wife of Thomas Fones, whose second wife was Priscilla, nee Burges, widow of Bezaliel Sherman c.1582-1618, whose brothers Edmund and Richard emigrated to New England. I descend from another brother, Samuel Sherman,
Michael, I’ll have to figure out a way to work that into the next update to EF sketches for John and Samuel Sherman!
I’m finding this out with our families now as I get closer to the early 1700 and 1600’s. Can be very confusing. In fact, my husband has an Anna Rising Conant in his line. But I’m loving it.
Charlene,
Yes, fun!
Do you have a list available of the families you will be studying? I’m most curious to see if John Whitmore is included. He appears in Massachusetts in the mid-1630s, moves on to be a first settler of Wethersfield, then Stamford, CT; where he was killed by Indians in 1648. His death and the search for the culprits is well documented. His body hadn’t been found for months, until Uncas stepped in to urge local Native Americans to show the location. An interesting story.
I am a 13th generation MA native (Plymouth County.) The families of both of my grandmothers rarely ventured beyond Plymouth County, with the exception of Barnstable County and what is now Norfolk County. My parents are both descendants of Stephen Hopkins and John Howland, just to name two of many common ancestors. I am a descendant of Roger Goodspeed through his son, Ebenezer. Ebenezer’s son married Hannah Phinney who’s mother was Sarah Lumbard. Ebenezer Goodspeed’s great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Goodspeed married Nathan Smith. Some of Nathan Smith’s ancestors were Rev. John Smith and his wife Susannah Hinckley (sister of Governor Thomas Hinckley), and Edward Fuller.
It is enjoyable to see all of these interlinking puzzle pieces click into place! Thank you Alicia, for the wonderful work that you continue to accomplish on the Early New England Families Project.