Holbrook

Twelve generations, from a Somerset yeoman to Puget Sound. Thomas Holbrooke farmed at Norton Malreward and left his son William a lease at Compton Dando; William moved to Glastonbury, and his son Thomas sailed from Weymouth in 1635 with the Rev. Joseph Hull's company, his wife Jane and four children, to settle at "Old Spain" in Weymouth, Massachusetts.

Thomas's son Capt. John, a housewright, sat eleven years for Weymouth in the General Court and mustered a company in King Philip's War. The family moved on to Scituate and Cape Cod: Deacon Elisha was a mariner of Wellfleet, and his son Capt. Gideon a Plymouth shipmaster, master of the schooner Eagle and the brigantine William.

Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook went to sea at thirteen and whaled the Pacific out of New Bedford through the 1840s, once all the way round the world. He came home in 1850 with the California fever, and in 1852 took up a claim at the head of Penn Cove on Whidbey Island, where he farmed for nearly forty years. His son Richard was a steamboat master on Puget Sound and in Alaska; his grandson Richard Clifford Holbrook, a builder and diver, was a Navy engineer at Pearl Harbor and commanded a Seabee battalion in the Pacific.

The line at a glance

Thomas Holbrooke of Norton Malreward (d. 1571/2) > William Holbrooke of Glastonbury (c. 1551-1625/6) > Thomas, the immigrant (d. Weymouth, by 1677) > Capt. John (1618-1699) > John (1650-1731) > Capt. John (1686-by 1749) > Deacon Elisha (1716-1779) > Capt. Gideon (c. 1765-1842) > Capt. Richard Blackmer Sr. (1821-1894) > Capt. Richard Blackmer Jr. (1872-1923) > Richard Clifford (1902-1955) > Frances Fairchild (b. 1931)

The wives' families: the Pierces, the Chittendens of Scituate and the Cliffords are in this line. Five are lines of their own: Sarah Mayo's (Mayo), Nancy Ellis's (Freeman and Ellis), Harriet Lowe's (Low), Jessie Clifford's mother Mariah Bruner's (Bruner), and Lucille McMillan's (McMillan).

The weakest links

• Thomas of Norton Malreward > William (probable, about 85-90%): rests on William's 1617 deposition and the wills of Thomas (1571/2) and Edith (1592).
• John (1686) > Elisha (probable, about 95%): the Scituate birth is documented; the Eastham records show it is the same man.
• Elisha > Gideon (probable, about 80-85%): two compiled genealogies, supported by Gideon's Wellfleet birth and his ties to Elisha's son Eliphalet. No record yet names Gideon's father.

Open questions

• Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook Jr.'s second family: he died at Bismarck in 1923, a farmer of Pollock, South Dakota, with a wife, Maud, and two young sons. Who was Maud, and what became of Douglas and Donald? (A research thread.)
• Which of Capt. John's three wives was the mother of John (b. c. 1650)? By the dates, Elizabeth Stream (married about 1645, died 1688); no record names her.
• Who were Sarah Chittenden's parents?
• Was Gideon's mother Sarah Mayo? He was born about 1765, while she was living (she was named in her mother's estate division of 1760), and Elisha did not remarry until 1771. Her own ancestry is on the Mayo line page.
• Was Martha Holbrook, who married Sarah Mayo's brother Daniel in 1738/9, Elisha's sister Martha (b. 1721)?