Notable ancestors in the Holbrook-Low Colonial Tree

From the Holbrook-Low Colonial Tree (trees/holbrook-low-colonial-tree.html, version of early October 2026), kept as written so nothing is lost when the tree page is retired. Short life stories of ancestors whose lives stand out, grouped as the tree grouped them. The substance is on each person's page, and the profiles themselves are on the Notable connections page.

People are given with their archive page ID in backticks. Tiers in brackets: [D] documented, [C] compiled, [I] inference, [T] tradition, [Q] unproven, [F] family record. "Frances" is Frances Fairchild Holbrook (b. 1931), from whom the tree is drawn.

Fifteen men in Frances's direct line went by the title Captain. Four were sea captains, seven were militia captains, and for the other four the records found so far do not say where the title came from. Others rose higher in the militia: Col. Ebenezer Tyler, Major Nathan Low and Major Rowland Tyler. Pick a name for a short life story and the line of descent down to Frances.

First comers

Richard Warren (Richard Warren)

Mayflower passenger, 1620, and signer of the Mayflower Compact

He came on the Mayflower in 1620 and signed the Mayflower Compact, leaving his wife Elizabeth and their five daughters to follow on the Anne in 1623. Where he was born, and who his parents were, is still unknown. [C]

In December 1620 he was one of the ten men named in the shallop that went looking for a place to settle. At dawn on 8 December they were attacked on the shore of Cape Cod, when "there were foure only of vs, which had their armes there readie." Afterward "some coates which hung vp in our Baricado, were shot through and through," and they named the place "The first Encounter." Three days later the same party sounded Plymouth harbour and found "divers corne fields, and little running brookes, a place very good for scituation." Two other ancestors of Frances, John Tilley and John Howland, were in the boat with him. [D]

He drew land on the north side of the town in 1623 and was one of the Purchasers, the settlers who shared in buying out the colony's London investors. He died in 1628 before his share was paid, and his widow finished paying it. [C]

Nathaniel Morton wrote in 1669 that he "was an usefull Instrument, and during his life bare a deep share in the Difficulties and Troubles of the first Settlement of the Plantation of New-Plimouth." [D]

Through his son Nathaniel's daughter Mercy he is an ancestor of Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Benjamin Church, the King Philip's War commander, was his grandson. Frances descends from him twice. His daughter Mary married Robert Bartlett, and two of their daughters have descendants who married: Rebecca's grandson William Harlow and Sarah's granddaughter Mercy Rider. [C]

Sources: Mourt's Relation (1622), Dexter ed. 1865 (https://archive.org/details/mourtsrelationo00dextgoog); Morton, New-Englands Memoriall (1669) (https://archive.org/details/newenglandsmemor00mort_0); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 1-2 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0102newp); Caleb Johnson, MayflowerHistory.com: The Mayflower Compact (https://mayflowerhistory.com/mayflower-compact).

John Howland (John Howland)

Mayflower passenger who fell overboard on the crossing; the last of the Mayflower men at Plymouth

He sailed on the Mayflower as a servant in Governor John Carver's household and signed the Mayflower Compact. His parents are given as Henry and Margaret Howland of Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, and his brothers Henry and Arthur came over later and settled at Marshfield. [C]

In a storm on the crossing, Bradford wrote, "a lustie yonge man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion above ye grattings, was, with a seele of the shipe throwne into [ye] sea." He caught hold of the topsail halliards and hung on "though he was sundrie fadomes under water," until he was hauled back aboard. "Though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church & commone wealthe." [D]

A month after the Mayflower reached Cape Cod he was in the shallop at the First Encounter, with Richard Warren and with John Tilley, whose daughter Elizabeth he later married. [D]

He was one of the partners, with Standish, Brewster, Alden and Allerton, who took over the colony's "trade of beaver skines & other furrs." In 1634 a man named Hocking took his boat up the Kennebec above Plymouth's trading house. The man in charge sent two men in a canoe to cut his cable; Hocking shot one of them dead, and one of the dead man's fellows shot Hocking. Bradford does not name the man in charge, but later accounts identify him as Howland. [C]

He was a deputy to the colony's General Court for many years from 1641. The colony's record of his death in February 1673 calls him "a godly man and an ancient professor in the wayes of Christ" and "the last man that was left of those that came over in the shipp called the May flower, that lived in Plymouth." [D]

Sources: Bradford, History of Plimoth Plantation (1898 ed.), Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24950); WikiTree Howland-21 (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Howland-21); Wikipedia, John Howland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howland); Caleb Johnson, MayflowerHistory.com: The Mayflower Compact (https://mayflowerhistory.com/mayflower-compact).

Elizabeth Tilley (Elizabeth Tilley)

Mayflower passenger at 13, orphaned the first winter; wife of John Howland

She was baptized at Henlow, Bedfordshire, on 30 August 1607 and sailed on the Mayflower at 13 with her parents, John and Joan Tilley. Both her parents died in the first winter, and so did her uncle and aunt, Edward and Ann Tilley. [C]

She married John Howland, who had been in the exploring shallop with her father. About 1651 Bradford wrote that they "are both now living, and have 10. children, now all living; and their eldest daughter hath 4. children." [D]

She spent her last years at Swansea, where in December 1686 she made her will as "Elizabeth Howland of Swanzey ... being Seventy nine yeares of Age but of good & perfect memory." It charged her children to "walke in ye Feare of ye Lord, and in Love and peace towards each other." [D]

The will shared out her books: "Mr Tindale's Workes" to her son John; "Willson on ye Romanes" to her son Isaac, Frances's ancestor; her "great bible" to her son-in-law James Browne; and her "small Bible" and "mr Robbinsons Workes called Observations Divine & Morrall" to her daughter Lydia. John Robinson had been the Pilgrims' pastor at Leiden. [D]

She died at Swansea on 21 December 1687, aged 80. [C]

Sources: Pilgrim Hall, John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley Howland wills (https://mail.pilgrimhall.org/pdf/John_Howland_Elizabeth_Tilley_Howland_Will.pdf); Pilgrim Hall Museum, Elizabeth Tilley Howland (https://www.pilgrimhall.org/elizabeth-tilley-howland/); Bradford, History of Plimoth Plantation, Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24950); Wikipedia, John Tilley (Mayflower passenger) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tilley_(Mayflower_passenger)).

Philip Delano (Philip Delano)

Walloon Protestant from Leiden who came on the Fortune, 1621; the Delano of FDR's family

He was baptized Philippe de Lannoy in the Walloon church at Leiden on 7 December 1603. His parents, Jean de Lannoy of Tourcoing and Marie Mahieu of Lille, were French-speaking Protestants from Flanders who had fled Spanish persecution. [C]

He came to Plymouth in November 1621 on the Fortune, the next ship after the Mayflower, a single man of about eighteen. He may first have lived with his uncle, the Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke. [C]

He was a freeman by 1633, volunteered for the Pequot War in 1637 and was granted 40 acres at Duxbury. The court often used him to settle boundaries: about 1647-48 it named him, with John Alden and others, to settle quarrels between Samuel Eaton and his neighbours, Capt. Myles Standish and Love Brewster. [C]

In 1679, as foreman of a twelve-man jury that included two of his sons, he laid out a highway for George Soule, "twenty foot att the narrowest place on the greensword, bounded with diuers great stones sett in the ground." [D]

He died at Duxbury in 1681 or early 1682. His family had to settle his wishes among themselves, because his written memorandum seemed to differ from what he had said aloud "through some forgetfullnes of his Memory or humaine Infeirmitie." Under their agreement "the yoake of old oxen" was to be worked in common by three of his sons. [D]

The Delano name of Franklin D. Roosevelt's mother comes from him. Roosevelt descends from his first marriage, to Hester Dewsbury; Frances descends from his second, to Mary (Pontus) Glass. [C]

Sources: Wikipedia, Philip Delano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Delano); The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 11 (https://archive.org/details/mayflowerdescendv1112mass); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 5-6 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0506newp).

Elizabeth Walker (Elizabeth Walker)

Richard Warren's widow, made a Purchaser of Plymouth Colony in her own right

She married Richard Warren at Great Amwell, Hertfordshire, on 14 April 1610 and came to Plymouth on the Anne in 1623 with their five daughters. He died in 1628, and she lived another forty-five years as "Widow Warren." [D]

Her husband had died before paying his share as one of the Purchasers. In March 1637 the court made "Elizabeth Warren, widdow, the relict of Mr Richard Warren" a Purchaser in her own right, because "the said Elizabeth pformed the same after his decease." It also confirmed the lands she had given her sons-in-law Richard Church, Robert Bartlett and Thomas Little. [D]

She held land at Eel River and gave parts of it to her daughters' husbands. In 1635 her servant Thomas Williams, told by "his dame" to fear God and do his duty, answered that "he neither feared God, nor the diuell"; the court let him off with a reproof. [D]

She died on 2 October 1673, "an aged widdow, aged aboue 90 yeares." Frances descends from her twice, through her daughter Mary. [D]

Her mitochondrial DNA haplogroup, H1j10a, has been found in tested descendants of three of her daughters. [C]

Sources: Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 1-2 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0102newp); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 11-12 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo1112newp); Mayflower DNA, Elizabeth Walker (mtDNA) (https://mayflowerdna.org/wiki/index.php/Elizabeth_Walker_(mtDNA)).

William Pontus (William Pontus)

Leiden Separatist and early Plymouth freeman; Frances's ancestor three ways

He belonged to John Robinson's congregation at Leiden, where "William Pautes, fustian-worker, from near Dover," married Wybra Hanson on 4 December 1610, with William Brewster as a witness. Fustian was a stout cloth of linen and cotton. [C]

He was a freeman of Plymouth by 1633. In 1638 he gave up two lots, forty acres in all, granted him "long since," "for the more comodious receipt of people into the towne of New Plymouth," keeping his house and about five acres, and was granted six acres more. He helped repair the town's herring weir in 1639 and 1640. [D]

In September 1638 he sat on the jury that tried Arthur Peach and two other Englishmen for robbing and killing Penowanyanquis, a Nipmuc man. They were found guilty and hanged, and Bradford wrote that they "all in the end freely confessed." [D]

He died on 9 February 1653 with an estate of £12 17s: a chest and a box, a pot, a pewter platter, two chairs, "4 ould stooles," and "one old lanthorne a trewell and a lampe." His will left his house to his elder daughter Mary. [D]

His daughters Mary and Hannah married Philip Delano and John Churchill. Mary's daughter Rebecca Delano married Hannah's son John Churchill, her first cousin, and a later marriage joined the families again, so Frances descends from him by three lines. [C]

Sources: Plymouth Colony Records, vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0102newp); The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 11 (https://archive.org/details/mayflowerdescendv1112mass); Library of Congress, The Murder of Penowanyanquis and the Trial of Arthur Peach (2018) (https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2018/09/the-murder-of-penowanyanquis-and-the-trial-of-arthur-peach-plymouth-1638/); Sibert, William Pontus (https://sibertancestry.org/Alphabet/Howland/P/Pontus/WilliamPontus.html).

Thomas Holbrook (Thomas Holbrook)

The Holbrook immigrant, who came from Somerset with Rev. Joseph Hull's company in 1635

A Somerset yeoman's son, he married Jane Powyes at St John's, Glastonbury, on 12 September 1616. In March 1635 he was enrolled at Weymouth, Dorset, as "Thomas Holbrooke of Broudway aged 34," with Jane and four children, among the families sailing with the Rev. Joseph Hull. [D]

Thirty-one years later, "an old man of seventy-seven," he told a court that Mr. Hull's company landed at Dorchester on 7 June 1635 and went on to Weymouth after about a fortnight. [D]

The Weymouth land book of about 1644 lists parcels "first giuen to Thomas Holbrooke" on Round Island, "Kingoke hill," "the plaine" and the Westerneck, and in 1651/2 he drew a great lot beside Fresh Pond. [D]

Mollie's typescript puts his first grants in "Old Spain," the old name for North Weymouth, a name whose origin, the town's historian admitted in 1885, "cannot now be traced." [F]

He was a selectman in the 1640s and 1650s. In 1649 he was on the committee that laid out "the high way for the country, from Waymoth to Dorchest'r," four rods wide, and as a townsman he witnessed the Indian deed for Weymouth's land. [D]

He lived into his eighties. His will left his sword, gun and musket to his grandsons John, Peter and William, and everything else to his wife Jane for her life, asking his sons "to be helpful to her, as she is ancient and weak of body." He was dead by April 1677. [C]

His sons John and William both became captains, and his son Thomas settled at Braintree. Frances descends from the eldest, Capt. John. [C]

Sources: Nash, Historical Sketch of Weymouth (1885) (https://archive.org/details/historicalsketch00nash); Records of the Massachusetts Bay, vols. 2-5 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofgoverno05mass); Deane, History of Scituate (1831) (https://archive.org/details/historyofscituat00deane); Davis, Ancestry of Joseph Neal (1945), ch. XI (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89069671295).

John Cogswell (John Cogswell)

Shipwrecked with his family on the Angel Gabriel at Pemaquid, 1635

He was baptized at Westbury, Wiltshire, in April 1592, a son of Edward Cogswell. In 1635 he sold his homestead at Westbury and Westbury Leigh and sailed from Bristol on 23 May aboard the Angel Gabriel, with his wife Elizabeth and eight children. [C]

The ship was lying off Pemaquid, on the Maine coast, when the great storm of 15 August 1635 struck, and she "became a total wreck." Richard Mather, crossing on another ship, wrote that she "was burst in pieces and cast away." [C]

William Tarbox, a fellow passenger, remembered that "there was saved a tent of Mr. Cogswell's, which he had set up at Pemaquid, and lived in it with the goods that he saved from the wreck." His servant Samuel Haines remembered a "Turkey worked carpet" from the parlour table in England, which "came safe ashore." A bark carried what was saved down the coast to Ipswich. [D]

Ipswich granted him three hundred acres "at the further Chebokoe," now the town of Essex, and a house lot on Bridge Street. In 1637 he signed the Ipswich petition asking that John Winthrop Jr. not be taken from the town: "It was for his sake that many of vs came to this place." Three other ancestors of Frances, Robert Lord, Thomas Boreman and John Proctor, signed it too. [D]

He died at Ipswich on 29 November 1669 without a will. His inventory lists "one mosket, sword, belt and Rest," books worth £1, pewter platters, and "one Carpite, 3li." [D]

Sources: Jameson, The Cogswells in America (1884) (https://archive.org/details/cogswellsinameri00jame); Winthrop Papers, vol. 3 (1943) (https://archive.org/details/winthroppapersv3wint); Probate Records of Essex County, vol. 2 (https://archive.org/details/probaterecordsof02mass_0); Vital Records of Ipswich, vol. 2 (https://archive.org/details/vitalrecordsofip02ipsw).

Banfield Capron (Banfield Capron)

A stowaway at about fourteen, by family account; settler of Barrington and Attleborough

A family account written in 1817 says that at about fourteen he and three schoolmates hid in the hold of a ship the night before she sailed for New England, and that the mates and crew talked the captain out of turning back. Daggett's history of Attleborough (1834) has another version: he "came to this country alone when he was quite a lad, as a cabin-boy, to seek his own fortune." [T]

Where he came from was forgotten. The 1817 writer knew only that it was "the northerly part of England, and that the town joined Wales," and chose Chester from a map himself. [T]

He farmed for about twenty years at Barrington, then sold up "in order to move back into the woods, (Attleborough,) as it was then called, where he could get a greater quantity of land." Daggett says he "laid out the lands there." [T]

The 1817 account describes him as "of a middling stature, well-built, of a light complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair." [T]

He had twelve children and married at least twice, the last time in December 1735 to Sarah, widow of Deacon John Daggett. [C]

He died on 20 August 1752, "being about ninety years old. Some think he was considerably older," though the figure was worked back from the birth of his eldest child. [C]

Sources: Holden, Capron Genealogy (1859) (https://archive.org/details/genealogyofdesce00hold); Daggett, Sketch of the History of Attleborough (1834) (https://archive.org/details/sketchofhistoryo00dagg_0); Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/genealogicaldic01savarich).

Founders, magistrates and ministers

William Collier (William Collier)

London merchant who helped finance the Pilgrims, then a magistrate at Duxbury

He was one of the London merchant adventurers who put up money for Plymouth Colony, and in 1626 he signed the agreement selling the investors' interest to the colony's leaders. In March 1630 two of the other London partners, James Sherley and Timothy Hatherley, wrote of him: "he could not spare money ... however, account of him as a sure friend." [D]

Bradford noted that Isaac Allerton had put £400 "into a brew-house of Mr. Colliers in London," though no London brewery can now be tied to him with certainty. [D]

In 1633 he came over himself with his family and settled at Duxbury. In 1638 the court ruled that Duxbury lands should go only to newcomers whom "Mr Collyer, Mr Partrich, Jonathan Brewster, & Wilim Basset" approved "to be fitt for their societie." He became an Assistant, one of the governor's council. [D]

Nathaniel Morton wrote that he had been "a good Benefactor to the Colony of New-Plimouth before he came over," was "a very useful Instrument ... in the place of Magistracy," and "lived a godly and holy life untill old Age." [D]

James Cudworth, who opposed the colony's laws against Quakers, complained in 1658 that "Mr. Collier, last June, would not sit on the bench, if I sat there." Collier's daughter Mary married Governor Thomas Prence, and Prence was one of the men who settled Collier's estate after his death in 1671. [D]

Sources: Bradford, Of Plimmoth Plantation, vol. 2 (https://archive.org/details/historyofplymout02brad); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 1-2 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0102newp); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 5-6 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0506newp); Bishop, New England Judged (https://archive.org/details/newenglandjudged00bishuoft).

Gov. Thomas Prence (Thomas Prence)

Governor of Plymouth Colony for nearly twenty years

The son of a London carriage maker, he came to Plymouth on the Fortune in 1621. In 1624 he married Patience Brewster, a daughter of Elder William Brewster, and after her death he married Mary Collier, daughter of the London backer William Collier, in 1635. He married twice more. [C]

He was governor of Plymouth Colony in 1634 and 1638, and then every year from 1657 until his death in 1673. He was also a founder of Eastham on Cape Cod. [C]

Quaker writers remembered him harshly. George Bishop, a hostile and partisan witness, quotes him as saying the Quakers "deserved to be destroyed, they, their wives, their children, their houses and lands, without pity or mercy," and reports an Indian saying about the seizure of Quaker goods: "All one a thief as Governor Prince." [D]

In March 1667, at a court held before him as governor, Arthur Howland Jr. was fined £5 "for inveigling of Mistris Elizabeth Prence and makeing motion of marriage to her, and prosecuting the same contrary to her parrents likeing." He promised to "wholly desist." Prence's will of 1673 names "my Daughter Elizabeth howland." [D]

The colony's record of his death calls him "a terrour to the wicked," and the church record says he had "a countenance full of majesty" and "was very amiable & pleasant in his whole conversation." His inventory includes "100 of Psalme bookes," a silver tobacco box, and "1 paire of ffringed Gloves wrought with Gould and silver." [D]

Sources: The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 3 (https://archive.org/details/mayflowerdescendv3mass); Plymouth Church Records (https://archive.org/details/plymouthchurchre22firs); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 3-4 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0304newp); Bishop, New England Judged (https://archive.org/details/newenglandjudged00bishuoft); Wikipedia, Thomas Prence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Prence).

Edmund Freeman (Edmund Freeman)

First named of the ten founders of Sandwich, 1637

He was baptized at Pulborough, Sussex, on 25 July 1596. Described as "of London, Merchant," he came over on the Abigail in 1635 and settled first at Saugus, now Lynn. A history of Lynn says he presented the colony with twenty corslets, pieces of plate armour. [C]

On 3 April 1637 he was the first named of the ten men allowed to settle Sandwich, on Cape Cod, and from 1640 to 1646 he was an Assistant, one of the governor's council. [D]

In 1642, while an Assistant, he was presented "for lending a gun to an Indian," which colony law forbade; the charge was discharged. Edward Winslow told John Winthrop in 1646 that the voters had left him out "in regard of his professed Anabaptistry and separacion from the Churches." In 1651 he and his wife were presented "for not frequenting the publick worship of God," and in 1659 his statement in court freed a jailed Quaker, Thomas Greenfield. [D]

His grandson Matthias Ellis lived with him until he "came unto man's estate," and in 1679 Edmund gave him land, "being my kinsman in blood, that is to say my grandson," for "being a support unto me in my old age and weakness." [D]

Frederick Freeman tells how he chose a pillion-shaped stone for his wife's grave and a saddle-shaped one for his own. The stones are still at Sandwich, with bronze tablets added in 1910. [T]

He died at Sandwich in 1682. His inventory lists a silver basin, a silver tankard, a silk cushion, a desk, "One dixionary & gt. Bible," and a gun. [D]

Sources: Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 1-2 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0102newp); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 3-4 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0304newp); Deed of gift to Matthias Ellis, Old Colony Deeds 5:169-170 (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-B35Z-6SSS); Historical Marker Database, Edmund Freeman (https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=120748); Freeman, Freeman Genealogy (1875).

Joseph Peck (Joseph Peck)

Deputy for Hingham and a founder of Rehoboth

He was baptized at Beccles, Suffolk, in 1587 and lived at Hingham, Norfolk, where his brother Robert was the rector. In 1638 the brothers came over together on the Diligent with a large company from that parish. Daniel Cushing's record has "Mr. Joseph Peck and his wife with three sons and daughter and two men servants, and three maid servants" settling at the new Hingham. [C]

At Hingham he was deputy to the General Court from 1639 to 1642, a selectman, a justice of the peace and an assessor, appointed among other things "to see people joined in marriage." [C]

In 1641 he was one of the main purchasers of Seacunk, which became Rehoboth, and he moved there in 1645. The Rehoboth records tell how on the way "they sheltered themselves and their horses in an Indian wigwam, which by some occasion took fire, and ... burnt three of their horses to death, and all their goods, to the value of fifty pounds." [D]

He wrote his will in his own hand. It leaves "my gould Ringe" to his son Joseph and "my two silver wine cupps" to John and Nicholas, and divides the rest among "my six sonnes ... the youngest and weakest to have as good a share as the eldest and strongest." He died on 23 December 1663. [D]

Sources: Ira B. Peck, Genealogical History of the Descendants of Joseph Peck (1868) (https://archive.org/details/genealogicalhist00peck); History of the Town of Hingham (1893), early settlers (https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~blackwell/books/ma/Hingham1893/h1settlers.html).

Rev. John Mayo (John Mayo)

First pastor of the Second Church in Boston

Baptized at Farthinghoe, Northamptonshire, in 1597, he entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1615. WikiTree, citing later research, makes him chaplain to William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, before he emigrated about 1638. [C]

He preached first at Barnstable and then at Eastham on Cape Cod. At Barnstable's thanksgiving in December 1639 the congregation "divided into three companies to feast together, some at Mr. Hull's, some at Mr. Mayo's, some at Brother Lombard's." The Mr. Hull was the Rev. Joseph Hull, who had brought the Holbrooks over in 1635. [D]

In November 1655 he was ordained the first pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later called the Old North, and in 1662 the church voted him sixty-five pounds a year. In 1664 he and Richard Mather ordained Increase Mather, who wrote of "my father and Mr. Mayo imposing hands upon me." [D]

By 1672 he "grew very infirm, insomuch as the congregation was not able to hear and be edified," and in April 1673 he moved to his daughter's at Barnstable. The church kept paying him until he died at Yarmouth in May 1676. Increase Mather wrote that "he was a blessing to his people." [D]

Sources: Robbins, History of the Second Church (1852) (https://archive.org/details/historyofsecondch00robb); Hawes, Thomas Howes of Yarmouth (1917) (https://archive.org/details/thomashowesofy00hawe); Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 (https://archive.org/details/foster-joseph-alumni-oxonienses-early-series-v-01-1891-92); WikiTree Mayo-13 (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mayo-13).

Thomas Riggs Sr. (Thomas Riggs)

Town clerk of Gloucester for fifty-one years

He was very probably the Thomas Rigg, son of Robert Rigg of Hawkshead in Lancashire, baptized there in March 1633, who in 1647 was bound apprentice in London for nine years to Richard Barlowe, a scrivener, through the Drapers' Company. That fits the Gloucester tradition that he was "educated in England for the profession of a scrivener." [C]

He was at Gloucester by 1658, when he married Mary Millett. He was town clerk from 1665 to 1716, fifty-one years, a selectman for more than twenty years, and the town's representative in 1700. [C]

In 1688 he and his brother-in-law Thomas Millett were fined over the town's refusal of one of Governor Andros's taxes. In 1693 the town excused him the poll tax as "decrepit in his lims," and in 1698 it made him schoolmaster at 1s 6d a day. [C]

A pigskin notebook inscribed "Thomas Riggs, his Booke, 1656" held twelve pages of shorthand that no one could read, and the rhyme "And if this booke whereon you Looke by Casualty be loste, restor to me, for I am he That knowe best what it Coste." A Boston paper described it in 1913; the authors of a 2007 study could not find it. [C]

The Gloucester Daily Times reported in 2026 that his house on Vine Street in Annisquam is of squared-log construction, with elements the paper dated to 1661, and that the city council approved a preservation restriction on it. He died on 26 February 1722, "town clerk about 50 y." [C]

Sources: Smith and Anderson, TAG 82 (2007) (https://www.alvyray.com/Riggs/printpapers/HawksheadRiggs_finalTAGversion.pdf); Babson, History of Gloucester (1860) (https://archive.org/details/historytownglou00changoog); Gloucester Daily Times, 8 June 2026 (https://www.gloucestertimes.com/news/local_news/property-owner-nonprofit-working-to-preserve-what-could-be-cape-ann-s-oldest-house/article_3596cf52-d8c8-496b-b775-be70c13bf3ee.html); Gloucester Daily Times, council vote (https://www.gloucestertimes.com/news/local_news/city-council-oks-preservation-restriction-on-one-of-cape-ann-s-oldest-homes/article_d388bb80-115b-489a-a6d1-10223c619264.html).

Deacon Elisha Holbrook (Elisha Holbrook)

Mariner and deacon of the Wellfleet church

Born at Scituate in 1716, a son of Capt. John Holbrook, he married Sarah Mayo at Eastham in 1742 and spent his life at Wellfleet, then the north precinct of Eastham. A Middlesex County lawsuit of 1766 calls him "Elisha Holbrook of Wellfleet in the County of Barnstable, Mariner." [D]

In August 1747, with his father-in-law Daniel Mayo as moderator, the precinct chose him and Zoheth Smith to petition the province to lower its tax, "more Especially by reason of the present Spreading of the Small pox amongst us." [D]

He looked after the meeting house. In 1760 the precinct voted that he "Should have four Pounds old Tennor for Sweeping and Looking after the Meeting house this year," and when it was enlarged with a porch and steeple in 1765 he contracted "to provide all the bricks, lime and other materials" for £16. In 1762 he was on the committee that helped get the precinct set off as the District of Wellfleet. [D]

He was a deacon of the church by 1771 and was probably chosen between 1763 and 1771. [I]

He died before June 1779, in the middle of the Revolution, without a will. His widow Priscilla complained that his son Eliphalet was holding back five bushels of salt, and found about two pounds left once the debts were paid. His son Gideon, then about fourteen, became a Plymouth shipmaster. [D]

Sources: The Mayflower Descendant, vols. 11-12 (Wellfleet precinct records) (https://archive.org/details/mayflowerdescendv1112mass); The Mayflower Descendant, vols. 13-14 (Wellfleet precinct records) (https://archive.org/details/mayflowerdescendv1314mass); Pratt, History of Eastham, Wellfleet and Orleans (1844) (https://archive.org/details/comprehensivehis00prat); Freeman, History of Cape Cod, vol. 2 (https://archive.org/details/historyofcapecod02free).

In court and in controversy

Jane Hawkins (Jane Hawkins)

Prophetess of St Ives and midwife of Anne Hutchinson's circle; banished from Massachusetts

She married Richard Hawkins at Bluntisham, Huntingdonshire, in July 1602. In April 1629, at St Ives, she fell "into a rapture or ecstacy" and spoke in verse for "three days and three nights in an auditory of very near 200 people," while the vicar and his curate wrote down "some thousands" of lines. The Bishop of Lincoln, who seized the papers, called her "a witty, crafty baggage" and wrote of the lines "which the poor woman (she is but a pedlar) did dictate." A week later he reported that the vicar had read out an acknowledgment of "the woman's imposture" in church. [D]

By about 1635 she was in Boston, a midwife among the followers of Anne Hutchinson. Winthrop says Mary Dyer's stillborn child of October 1637 was "viewed of none but Mrs. Hutchinson and the midwife, one Hawkins's wife." He called her "a rank familist" who "grew into great suspicion to be a witch," and repeated the charge "that she used to give young women oil of mandrakes and other stuff to cause conception." [D]

In March 1638 the court ordered that until she left, "shee is not to meddle in surgery, or phisick, drinks, plaisters, or oyles, nor to question matters of religion, except w'th the elders for satisfaction." She was banished then, and again in 1641, when her sons were bound to carry her away. [D]

She kept asking to come back. In 1650 she was allowed "to come & stay in this jurisdiction one moneth" to visit her children; in 1651 the court refused, "not knowinge how to satisfy themselues about this woman"; in 1655 she was given two months "to transport herselfe for England." In 1656 she was at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and a "widdow Hawkins," probably she, held land there in 1658. [D]

Her granddaughter Mary Hawkins married John Kneeland, a Scot of Boston, and Mary's grandson Samuel Kneeland became a Boston printer and newspaper publisher. [C]

Sources: Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1628-29 (https://archive.org/details/sim_great-britain-public-record-1625-1649-domestic-series_1628-1629); Winthrop's Journal, vols. 1-2 (https://archive.org/details/winthropsjournal01wint); Records of the Massachusetts Bay, vols. 1 and 3 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofgoverno01mass); Early Records of the Town of Portsmouth (https://archive.org/details/cu31924028840234).

Lt. John Ellis (John Ellis)

Lieutenant of the Sandwich company and keeper of an ordinary

Where he came from is unknown. By August 1644 he had married Elizabeth Freeman, Edmund Freeman's daughter, at Sandwich, and in June 1645 the court recorded: "John Ellis, of Sandwich, for abuseing himself wth his now wyfe by committing vncleanesse wth her before marryage, is censured to be whipt at publike post, and Elizabeth, his wyfe, to stand by whilst execucon of the sentence is pformed; wch was accordingly donn." He was fined £5 more "for his long and tedious delayes" in confessing. [D]

From 1653 he was lieutenant of the Sandwich company. That year the town gave him and two partners "all the whales that come up within the limits and bounds of Sandwich," at £16 a whale, paid a third each in oil, corn and cattle. [D]

From 1659 he kept an ordinary "for the entertainment of strangers and trauellers," but was "prohibited to pmitt towne dwellers to stay drinkeing vnessesaryly att his house." In 1668 Matthew Mayhew sued him "for detaining a cow sundry yeares" and was awarded "a sufficient good cow, of a reasonable stature, and not exceeding eight yeares old." In 1670 a Native man named William complained that "the oxen of Leiftenant Ellis had broken in to his corne att Breake Hart Hill." [D]

In February 1676, in King Philip's War, a town meeting called by him and the constable allowed Sandwich families "to repair to the town garrison for safety," and a watch was kept "beyond Lt. John Ellis' land." He was dead by June 1677, when his estate went to administration. [D]

Sources: Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 1-2 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0102newp); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 3-4 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0304newp); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 5-6 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0506newp); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 7-8 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0708newp); Freeman, History of Cape Cod, vol. 2 (https://archive.org/details/historyofcapecod02free).

Samuel Rider Sr. (Samuel Rider)

Lieutenant at Yarmouth, put out of office for resisting a press for the Lord Protector's expedition

He came from All Hallows parish in Northampton and was at Yarmouth on Cape Cod by January 1639. He was the town's deputy to the General Court and sat on the colony's council of war, and in June 1653 he became lieutenant of the Yarmouth company. [D]

In 1654 the constable came "in the name of his highnes the Lord Protector," Oliver Cromwell, "to presse men for an entended expedition." Rider was summoned "for his affronting the cunstable of Yarmouth" and "for vsing words vnto him tending to sedition." In March 1655 the court put him out of office and ordered that he "beare armes as a common soldier." [D]

The company split over him, "some being for him and som against him," and Robert Dennis produced a paper "shewing great abuse done vnto himselfe by the said Rider in many vnsufferable and provoking speeches." He was made lieutenant again in 1658. [D]

Near the end of his life, "very weake," he was asked about a meadow his son Zachariah had bought from him without a deed. "I sould it to him longe agoe," he said, and asked whether Zachariah should have assurance of it, answered "yes God forbid else." He died in late 1679. [D]

Sources: The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 11 (https://archive.org/details/mayflowerdescendv1112mass); Plymouth Colony Records, vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0102newp); Plymouth Colony Records, vol. 3 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0304newp).

Job Tyler (Job Tyler)

Andover settler whose complaint brought a neighbour to trial for witchcraft

His origin is unknown. He was born about 1619 and may be the Job Tyler admitted at Newport in 1638. He lived in turn at Andover, Roxbury and Mendon. [I]

In 1659 Job, his wife Mary and two of their children swore that "they saw a thing like a bird to come in at the door of their house, with John Godfrey, in the night," and that "the bird vanished as they conceived through the chinck of a joynted bord." In January 1666 he and John Remington complained against Godfrey for "severall acts which they conceave to be acts of witchcraft," each putting up £20 to prosecute. Godfrey was found "suspitiously Guilty of witchcraft, but not legally guilty." [D]

In 1662 his son Hope, about thirteen, ran away from his master Thomas Chandler of Andover, and Godfrey testified that another son, Moses, burned his brother's indenture "in the sight of his father." The Tyler house burned about then. Job later had to retract in public for calling Chandler "a base, lying cozening, cheating knave," and the arbitrators set the costs "considering Job's poverty and necessities." [D]

In 1665, as "Job Tyler, of Roxbury," he was fined for cutting and carrying off hay from the meadows of Owannamaug, a Native leader near Marlborough. In 1669, at Mendon, he told the selectmen that "if the Selectmen had more to say to him than he to them they might come to him." [D]

Several of his son Hopestill's family were accused in the Andover witchcraft cases of 1692. Edith Kermit Roosevelt, wife of President Theodore Roosevelt, descends from Hopestill. [C]

Sources: Clements Library, Accusation of Witchcraft 1665/66 (https://clements.umich.edu/from-the-stacks-accusation-of-witchcraft-1665-66); Records of the Court of Assistants, vol. 3 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcourtof03mass); Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, vols. 2-3 (https://archive.org/details/recordsfilesofqu02esse); Metcalf, Annals of Mendon (https://archive.org/details/annalsoftownofme00metc).

Deacon Thomas Low (Thomas Low)

Chebacco farmer who signed the 1692 petition for John and Elizabeth Proctor

He came to Ipswich as a small child, probably with his father Thomas, about 1636, and married Martha Boreman on 4 July 1660. They farmed at Chebacco, the part of Ipswich that is now the town of Essex. [C]

In 1669 John Chub was sentenced for killing Reynold Foster's horse. One witness "saw Thomas Low, jr., run at Renall Foster's horse with a pitchfork," and another heard "Goodwife Lowe" say "that their horse had bitten his horse." Chub "engaged to serve Thomas Low until he be satisfied for his engagement to the court for defraying his fines." That same year Low served a writ as deputy for Robert Lord, the marshal of Ipswich, another ancestor of Frances. [D]

In 1692, when John and Elizabeth Proctor of Salem Farms were in jail accused of witchcraft, "Tho. Low Sanor" signed the Ipswich petition on their behalf. John Proctor had grown up at Ipswich, and his sister Abigail was the wife of Thomas Varney, another ancestor of Frances, who signed it too. [D]

His will of 1708 calls him "ancient, crazey & infirm in body" and leaves his wife "a horse to ride on" and "two barrels of cydar." He died on 12 April 1712, aged 80. [D]

Sources: Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, vol. 4 (https://archive.org/details/recordsfilesofqu04esse); Salem Witchcraft Papers, no. 107 (John Proctor) (https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n107.html); Goldthwaite, Boardman Genealogy (1895) (https://archive.org/details/boardmangenealog00gold).

Captains and soldiers

Capt. Hopestill Foster (Hopestill Foster)

Captain of the Dorchester company, who had letters from King Philip

He came from Biddenden, Kent, at about fifteen with his widowed mother Patience on the Elizabeth in 1635, and settled at Dorchester. He was made a freeman in 1639 and joined the Artillery Company in 1642. [C]

He was a brewer, for thirty years a Dorchester selectman, and the town's deputy in 1652 and 1653. He rose from ensign to captain of the Dorchester company, and in 1670-71 the Dorchester church named "Capt ffoster" among its messengers to counsel the divided Braintree church. A historian of the Artillery Company called him "a man of judgment, and deserved popularity." [C]

He corresponded with Metacom, the Wampanoag leader the English called King Philip. In 1672 Philip wrote asking him for "five yards of White light collored serge to make me a coat and a good holland shirt." Three years later King Philip's War began. [C]

He died on 14 October 1676, two months after King Philip was killed, "Aged 56 Years," and is buried in Dorchester North Burying Ground. His will gave £5 toward the free school. [D]

His son John Foster, a Harvard graduate, opened Boston's first printing office in 1675 and cut the woodcut portrait of Richard Mather and the 1677 map of New England, both counted among the first of their kind made in the colonies. His profile is with the close kin in this tab. [C]

Sources: Dorchester Atheneum, Hopestill Foster (https://www.dorchesteratheneum.org/project/hopestill-foster-1620-1676/); Roberts, History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/historyofmilitar01robe); Records of the Massachusetts Bay, vols. 1 and 3 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofgoverno01mass); Records of the First Church at Dorchester (1891) (https://archive.org/details/recordsoffirstch00firs).

Capt. John Holbrook (John Holbrook)

Housewright, deputy and captain of Weymouth; led a company in King Philip's War

Baptized at St John's, Glastonbury, on 6 April 1618, he came over at about seventeen with his parents in 1635. He was a housewright, a builder of houses, and in a later historian's words "a very enterprising man of business," whose dealings in land were "quite extensive for his day." [C]

He was a freeman in 1640 and a selectman in 1648, lieutenant of the Weymouth company by 1664 and captain by 1676, and Weymouth's deputy to the General Court in eleven different years between 1651 and 1686. The town's schoolhouse of 1681 and meeting house of 1682 were built on land "bought of Capt. John Holbrook." [D]

In April 1676, in King Philip's War, the colony raised "three [companies] of foot under Capts. Sill, Cutler and Holbrook." He mustered his company at Concord on the 29th and wrote: "this Day have mustered my Company ... which are but very Small which is a great Discouragement to me ... I have neither Drume nor Collors." His orders were for 82 men, with 28 horses and 14 men to tend them, drawn from seven towns. [D]

He married three times, the third time to Mary, widow Loring, with a contract before marriage. He died at Weymouth on 23 November 1699, "aged about 82." His will left his pastor, Samuel Torrey, five pounds and "the Foot Company in Weymouth" three pounds, and his Scituate farm went to his son John. [D]

The will also says: "if my Indian Servant Anthony doth behave himself well, that he have his Freedom in twelve years after my decease." No record of Anthony's origin has been found. [D]

Sources: Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip's War (1906) (https://archive.org/details/soldiersinkingph00bodg_0); Records of the Massachusetts Bay, vols. 2-5 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofgoverno05mass); Nash, Historical Sketch of Weymouth (1885) (https://archive.org/details/historicalsketch00nash); Will of John Holbrooke of Weymouth, 1699, Suffolk Probate 14:111-113 (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9Y5-4W1L).

Capt. Michael Pierce (Michael Pierce)

Captain of Scituate, killed with most of his company in Pierce's Fight, 1676

He was at Hingham by 1653, when as "Michael Pierce of Hingham" he took an apprentice, and later settled at Scituate. When Scituate chose him lieutenant in 1666, the colony court answered that "wee haue not to object concerning him but that hee is a stranger to vs," and put someone else in charge. [D]

In 1669 the court made him captain of Scituate's company, with Isaac Buck, another ancestor of Frances, as his lieutenant. A London tract of 1676 calls him "Brother to Captain Pierce of London." [C]

On 15 January 1676, "being now by the appointment of God going out to war, against the Indians," he made his will. It left "my daughter, Abigail Holbrook five pounds" and "my daughter Mary Holbrook, twenty pounds." Abigail was the wife of John Holbrook, son of Capt. John of Weymouth. [D]

On 26 March 1676, near Pawtucket Falls, his company of English soldiers and Native allies was surrounded. A London account says he "cast his 63 English and 20 Indians into a Ring, and fought Back to Back." The Rehoboth minister Noah Newman wrote the next day that they "were enclosed with a great multitude of the enemy, which hath slain fifty-two of our Englishmen, and eleven Indians." Fifteen of the dead were from Scituate, among them Capt. Pierce and Benjamin Chittenden. [D]

Sources: Deane, History of Scituate (1831) (https://archive.org/details/historyofscituat00deane); Drake, The Old Indian Chronicle (https://archive.org/details/oldindianchronic00drak); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 3-4 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0304newp); Pierce Genealogy No. IV (1889) (https://archive.org/details/piercegenealogyb1889pier).

Lt. Isaac Buck (Isaac Buck)

Blacksmith, town clerk and lieutenant of Scituate

He was a blacksmith and for many years town clerk of Scituate. In 1655 he was fined 20s "for refusing to shooe horses which were to be ymployed to carry one of the comissioners to New Hauen on the countryes business," and at the same court, as clerk of the militia band, he was ordered to make "a publicke acknowledgement" at the head of the company for misbehaving at training. [D]

He was made lieutenant in 1669, under Capt. Michael Pierce. On 20 May 1676, when a war party burned much of Scituate and attacked the garrison at the mill, the attackers "were not repulsed until night close"; "Lieut. Buck had mustered all the men below." Afterward, Deane wrote, "Lieut. Buck was in constant service." [C]

Scituate's town records from 1665 to 1692 are in his handwriting. In January 1687, under Governor Andros, he certified an order read at town meeting, "per me Isaac Buck, Town Clerk." In 1660 he built a house near the harbour on what was still called "the Buck field" in 1831. [C]

He died in 1695 without a will. His inventory lists "Smith tools" at £5 19s, "Armes and amminition" at £2 10s, and "housing and lands" at £130. [D]

Sources: Deane, History of Scituate (1831) (https://archive.org/details/historyofscituat00deane); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 3-4 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0304newp); Byron Buck, Isaac Buck of Scituate and Some of His Descendants (typescript, 1988).

Lt. Isaac Howland (Isaac Howland)

Son of Mayflower passengers; served under Benjamin Church in 1676; innkeeper of Middleborough

A son of the Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, he was born at Plymouth in 1649 and settled at Middleborough on land his father left him. [C]

In the summer of 1676 he served with Benjamin Church. Church's narrative tells of a raid when Philip's people fled into a swamp, leaving "their kettles boiling, and meat roasting upon their wooden spits." Church "sent Mr. Isaac Howland with a party on one side of the swamp" while he ran the other, and at the far end many of the enemy "stood still and let the English come and take the guns out of their hands, when they were both charged and cocked." [D]

A Middleborough story printed in 1906 says that in June 1675 a Native man taunted the garrison from a rock across the river, and that Howland, chosen "for his skill as a marksman," hit him with a borrowed long gun at a distance given as 155 rods, nearly half a mile. No record of the time mentions the shot. [T]

Middleborough held its town meetings at his house in the early 1680s, hired him in 1683 to help build a fish weir at the bridge, and in 1686 chose him "to keep ye ordinary." He was the town's representative to the General Court in 1692. His mother left him her copy of "Willson on ye Romanes." [D]

He died at Middleborough on 9 March 1724, aged 74, and is buried in the Cemetery at the Green. [C]

Sources: Church, History of King Philip's War (1825 ed.) (https://archive.org/details/khistkingphilips00churrich); Weston, History of the Town of Middleboro (1906) (https://archive.org/details/historyoftownofm00west_0); Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 5-6 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0506newp); Pilgrim John Howland Society, Howland Quarterly (1937) (https://pilgrimjohnhowlandsociety.org/articles/16).

Capt. Peter Bennett (Peter Bennett)

Miller of Fall Brook and captain of Middleborough's first militia company

About 1692 he settled at Fall Brook in Middleborough, where he owned the water privilege and a grist mill. In 1700 he married Priscilla Howland, a daughter of Isaac Howland; they were fined because their first child was born five months after the wedding. [C]

In 1706 the town ordered every housekeeper to "bring or send in unto Peter Bennet six blackbirds heads" before mid-June or pay two shillings, and "one Crow's head shall be accepted instead of three blackbirds heads." He kept the count. [D]

He was a selectman in 1715 and on the 1716 committee that divided the town into quarters so that one schoolmaster could teach in each in turn. He followed Joseph Vaughan as captain of the town's first militia company. [C]

About 1735 he and Francis Miller asked leave to dam Fall Brook for a furnace. The Fall Brook Furnace, which the town's historian called "one of the first blast furnaces," was built there and later belonged to his son-in-law John Miller. [C]

The historian's list of members of Middleborough's First Church includes "Jenny, (Afr.), ... m. 1747, serv't. of Peter Bennet." He died on 22 October 1749, with an estate valued at about £6,098. [C]

Sources: Weston, History of the Town of Middleboro (1906) (https://archive.org/details/historyoftownofm00west_0); Sibert, Peter Bennett (https://sibertancestry.org/Alphabet/Howland/B/Bennett/PeterBennett.html).

Capt. John Holbrook (John Holbrook)

"Gentleman" of Scituate and Hingham who ended his days on Cape Cod

The grandson named in Capt. John Holbrook's will of 1699, he was born at Scituate in 1686, inherited the Scituate farm, and married Sarah Chittenden in 1709. His mother's father was Capt. Michael Pierce, and his wife's grandfathers were Isaac Chittenden and Lt. Isaac Buck, all three of Scituate. [C]

By the 1730s the courts call him "Gentleman," and at his death he was "Capt."; no commission has been found to explain the title. He was living at Hingham in 1735, when a Boston tavern keeper sued him for debt and then failed to appear, and when he and a Boston trader signed a bond for "Forty nine pounds one shilling" to a Boston shipwright. [D]

His sons went to Cape Cod first. Thomas married at Eastham in 1735, and by 1738 Capt. John was "now of Eastham" himself. His eldest son John went on to Maine and bought a house on Great Chebeague Island in 1742. [D]

He died at Eastham by early 1749, "Capt John Holbrook late of Eastham ... Gent Deceased." His son Elisha stayed on Cape Cod as a mariner and deacon at Wellfleet. [D]

Sources: Will of John Holbrooke of Weymouth, 1699, Suffolk Probate 14:111-113 (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9Y5-4W1L); Suffolk Court Records 1734-1735: Webb v. Holbrook (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSR7-MSP4-R); Suffolk Court Files no. 40652: the 1735 bond (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSRW-97ST-7); The Mayflower Descendant, vol. 10 (https://archive.org/details/mayflowerdescendv10mass).

Capt. Samuel Tyler (Samuel Tyler)

Captain, selectman and representative of Attleborough

At twenty, in 1715, he bought land of Matthew Short for £100, and in 1717 he married Mary Capron, a daughter of Banfield Capron. The Tyler family historian called him "far the most important early Tyler of the locality." [C]

He was a selectman of Attleborough in twelve years between 1724 and 1753 and the town's representative to the General Court in 1737, 1745 and 1747-49. In 1720 he and a widow divided Willett's Farm on the Seven Mile River, "originally laid out with great regularity, in parallel lines," and in 1751 he was on the committee to petition for a straight boundary on the old Plymouth-Massachusetts line. [C]

In April 1757 he was made captain of the First, or "South Town," company of the Attleborough train band. He made his will on 16 May 1759, the day before he died. [C]

The family historian counted "all his three sons becoming Revolutionary veterans, one being a lieutenant, and another major-general of militia; five of his grandsons also served in the Revolution, thus making eight all told, from this immediate family, of the ten Tylers furnished by the town to that cause." The major-general was his son Ebenezer. [C]

Sources: Brigham, The Tyler Genealogy (1912), vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/cu31924092510894); Daggett, Sketch of the History of Attleborough (1834) (https://archive.org/details/sketchofhistoryo00dagg_0).

Capt. Daniel Read (Daniel Read)

Captain of Attleborough; very probably the father of the composer Daniel Read

Born at Attleborough in December 1716, he married Mary White in 1741 and had eleven children. A Reed family history says that "the elder Daniel of this family was known, as was his father, by the appellation of 'Captain.'" [C]

In September 1775 his son David died on the 12th, aged twenty-six, his son Ezra on the 21st, aged fifteen, and his wife Mary on the 23rd. His daughter Hannah's husband, Ebenezer Tyler, lost three small sons in the same few weeks. [D]

Men named David, Joel and Peter Read of Attleborough, very probably his sons, served in the Revolution. David and Joel marched on the Lexington alarm in Capt. Jabez Ellis's company, with their brother-in-law Ebenezer Tyler, and Peter was a corporal on the Rhode Island alarm of December 1776. [I]

His son Daniel, born in November 1757, was very probably the composer Daniel Read (1757-1836) of New Haven, who wrote the hymn tunes "Windham" and "Sherburne" and published The American Singing Book (1785). A family history says this family's grandson Ezra worked "with his uncle, Daniel Read, in publishing musical and other works in New Haven." [I]

He died on 23 February 1801, "in his 85th y." [D]

Sources: J. W. Reed, History of the Reed Family (1861) (https://archive.org/details/historyofreedfam1861reed); Lothrop, The Nicholas White Family (1902) (https://archive.org/details/nicholaswhitefam00loth); Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, vol. 13 (https://archive.org/details/massachusettssol13mass); Hymnology Archive, Daniel Read (https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/daniel-read).

Col. Ebenezer Tyler (Ebenezer Tyler)

Minuteman of 1775 who rose to general of militia

A son of Capt. Samuel Tyler, he was born at Attleborough in 1740 and in 1762 married Hannah White Read, a daughter of Capt. Daniel Read. [C]

On 19 April 1775 he marched as a private in Capt. Jabez Ellis's company of sixty minute men. A survivor remembered that "we sat out at night," were fed at Dedham from "two tables by the road side," and at Roxbury "were then marched round and round Roxbury Meeting House, to make as much show of numbers as possible in view of the British." [C]

That autumn three of his small sons died within a week: Leander on 26 September 1775, and Rowland and Habijah both on 1 October. Twins born to him in 1780 were named Rowland and Abijah. [D]

Most of his later service was in Rhode Island: as a sergeant on the alarm of December 1776, as a lieutenant for almost three months in 1778, and twice on alarms to Tiverton in 1780. After the war he rose in the militia, captain in 1786, major in 1790 and colonel in 1799, and the family historian says he was "major-general six years" and "three times deputy to the General Court." [C]

He died on 29 January 1811 in his barn, "found dead upon the hay mow, with a pitch fork in his hand." [C]

The family historian reports that his sword, "captured from a British surgeon," was held by Gen. Mitchell of Bangor, his great-grandson. [T]

Sources: Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, vol. 16 (https://archive.org/details/massachusettssol16mass); Daggett, Sketch of the History of Attleborough (1834) (https://archive.org/details/sketchofhistoryo00dagg_0); Brigham, The Tyler Genealogy (1912), vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/cu31924092510894).

Shipmasters, builders and pioneers

Sgt. William Harlow (William Harlow)

Plymouth cooper, selectman and deputy; the Harlow Old Fort House carries his name

A cooper by trade, he married three times: Rebecca Bartlett, a granddaughter of Richard Warren, in 1649; Mary Faunce in 1658; and Mary Shelley in 1665/6. He was a selectman and deputy for Plymouth and a sergeant of its militia. [C]

His second wife died in 1664, and in 1667 Nathaniel Morton, the colony's secretary and later the author of New Englands Memoriall, took their son Nathaniel, "being now neare two yeares and an half old," to bring up until he was 21. Mary Faunce had been Morton's niece. [D]

In 1671 the court appointed him to view "the Damage done to the Indians by the Horses and Hoggs of the English," and to help buy the unpurchased lands at Sepecan. In 1691 a drift whale came ashore against a Plymouth pasture fence, and the town chose others to act in court, "seing serjant harlow & Joseph Bartlet did somwhat decline the Thing." [D]

Plymouth tradition says he built the Harlow Old Fort House in 1677 with timbers from the Pilgrims' fort on Burial Hill, taken down after King Philip's War. An architectural historian who surveyed the house in 1996 dated it to 1700 or later. The Plymouth Antiquarian Society opened it to the public in 1921. [T]

He died on 25 August 1691, "in his 67th yeare neere finished." [D]

Sources: Plymouth Colony Records, vols. 5-6 (https://archive.org/details/recordsofcolonyo0506newp); Records of the Town of Plymouth, vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/cu31924092203680); Wikipedia, Harlow Old Fort House (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlow_Old_Fort_House); Plymouth Antiquarian Society, 1677 Harlow House (https://plymouthantiquarian.org/?p=30).

Capt. James Ginn (James Ginn)

Penobscot pioneer, shipbuilder and merchant of Bucksport

He came of a Genn family of Virginia and Maryland. His father was probably Thomas Genn of the Choptank River in Maryland, a shipbuilder whose estate included "one new vessel frame under construction." In June 1768, at Gloucester, he married Anne Riggs, a great-granddaughter of the Gloucester town clerk Thomas Riggs. [C]

They settled up the Penobscot River in Maine. In July 1776 he was commissioned second lieutenant in Col. Josiah Brewer's Penobscot regiment, and he commanded the first militia company "established up the Penobscot." In 1785 "he had in his family, three men, two women and ten children." [C]

At Orrington he was plantation clerk and treasurer, and at Orland he ran Robert Treat's mill and built a brig and two schooners. In 1791 the county court charged him with "building a dam across Easton River and neglecting a fishway." [C]

In 1800 he moved to Bucksport, built a wharf and store, and was remembered as "the first importer of foreign goods into this town." On 12 May 1803 the Bucksport church was gathered in his great house while it was still unfinished, with "a temporary pulpit and seats ... fitted up for the occasion," and so many came from nearby towns "that it was with difficulty they could find places to lodge in the village." [C]

He died at Bucksport in April 1818, "Capt. James Ginn, aged 71." [D]

Sources: Bangor Historical Magazine, vols. 1, 2 and 4 (https://archive.org/details/bangorhistoricalv1bang); Maine Historical Magazine, vol. 9 (https://archive.org/details/mainehistoricalm18941895bang); Hancock County Court of Sessions index (https://www.mainegenealogy.net/hancock_sessions_record.asp?id=22); NEHGR 34 (1880) (https://archive.org/details/newenglandhistor34wate).

Capt. Gideon Holbrook (Gideon Holbrook)

Plymouth shipmaster of Manomet Ponds

Born at Wellfleet about 1765, a son of Deacon Elisha Holbrook, he went to sea and settled at Manomet Ponds in Plymouth, where he married Sally Clark in 1788. [C]

He was master of Plymouth vessels: the schooner Eagle in 1790-91, the brigantine William in 1794, and the schooner Endeavour, 96 tons, built at Plymouth in 1808, which he co-owned with Eliphalet Holbrook. [D]

After Sally died he married the widow Nancy (Ellis) Blackmer in December 1818, and in 1821 they named a son Richard Blackmer Holbrook, after her first husband. [D]

A Gideon Holbrook was a Plymouth selectman in 1817-20 and a representative to the General Court in 1819-20. On 1 March 1819 the selectmen, "Gideon Holbrook, James Spooner, Wm P. Ripley," asked the probate court to put the sailmaker Edward Doten under a guardian because "by his excessive drinking" he was wasting his estate. Whether this selectman was Capt. Gideon or his nephew Gideon Jr. is not settled. [I]

He died on 23 January 1842 and is buried at Manomet. His will left Nancy the use of his whole estate, "having entire confidence in her judgment & discretion"; his inventory included half a cider mill and pew no. 36 in the meeting house. [D]

Sources: Ship Registers of the District of Plymouth (1939) (https://archive.org/details/shipregistersofply00surv); Massachusetts Pocket Almanack for 1820 (https://archive.org/details/pocketalmanackfo1820amer); Plymouth Probate: the selectmen's complaint of 1 March 1819 (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L97D-8HMQ); Plymouth County Probate, will of Gideon Holbrook, 1841.

Rowland Tyler (Rowland Tyler)

Builder of the Dixmont Corner Church; said to have been taken prisoner at Hampden in 1814

Born at Attleborough on 2 February 1780, a twin and a son of Col. Ebenezer Tyler, he went to the Penobscot country of Maine in 1796. His twin brother, Dr. Abijah Weld Tyler, drowned in the Penobscot River in 1807. [C]

He taught school at Hampden, married Sally Ginn in 1804, and became the agent for Dr. Dix in settling the new township of Dixmont. He was also a major of militia and a deacon. [C]

A "Rowland Taylor" of Dixmont served at Hampden in September 1814, when British forces came up the Penobscot, and the History of Penobscot County (1882) says he was taken prisoner there. [T]

He designed and built the Dixmont Corner Church. Its National Register nomination calls it "among the earliest carpenter-gothic buildings in the Penobscot region, and an unusually sophisticated example for so remote a township," and adds: "The Bangor City Hall of 1812 is the only other work attributable to him." [C]

About 1840 he moved to Bangor and kept the "Tyler Stand" tavern there. He died at Bangor on 18 October 1872, aged 92, and was buried at Dixmont. An old pupil wrote: "If there ever was a true, noble gentleman, Rowland Tyler was one." [C]

Sources: NRHP nomination, Dixmont Corner Church (1983) (https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/83000468_text); Brigham, The Tyler Genealogy (1912), vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/cu31924092510894); History of Penobscot County (1882) (https://archive.org/details/historyofpenobsc00will).

Capt. Nathan Low (nathan-low-1804)

Deer Isle sea captain whose schooner was run down off Seguin

A farmer and sea captain of Deer Isle, Maine, and a son of Major Nathan Low, he married Hannah Read Tyler, a schoolteacher and a granddaughter of Col. Ebenezer Tyler; Mollie gives the date as 4 October 1832. A Nathan Low was selectman of Deer Isle in 1828-29. [C]

On 10 September 1874 the steamer Lewiston ran down his schooner Paragon off Seguin Island, at the mouth of the Kennebec. The schooner "was in ballast, and was valued at about $800." The steamer's officers said she "had her light on the wrong side"; the schooner's master said "the lights were correctly set." [D]

The Portland paper said the steamer's boats rescued "the captain and his father and brother"; the Ellsworth paper described the crew as "an old man and two boys." The papers disagree about who was aboard, and the master's name, given as "B. F. Law," is unresolved. [D]

He died a week later, on 17 September, "from the effects of exposure in the water." He was nearly seventy. "He leaves a wife and three children." [D]

Sources: Portland Daily Press, 12 Sept 1874, p. 3 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83016025/1874-09-12/ed-1/?sp=3); Ellsworth American, 17 Sept 1874, p. 3 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84022374/1874-09-17/ed-1/?sp=3); Daily Kennebec Journal, 19 Sept 1874, p. 3 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn82014248/1874-09-19/ed-1/?sp=3); Hosmer, Historical Sketch of Deer Isle (1886) (https://archive.org/details/historicalsketch00hosm).

Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook (Richard Blackmer Holbrook)

Plymouth seaman, gold-rush emigrant and Whidbey Island pioneer

Born at Manomet, Plymouth, on 7 August 1821, a son of Capt. Gideon Holbrook, he was named for his mother's first husband, Richard Blackmer. In the census of August 1850 he is "Richard Holbrook, 27, Seaman," at home with his widowed mother. [D]

By the family's account he gave up command of a ship to go to the California gold rush, traded produce by sloop out of San Francisco, lost his savings while sick with typhoid, and went north. [F]

The pioneers' necrology says he "arrived in California March 4, 1851, and came to Puget sound in April, 1852, soon thereafter locating on Whidby island." His donation land claim says he had lived on his claim there since 5 May 1852. On 24 December 1860, at Steilacoom, he married Harriet Phillips Low of Deer Isle, Maine, and they had four children, among them Mollie, who later compiled the family typescript. [D]

The family remembers that as county treasurer he kept the county's money in an old blue sugar bowl in the china closet. [F]

He died at Coupeville in May 1894 and is buried in Sunnyside Cemetery there. A later memorial marker reads "1830-1898," wrong on both dates. [D]

Sources: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18 Nov 1894, p. 11; 1850 U.S. census, Plymouth, Mass.; Find a Grave 11548347, Sunnyside Cemetery (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11548347/richard-b-holbrook); Mollie's typescript (project file).

Harriet Phillips Low (Harriet Phillips Lowe)

Deer Isle woman who went west in the 1850s; Whidbey Island's nurse

Born at Deer Isle, Maine, about 1834, a daughter of Capt. Nathan Low and Hannah Read Tyler, she was named, Mollie says, for her aunt's husband, Dr. John Phillips. [F]

About 1855 she went west with her first husband, Crowell H. Sylvester, a brother of Edmund Sylvester, the founder of Olympia. Mollie says her grandfather Rowland Tyler saw her off at New York, and that after "a few sorrowful and disappointing years" she earned her living with a sewing machine. [F]

The marriage was dissolved by a private act of the Washington territorial legislature, "Passed January 17th, 1860," which dissolved "the bonds of matrimony" between "Crowell H. Sylvester and Harriet P. Sylvester." [D]

On Christmas Eve 1860 she married Capt. Richard B. Holbrook at Steilacoom. The family remembers her arrival on Whidbey Island as a bride, the last leg by canoe through a storm, and a neighbour at Penn's Cove calling out: "Why, I thought you were an Indian woman, Mr. Holbrooks, I thought you had brought home an Indian woman after all!" For many years she was the island's informal nurse. [F]

She died on 26 November 1918 at her son's house on Mercer Street in Seattle. The Seattle Star called her a "Seattle pioneer," aged 84. [D]

Sources: Acts of the Legislative Assembly of Washington Territory, 1859-60, Private Laws p. 476; Brigham, The Tyler Genealogy (1912), vol. 1 (https://archive.org/details/cu31924092510894); Seattle Star, 27 Nov 1918, p. 3 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn87093407/1918-11-27/ed-1/?sp=3); Mollie's typescript, pp. 82-86 (project file).

Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook Jr. (Richard Blackmer Holbrook)

Steamboat master on Puget Sound and in Alaska

Born on Whidbey Island in September 1872, he went to Cook Inlet in Alaska as early as April 1896. When he married Jessie Lorene Clifford in Seattle on 28 September 1900, the paper said he "holds a responsible position as steamboat master on Puget Sound." [D]

He was master of the steamer Potlatch on the Hood Canal run and at one time of the State of Washington. An Alaska paper wrote in 1915: "For sixteen years Capt. R. B. Holbrook, as master of steamships, ran between Seattle and Hood canal ports without ever losing a passenger or damaging a ship." [D]

That year he and Capt. J. W. Mangan bought the steamer Tyconda for $14,500 and took her north to Cook Inlet. On 1 October 1915 she "burned to the water's edge" at Anchorage: "In charge of Capt. R. B. Holbrook. No insurance." [D]

In 1916 and 1917 he was a master on the boats of the Alaskan Engineering Commission, which was then building the Alaska Railroad, among them "B. and B. No. 3, Captain Dick Holbrook, running between Talkeetna and Croto" on the Susitna. In 1917 the Pioneers of Alaska at Anchorage elected him a member, noting that he had come "to Anchorage as soon as the town was established here." [D]

He is last found in November 1918, when his mother died at his house on Mercer Street in Seattle, and in the 1919 city directory as a master mariner. By 1922 Jessie was being called a widow, but when and where he died is still unknown. [D]

Sources: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7 Oct 1900, p. 14 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045604/1900-10-07/ed-1/?sp=14); Douglas Island News, 15 Dec 1915, p. 5 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84021930/1915-12-15/ed-1/?sp=5); Valdez Daily Prospector, 1 Oct 1915, p. 1 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn98060264/1915-10-01/ed-1/?sp=1); Anchorage Daily Times, 29 July 1916, p. 3 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/2019271005/1916-07-29/ed-1/?sp=3); Anchorage Weekly Times, 12 Sept 1917, p. 5 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/2019271426/1917-09-12/ed-1/?sp=5); Seattle Star, 27 Nov 1918, p. 3 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn87093407/1918-11-27/ed-1/?sp=3).

Richard Clifford Holbrook (Richard Clifford Holbrook)

Seaman and Navy engineer at Pearl Harbor and on Guam; Frances's father

Born in Seattle on 12 July 1902, a son of Capt. Richard B. Holbrook Jr. and Jessie Clifford, he grew up in western Washington, in Seattle, Kitsap County and Grays Harbor County. In 1925 and 1926 the Seattle directories list him as a mariner, living at the family house on Mercer Street. [D]

In May 1927 he married Lucille M. McMillan of Tacoma, and their daughter Frances was born at Tacoma in 1931. He was a Navy Seabee (construction battalion) veteran, and the 1940 census lists him as an associate engineer with the Navy, a civilian post. [C]

He was at Pearl Harbor by 1941. Frances remembers him going down into the harbor for days at a stretch after the attack and coming home black with soot. [F]

From 1949 to 1951 he was on Guam, where the family credits him with the "first dam on Guam"; the Navy's Fena dam, finished in 1951, is the likeliest candidate. In December 1951 he left for the Naval Ammunition Depot at Shumaker, Arkansas. He died at Hot Springs, Arkansas, on 30 November 1955, aged 53. [C]

Sources: Seattle city directories, 1925 and 1926; 1940 U.S. census; passenger manifests, 1941 and 1949-51; Collins_Reed_Master_Family_Tree (project file); collins-reed-family-history.md (project file).

The tree's shorter list of notable ancestors

On the first ships

• Richard Warren (Richard Warren): Mayflower, 1620. Signed the Mayflower Compact and was in the exploring party at the First Encounter.
• John Howland (John Howland): Mayflower, 1620. Thrown overboard in a storm on the crossing; he caught the topsail halyards and was hauled back aboard (Bradford).
• Elizabeth Tilley (Elizabeth Tilley): Mayflower, 1620, aged 13. Both her parents died the first winter; she married John Howland.
• John Tilley (John Tilley): Mayflower, 1620. In the First Encounter party with Howland and Warren; died the first winter.
• Joan Hurst (Joan Hurst): Mayflower, 1620. Died the first winter.
• Elizabeth Walker (Elizabeth Walker): Came on the Anne, 1623, with five daughters. The court made her a Purchaser of the colony in her own right in 1637; she died in 1673 "aged aboue 90 yeares."
• Robert Bartlett (Robert Bartlett): Anne, 1623. Wine cooper; married Mary Warren.
• Philip Delano (Philip Delano): Fortune, 1621. Baptized Philippe de Lannoy in the Walloon church at Leiden; the Delanos of Franklin Roosevelt's mother take their name from him.
• Gov. Thomas Prence (Thomas Prence): Fortune, 1621. Governor of Plymouth Colony in 1634, 1638 and 1657-1673.
• William Bassett (William Bassett): Fortune, 1621. A master mason from Sandwich, Kent, who had lived at Leiden.
• William Pontus (William Pontus): Member of John Robinson's Leiden congregation; married there in 1610 with William Brewster as a witness.

Founders and leaders

• Edmund Freeman (Edmund Freeman): First named of the ten men who settled Sandwich in 1637; Assistant of Plymouth Colony; gave the colony twenty corslets of armour.
• William Collier (William Collier): London merchant who helped finance the Pilgrims; settled at Duxbury in 1633.
• Rev. John Mayo (John Mayo): First pastor of the Second (Old North) Church in Boston; helped ordain Increase Mather in 1664.
• Thomas Lamb (Thomas Lamb): Came with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630; a founder of the Roxbury church.
• Thomas Holbrook (Thomas Holbrook): Came in 1635 with Rev. Joseph Hull's company from Weymouth, Dorset; selectman of Weymouth.
• Joseph Peck (Joseph Peck): Deputy to the General Court and a founder of Rehoboth; on the way there his party lost three horses and all their goods when the wigwam they sheltered in caught fire.
• Capt. Hopestill Foster (Hopestill Foster): Captain at Dorchester; in 1672 King Philip asked him for serge "to make me a coat."
• Thomas Riggs Sr. (Thomas Riggs): Town clerk of Gloucester for 51 years; very probably trained in London as a scrivener's apprentice.

Caught up in the events of their day

• John Proctor Sr. (John Proctor): Came in 1635 on the Susan and Ellen; father of John Proctor, hanged at Salem in 1692.
• Jane Hawkins (Jane Hawkins): Midwife of Anne Hutchinson's circle; Winthrop called her "a rank familist." Banished from Massachusetts in 1638 and 1641.
• Job Tyler (Job Tyler): His 1659 complaint about "a thing like a bird" that came in with John Godfrey led to a witchcraft trial; his family was caught up in the Andover accusations of 1692.
• John Cogswell (John Cogswell): Wrecked with his wife and eight children on the Angel Gabriel at Pemaquid in the storm of August 1635.
• Rachel Martin (Rachel Martin): Came on the Elizabeth in 1635 at about seventy.
• Capt. Michael Pierce (Michael Pierce): Killed with most of his company in Pierce's Fight, 26 March 1676, in King Philip's War.
• Isaac Chittenden (Isaac Chittenden): Killed defending Scituate in 1676; his son Benjamin died in Pierce's Fight.
• Deacon Thomas Low (Thomas Low): Signed the 1692 Ipswich petition for John and Elizabeth Proctor.
• Sgt. David Low (David Low): Went on Sir William Phips's expedition against Quebec in 1690.
• Banfield Capron (Banfield Capron): By family account, stowed away for New England at about 14; died in 1752 "aged 92 years."

Later generations

• Capt. James Ginn (James Ginn): Early settler on the Penobscot; built ships at Orland and in 1803 the great house at Bucksport where the town's church was gathered.
• Capt. Nathan Low (nathan-low-1804): Sea captain of Deer Isle; died in 1874 after a steamer ran down his schooner off Seguin.
• Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook (Richard Blackmer Holbrook): Whidbey Island pioneer of 1852; as county treasurer he kept the county's money in a blue sugar bowl (family account).
• Richard Clifford Holbrook (Richard Clifford Holbrook): Navy engineer at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and on Guam in 1949-51.