Banfield Capron

In Rehoboth and Attleborough by about 1680. His daughter Elizabeth was born 22 Oct 1684 (Rehoboth VR). His will, dated 8 Apr 1747, names “Mary Tiler” (WikiTree, citing Bristol Probate 13:258-261). Holden lists twelve children: Banfield, Joseph, Edward, Walter, John, Jonathan, Betsey, Mary, Hannah, Margaret, Sarah and “A daughter.”

The stowaway story is family tradition, from Philip Capron’s account of 1817, printed by Holden (pp. 7-8). If he was about fourteen and born about 1660, the crossing was about 1675. “He, with three other youths, each about 14 years old, and all schoolmates … privately concealed themselves in the hold of the vessel … The captain said he must return with them, for it was against the law … But both of the mates, and all the ship’s crew, thought it best to proceed on”. And: “The said Banfield was of a middling stature, well-built, of a light complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair.” The account does not actually name his home: “The name of the town or county that the said Banfield came from is forgotten; but it has been kept in remembrance, that he came from the northerly part of England, and that the town joined Wales.” The writer then picked Chester from a map as “reasonable to conclude.” Daggett’s history of Attleborough (1834) has another version: “Tradition says, he came to this country alone when he was quite a lad, as a cabin-boy, to seek his own fortune.”

Barrington and Attleborough. In 1779 Philip Capron visited the Barrington farm where Banfield first settled and lived about twenty years. The old owner, a Mr. Humphrey, said he had bought it from Banfield, who “had a large family of children” and sold “in order to move back into the woods, (Attleborough,) as it was then called, where he could get a greater quantity of land” (tradition, Holden pp. 7-10). Daggett says he settled where Joab Daggett later lived “and laid out the lands there.”

His age. The 1817 account says he died “being about ninety years old. Some think he was considerably older,” and gets the figure by supposing he was 21 when his first child was born in 1682 or 1683. That rests on his Bible, then owned by his grandson Abiel Brown, which recorded only the birth of his eldest daughter, 22 Oct 1684; other leaves “had become loose and were lost.” Holden’s “aged 92 years” is therefore an estimate.

His wives. Holden (p. 25) names his first wife only as “a lady by the name of Callender, of Rehoboth”; his second as Elizabeth Blackington of Attleborough, d. 10 May 1735; and his third, married 16 Dec 1735, as “Mrs. Sarah Daggett … relict of Deacon John Daggett.” The 1817 account says only that he married “one of Callender’s daughters,” with no first name, and that one Callender daughter “married in Boston, by the name of Winter, or Winthrop,” and that the family later moved near Dartmouth College (tradition). The only primary trace of a Callender at Rehoboth is “John Callender” in the list of proprietors and inhabitants of 7 Feb 1689 (Rehoboth VR p. 916). WikiTree’s John Callender (born Boston 1637, died Attleborough 1706) and a daughter baptized at Chulmleigh, Devon, in 1661 are inconsistent with each other and sourced only to online trees. “Elizabeth Callender” rests on weakly sourced modern trees, and the first name may have been borrowed from the second wife (inference).

Holden’s three marriages may really be two (inference). Abiel Brown said in 1817 that Banfield “lived with his first wife fifty-two years after they were married,” and that she was about seventy when she died; Daggett and Savage give his wife Elizabeth’s death as 10 Mar 1735, nine months before he married the widow Sarah Daggett. That fits one long first marriage ending in 1735 better than a Callender wife followed by an Elizabeth Blackington. Holden gives no date for a change of wives, so whether his daughter Mary (b. about 1696) was a Callender or a Blackington daughter is not established.

Mollie’s descent from the Callendars of that Ilk has no evidence; her own source says that estate passed to the Livingstons by charter in 1347, and Callender is also an English surname.

Open questions

• Who was Elizabeth (Callender? Blackington?) Capron? The 1735 Attleborough death record and 17th-century Swansea and Barrington records may settle it.
• Which wife was the mother of his daughter Mary (b. about 1696)?
• Read his will (Bristol Probate 13:258-261).