Thomas Holbrook

The immigrant. “Thomas Holbrooke of Broudway aged 34 yeare” was enrolled at Weymouth, Dorset, on 20 Mar 1634/5 in the Rev. Joseph Hull’s company, with Jane (34), John (11), Thomas (10), Anne (5) and Elizabeth (1) (NEHGR 25:14; Hotten p. 285). “Broudway” is unresolved: it may be the parish of Broadway near Ilminster, or a place near Glastonbury (inferred). In a deposition of 2 Nov 1666, “an old man of seventy-seven,” he said he came with Mr. Hull’s company, which landed at Dorchester on 7 June 1635, and went on to Weymouth after about a fortnight (Suffolk Court Files no. 815, via Davis 1945).

Settled at “Old Spain,” Weymouth, Massachusetts. Weymouth’s historian Gilbert Nash (1885) says the larger part of the early town lived in North Weymouth, “commonly known as ‘Old Spain,’” running from the shore of the bay to Burying Hill, a name the village had carried “from time immemorial, and whose origin cannot now be traced”; the Pilgrim Church of North Weymouth (1852) was founded “in Old Spain.” The Weymouth land book (c. 1644) lists parcels “first giuen to Thomas Holbrooke” on Round Island, Kingoke hill, “the plaine” and the Westerneck, and in 1651/2 he drew great lot no. 21 east of Fresh Pond, which in Nash’s day was called Whitman’s Pond, in East Weymouth. As a townsman (selectman) he witnessed the Indian deed for Weymouth, with a marginal agreement with Natahant dated March 1652 (Nash, pp. 251-282).

Freeman of Massachusetts Bay between May 1645 and March 1647 (Mass. Bay Records 2:294). Townsman (selectman) 1641-1654; a compiled list has him selectman in 1645, 1646, 1651, 1652 and 1654. Named among the first proprietors of Rehoboth in 1643 but forfeited the lot in 1644/5 by not moving there. On 25 Feb 1648/9 “Thom : Holbrooke, Henry Kingman, & Nathell Adams, a comittee of Waymoth” agreed with Braintree on “laying out of the high way for the country, from Waymoth to Dorchest’r,” four rods wide past Braintree meeting house; the General Court received their return in May 1649 (Mass. Bay Records 2:271-272; 3:158). Deane says he held land in Scituate by 1649, where his son William later settled (History of Scituate, p. 287).

His will (31 Dec 1668, proved 24 Apr 1677) names wife Jane, eldest son John as executor, sons Thomas and William, daughters Anne Rennolds, Elizabeth Hatch and Jane Drake, and grandsons John (his sword), Peter (his gun) and William (his musket). Deane’s abstract: “To wife Jane all my estate during her life, (requesting sons John, William and Thomas to be helpful to her, as she is ancient and weak of body)” (p. 287). Mollie says his grandson Peter had cared for him and his wife for about eight years. His inventory, dated 10 Mar 1676/7, calls him lately deceased (Davis 1945).

His sons John and William both became captains, and his son Thomas settled at Braintree.

Mollie’s typescript (pp. 1-6, 11-12) gives his wives as Experience Leland, daughter of Hopestill Leland, and Jane Kingman, and calls him “son of Sir Thomas Holbrooke of Broadway.” None of this has a source: his wife was Jane Powyes, whom he married at Glastonbury in 1616, and his father was William Holbrooke, a Glastonbury yeoman (will, 1625).

Open questions

• His Y-DNA. The FamilyTreeDNA Holbrook project’s group for his descendants (haplogroup J-FTD548) rests on two Big Y testers, probably second cousins, who match each other but no other Holbrooks; their closest matches are mostly Freemans, and the project’s administrator asks whether another lineage entered that line (research/holbrook/early-holbrook-family-england.md). A test by a male-line Holbrook descended from Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook would add a third, independent line and show whether J-FTD548 is really his signature.