..... i. Thomas Bancroft, eminent poet, native of Swarkestone, Derbyshire, was alive at Bradley in that shire as late as 1658. His brothers were Ralph and John Bancroft, the latter of whom sold his land preparatory to removing to New England but died before 1639 prior to arriving in the New World; see evidence below.
..... ii. To be distinguished from the said John Bancroft, a certain John Barcroft, with wife Jane, was of Boston, Massachusetts in 1633; not known to have had any children, nor is there record in America of this couple after 1633.
..... iii. The Widow Bancroft of Lynn, Massachusetts, 1638, was likely in 1644 of Southampton, New York; there is no evidence that her name was Jane, as has sometimes been supposed, doubtless in confusion with Jane Barcroft, above. The widow possibly had daughters that married John Stratton and Thomas Talmage, Jr., two early settlers of Long Island.
..... iv. The said Widow Bancroft may have had sons John and Thomas Bancroft who were living in the Connecticut valley in the 1640's and 1650's; their sister seems to have been Anne or Hannah who married Sgt. John Griffin at Windsor, Connecticut, in 1647.
..... v. In records of Dedham, Massachusetts of the year 1647, appears the name of Thomas Bancroft, then aged about 22 years; although he later removed to Lynn, there is no good reason to think him akin to the Widow Bancroft. His name, however and that of his son Ralph, conform to the theory that he was somehow related to the aforesaid poet, Thomas Bancroft.
..... Much of the material that Dr. McCracken reviewed had been gathered some sixty years earlier by J. Henry Lea who summarized his findings in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 56:84-87, 196 f. Most curiously, however, Mr. Lea seems to have neglected to consult the will of John Bancroft of Kings Newton, in the parish of Melbourne, Derbyshire, dated 5 Jan 1634/5 and proved 12 May following by his relict Anne (PCC 55 Sadler). Asking to be buried in the parish church of Melburne, the testator left his goods to wife Anne for life, stipulating that she should divide equally between the children, with the elder son John getting the usual double share and the other six children one share each, they not named but two of the seven children are minor sons and perhaps not yet apprenticed. And if any things shall happen to be doubtful concerning my meaning, . . . "or that my wyfe shall happen to remoue from the place where shee now dwelleth it is my mynd and will that my Ouerseers hereafter named or any two of them shall expound the said doubt and it shalbe at my said wiues pleasure to remoue and dwell wth my children where shee pleaseth pvided that shee do yt by the consent of my said ouseers or any two of them." As will be seen below, this implication of a possible moved elsewhere may be significant of plans laid before the final illness of the testator. Overseers were Henry Beighton of Ticknail, Nathaniel SOWTHER of Derby and John Ratcliffe of Kings Newton; witnesses were Nathaniel SOWTHER, Thomas Grimbold and Robte Draper [he by mark]. SOWTHER may have served as scrivener for the will, on which point see below.
..... As shown by Dr. McCracken, Mr. Lea made some wrong assumptions, the worst of which was that John Bancroft, the poet's brother, actually arrived in New England, dying soon afterwards. Both Meredith B. Colket, Jr. and Dr. McCracken reject this assumption, and with reason, for in memory of John Bancroft, his brother, are these words of the poet Thomas Bancroft, printed in 1639, and reprinted by John Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, (London 1804), vol. 3, pt. 2, p. *886 [sic, not 886].
.....
You sold your land, the lightlier hence to go
.....
To foreign coasts; yet (Fates would have it so)
.....
Did ne'er New England reach, but went with them
.....
That journey towards New Jerusalem.
..... The question therefore now arises as to whether John Bancroft of Kings Newton, whose will we have abstracted, can have been brother to the poet, Thomas Bancroft. It must be noted that Kings Newton adjoins Swarkeston, the two being separated only by the River Trent. Moreover, the fact that the testator stipulated burial in the church seems to link him with the family of Bancroft long seated at Chellaston and Swarkeston, who in several wills abstracted by Mr. Lea, had also specified burial in their church, a privilege reserved for few persons. What seems much more meaningful, however, is the fact that Nathaniel SOWTHER of Derby, seemingly closest friend to the deceased John Bancroft, removed - almost immediately after Bancroft's death - to New England, where in 1636 he was given the position of Secretary to the colony of Plymouth. That Secretary SOWTHER of Plymouth was the SOWTHER of John Bancroft's will will be readily apparent from a comparison of the sign manual or cipher appended to his signature as witness to the Bancroft will with a similar signature to a 1653 deed of John and Martha Cogan of Boston where SOWTHER was then Notary Public. This deed is preserved in the Massachusetts Historical Society which kindly permits our reproduction of the part containing the signature.
..... Considering the foregoing facts, we are entitled to think it possible that SOWTHER, as closest friend to John Bancroft, may have carried the latter's family to the New World in 1636 or that he may have been the instrument who made possible their removal to New England around that time. We know from the poet that his elder brother, John, who lived in any case in the immediate neighborhood of Kings Newton, had died before 1639, having planned removal to New England. It seems rather likely that it was the John Bancroft of Swarkeston who sold his lands, say in 1633, and removed to the hamlet across the river, dying there at Kings Newton before he could complete his plans to migrate from England.
..... There are bits of evidence that conform to our reconstruction of the Bancroft story. In the first place, each of the three children attributed to the Widow Bancroft in Connecticut, had a daughter Anne or Hannah and a son Nathaniel. The girls' names easily could honor, the relict of John Bancroft of Kings Newton, their supposed grandmother, while the name Nathaniel could easily have been meant to honor SOWTHER, their supposed benefactor.
..... Significantly, also, it is to be noted that Thomas Talmage, Jr., of Long Island, in 1644 named one of his sons Nathaniel (a name not earlier found in this family). Moreover, Talmage had a daughter Hannah or Anna. His position as secretary or recorder at Easthampton, L.I., ties in nicely with that of Nathaniel SOWTHER, who was, if we are right, benefactor of Talmage's supposed wife's family (see Arthur White Talmage, Talmage Genealogy, [1909], pp. 23 f.).
..... In addition, we cite a Suffolk County, Massachusetts deed of 22d da. 9th mo. 1648 (Lib. 1, ff 96), which states:
.....
Mr. Robt Saltonstall of Boston (granted) to Mr.
.....
Nicholas Davison of Charlston his dwelling house
.....
in Windsor uppon Connecticut formerly the possession
.....
of ffrancis Stiles of Windsor, and now or late in
.....
the occupation of Tho. Gilbert and John Banckraft.
That Gilbert and Bancroft occupied the same house could mean little, but when in Mr. Lea's cited paper we read of acquaintance between the Bancrofts of Chellaston and Swarkeston and the Gilberts of Barrow, which adjoins Swarkeston, we may commence to think that Bancroft of the Connecticut Valley in 1648 was quite possibly from the same part of England as Thomas Gilbert, and that their forefathers can have been acquainted. This, then, is a clue that the Connecticut valley Bancrofts and Gilberts may have come from Swarkeston or vicinity. Hand in glove with the foregoing facts is the comparable relationship that seems to have existed between Nathaniel SOWTHER and the Bancroft family on the one hand and between Elder William BREWSTERof Plymouth and SOWTHER, on the other.
..... It appears obvious that the ruling elder's influence may have accounted for the immediate appointment of SOWTHER, a newcomer, as Secretary of Plymouth Colony in 1636. For the elder's son Jonathan had in 1624 married Lucretia OLDHAM of Derby, who must have known SOWTHER in that city, where he plainly seems to have been a scrivener. Indeed, it is not at all farfetched to think that Lucretia may have been closely akin to SOWTHER for here mother seems to have been that Philippa SOWTHER (daughter of John), who was baptized in the parish of All Saints, Derby, 6 July 1568 in which parish she married 17 November 1588 William OULDHAM, known to have been the father of Lucretia, aforesaid (see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 111:242 and the manuscript parish registers of All Saints, Derby).
..... At the time of SOWTHER's arrival at Plymouth in 1636, Jonathan BREWSTER was occupying an important trading post for Plymouth on the then remote Connecticut River; see George F. Willison, Saints and Strangers, 1945 edition, pp. 296, 302; p. 347 in paperback edition (1965), which is neither a reprint nor condensation of the 1945 but a revision of it, by the author himself.
..... It is not to be thought that SOWTHER's wife (whom he had married in 1613 at Derby) would have relished the continual shepherding of the Bancroft widow and her seven children, by her busy husband. So that even if Widow Bancroft came to Plymouth, where she has not been found recorded, it is likely that she may have removed not long afterwards. Connecticut was in 1636 too unstable for a widow with children; Lynn appears to have been first stopping place and when many of that town removed to Long Island before 1650, the widow Bancroft may well have gone with them, Connecticut still not being thought too secure. Yet it is likely that some of her children found homes along the River Connecticut, perhaps through the influence of SOWTHERand his kinsfolk, the BREWSTERs The trade of young John Bancroft of Windsor, a ferryman, suggests the fondness that his supposed uncle, the poet Thomas Bancroft, had for the River Trent. We give this extract from the poet's words (Nichols, loc. cit.):
.....
Sweet River, on whose flowery margin laid
.....
I with the slippery fish have often play'd
.....
At fast and loose. . .
..... Bancroft descendants will perhaps wish to read what the poet said of his own parents "buried near together in Swarston church" (Nichols, ibid.):
.....
Here lies a pair of peerless friends
.....
Whose goodness (like a precious chain)
.....
Adorn'd their souls in lives and ends;
.....
Whom when Detraction's self would stain
.....
She drops her tears instead of gall
.....
And helps to mourn their funeral.
..... In tracing back the SOWTHER family at Derby, we find that John SOWTER occurs 6 January 1498 in an extract from the court roll of the manor of Belper (Beau Repaire), Derbyshire, at Duffield, re 1 acre at Stanley (some five miles northeast of Derby - Derbyshire Charters, p. 37, no. 288). It was perhaps his son and namesake who served as churchwarden of the parish of All Saints, Derby, between 1535 and 1545 (History of the Parish of All Saints, Derby). About 1547 and again about 1554, John SOWTER of Derby, plumber, and Agnes his wife, daughter of Thomas Fynymore, deceased, claimed property at Hanbury, Staffordshire, against Elizabeth Stafford and Alice her daughter, wife of John Greenwaye (Public Records Office, Lists and Indexes, 54:163; 55:95).
..... Perhaps a son of John and Agnes was that John SOWTER whose children, baptized at All Saints, included:
Thomas SOWTER, baptized April 1567
Philippa SOWTER, baptized 6 July 1568, married at age 20 to William OULDHAM(probably the man of that name buried at All Saints, Derby, 26 June 1636). Their daughter Lucretia, baptized 1600, married 1624 in New England (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 111:242).
..... The aforesaid Thomas SOWTER may well have been father of Nathaniel SOWTHER or SOWTER of Derby, who deposed 19 October 1654 aged about 62 (Suffolk County, Massachusetts Deeds 2:85), so was born circa 1592. He married at St. Peter's, Derby, 28 March 1613, Alice DEVONPORT. In 1634 Nathaniel SOWTHER was appointed overseer of the will of John Bancroft, signed the will as a witness (see above) and possibly was the scrivener who wrote out the text of the will. In 1653 he also signed as witness the Cogan deed and there are clear resemblances at least in some words between the handwriting of the Bancroft will and the Cogan deed and whatever differences are visible may obviously be the result of the natural changes in the handwriting of any man in a period of nineteen years or the conditions surrounding the production of the document.
..... For the subsequent history of Nathaniel SOWTHER in New England, see the fine article by Mrs. John E. Barclay which follows immediately. Now, however, there remains to be presented additional information tending to show the connection between Connecticut Gilberts and the part of Old England whence came, supposedly, our Connecticut Bancrofts.
..... Thomas Gilbert, named above as at Windsor, Connecticut in 1648, had sons Jonathan and Josiah who were styled kinsmen by the Widow Katharine (relict of John) Harrison of Wethersfield, Connecticut, at the time of her extended trial as a witch (Homer W. Brainard, Harold S. Gilbert and Clarence A. Torrey, The Gilbert Family, (1954), 5 f..; Henry R. Stiles, History of Wethersfield, Connecticut, 1:276, 2:416). During the trial she testified in 1670 that she had been in Connecticut nineteen years, coming directly from England (R. E. Dale, Boston Evening Transcript, 11 July 1934).
..... Earlier in the proceedings against Widow Harrison, Elizabeth, wife of Simon Smith of Thirty Miles Island testified in 1668 that "Katharine was . . . one that told fortunes . . . and also would oft speak and boast of her great familiarity with Mr. Lilly, one that told fortunes and foretold many matters that in future times were to be accomplished" (John M. Taylor, The Witchcraft Dulusion in Colonial Connecticut, (New York, 1908), p. 56. In responding to the accusation, the widow cited as witnesses, among others, both Jonathan and Josiah Gilbert - it seems clear that she was related to them.
..... Who was the Mr. Lilly named by the widow's accuser? According to the Dictionary of National Biography, William Lilly (1602-1681), noted astrologer and fortune teller was born at Diseworth, Leics. In 1620, when 18 years of age, after being educated in a school at Ashby de la Zouch near Diseworth, he removed to London where his chequered career brought him into correspondence with the King of Sweden and friendship with Elias Ashmole, the famed antiquarian and astrologer.
..... We doubt that Katharine, widow Harrison, personally knew Mr. Lilly; her first daughter Rebecca was born at Wethersfield in 1654 and it would seem that Katharine herself was not born much before 1624, if that early; yet we think it quite possible that either her husband or her kinfolk had known Lilly as a youth before Lilly left his native shire. Diseworth, his birthplace, lies about six miles from Barrow on Trent, adjoining Swarkeston, which could very well be the parish where the Gilberts of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield originated. Two men named John Harrison were testators in the early 1600's, both of Bredon (close to both Barrow and Diseworth (see British Record Society, Index to Leicestershire Wills, Vols. 27, 51).
..... Too, it must be recalled that Thomas Bancroft of Swarkeston, father of the poet, in his will in 1626, named as overseer his neighbor, Roger Gilbert of Barrow, where the Gilberts had long flourished (see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 56: 84-87; The Genealogist, n.s., 7:138-140). The original will of Elizabeth Gilbert, spinster, late of Barrow, dated 20 March 1614 (nuncupative), now in the Public Library, Lichfield, Staffordshire, tells us that her grandsire was William Gilbert, father of her uncle Roger Gilbert whose children she named as John, Elizabeth, Francis, William, Sarah and Anne. There is even a remote chance that the latter, Anne, may have been the wife of John Bancroft who died a resident of Melbourne. Note also that Thomas Gilbert married Anne Ward, 26 June 1611, at Swarkeston.
[Editor's Note: We are happy to print Mr. Hunt's interesting speculation concerning the Bancroft origin. The newly discovered will is important and the onomastic arguments and chronology fit nicely, but it is a bit strange that the Widow Bancroft shows up first at Lynn and not at Plymouth wit the SOWTHERS.]
Richard Dennis Souther
Souther Family Association
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