♀Agnes (surname unknown)

Agnes was the wife of William Lane, an early settler of Dorchester, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, and an early member of the church gathered there in 1636. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through George Lane (about 1613–1689), who was most likely her son.

Dorchester

On 8 May 1635 “William Lane, his wife and son” were among the passengers shipped in the Hopewell, master John Driver, bound from Weymouth, in Dorset, to Massachusetts Bay. The wife was probably Agnes. William was living at Dorchester by 1635, and the town granted him land there in 1637.

The church at Dorchester^W was gathered in 1636 under its minister, Richard Mather^W. Agnes joined it in its first years, before November 1639, as one of those added “by profession of faith and Repentance and taking hould of the Covent before the Congregacon”. She became a member in her own right: her husband’s name does not appear in the church’s records.

Family

William had six children, two sons and four daughters, all probably born in England: Elizabeth, Mary, Avith, George, Sarah and Andrew. Agnes was most likely their mother. When William made his will on 28 February 1650/1 he named no wife, so she had probably died by then. No record of her death is known. William died about 1654.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through George Lane and his daughter Sarah Lane (born 1638), and on through her daughter Sarah Lewis (1661–1732). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both descended from George Lane. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one.

Notes

Her name

Her name comes from the Records of the First Church at Dorchester, in New England, 1636-1734 (Boston, 1891), page 5. “Agnes Lane” stands among the women in the list headed “The names of such as since the constituting or gathering of the church at dorchester have been added to the church and joyned thereunto as members of the same body”, which ends before the admissions of “4 da 9th mo 1639”. She is the only Lane in that list, and the printed index has no William Lane anywhere in the volume. That she was William’s wife rests on the name, the place and the time; no record states the marriage. Her maiden surname is not known.

The voyage of 1635

The Hopewell entry is in Peter Wilson Coldham’s Complete Book of Emigrants, 1607-1660, volume 1, page 144, from the port books (PRO E190/876/1): “William Lane, his wife and son”. The entry names neither the wife nor the son.

Her children

No record names Agnes as the mother of William Lane’s children. The History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts (1893), volume 2, pages 410 to 411, gives the six children from William’s will, “all prob. b. in Eng.”, and calls William “prob. a wid’, as no mention is made of his w. either upon Dor. or Hing. rec’s.” She is the only wife of his on record, but a second wife is not ruled out, so her motherhood of the six is an inference. The will itself, dated “28. 12mo 1650” and proved 6 July 1654, is abstracted in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 5 (1851), page 304.

The name Farnsworth

Gale Ion Harris, writing in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 156 (2002), page 147, calls her “Agnes (Farnsworth)”, following a genealogy published by Fitts in 1897. The records do not support it. William’s will names as executors his “Louing brother Joseph ffarnworth” and John Wiswall. Both men stand in the same Dorchester members’ list as Agnes, so “brother” there most likely means a brother in the church, not a brother-in-law, and Joseph Farnsworth later became William’s son-in-law as the second husband of his daughter Mary.