♂Anthony Dodson

Anthony Dodson (died before 8 July 1682) was a man of Scituate in Plymouth Colony^W, who married Mary Williams there in 1651 and whose widow and children settled his estate in 1682. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Bithiah Dodson.

Marriage and family

Anthony Dodson married Mary Williams, the daughter of John Williams Sr., at Scituate on 12 November 1651. James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England places him at Scituate by 1650 and gives the couple seven children: two sons, Gershom and Jonathan, and five daughters, Sarah, Mary, Patience, Bethia and Eunice, the eldest born in 1652. About 1653 he was rated at Scituate for the Indian purchase, the colony’s levy toward buying land from its Native owners. Their children also included a daughter Margaret, born in 1656.

The same dictionary records that their son Gershom was killed on 26 March 1676 in the Rehoboth fight of King Philip’s War^W, a soldier in the company of Captain Michael Pierce of Scituate, who fell with him. Jonathan was left as the only son.

Death and estate

Anthony Dodson was still living on 6 May 1678, when he served on a coroner’s jury, and died at Scituate before 8 July 1682. On that day his widow Mary and their son Jonathan made an agreement over the estate of “Anthony Dodson deceased”, in which Thomas Studson, the husband of one of the daughters, was also named; Thomas King Sr. and John Cushing witnessed it. The court ordered that the four daughters named in it, Patience, Mary, Bethya and Eunice, should each “have ten pounds a peice”, to be paid as they came of age or married.

Bethya, as the order writes her, was Bithiah, who married Rodolphus Elmes at Scituate on 20 February 1696.

Notes

The agreement and the court order are entered in the Plymouth Colony probate records on a page damaged at its edges, so parts of the text are lost. The name of Thomas Studson’s wife falls in a gap. Savage gives Sarah Dodson as the wife of Thomas Stetson, married in 1671, and a Mayflower Society genealogy of the Warren family names a son “of Thomas and Sarah (Dodson) Stetson”. The words about the daughters coming of age are also partly lost; “or are married” is the probable wording.

Savage gives the marriage as 12 November 1651 in his entry for Anthony Dodson and as 1652 in his entry for John Williams; the Scituate records give 1651.

Gershom’s death in 1676 rests on Savage’s dictionary; no record of it has been found. No record of Anthony Dodson’s birth or parents has been found.

The Plymouth Colony court records give the rate for the Indian purchase at Scituate (Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, vol. 7, pp. 129–30) and the coroner’s jury of 6 May 1678 (vol. 5, p. 262). Savage’s count of seven children does not include Margaret, born in 1656.