♀Catharine Whitcomb

Catharine Whitcomb lived at Scituate in Plymouth Colony^W, where nine children of her husband, Rodulphus Elmes, were born between 1645 and 1668. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Rodolphus Elmes (1668–1749).

Family

Much of what is known of her comes from the genealogical dictionary of early New England settlers compiled by James Savage^W, who drew on Samuel Deane’s history of Scituate. Savage makes her a daughter of John Whitcomb, who was at Dorchester in 1635 with a family begun in England and had moved to Scituate before 1644, and he has Catharine marry Rodulphus there that year. The town’s register of births then enters nine children of Rodulphus, five daughters and four sons, from Sarah on 29 September 1645 to a son named Rodulphus after his father on 27 May 1668. Each entry names only the father, so it is on Savage’s account that she was their mother.

Her father did not stay in Scituate. By Savage’s account he was admitted a freeman of Plymouth Colony on 3 June 1652, moved soon after to Lancaster, and died there on 24 September 1662. He apparently left no will: his estate was inventoried on 2 October 1662, and a petition of 7 October 1662 asked for it to be divided, naming neither Catharine nor her brother Robert, who were in Scituate according to Holman’s history. Her mother, Frances, made her own will on 12 May 1671, five days before she died. It leaves a shilling each to “my Eldest daughter Katherin” and to her five sons, her greatest brass pot to her daughter Abigail, and the rest to the youngest daughter Mary, whom she made sole executrix. The eldest daughter, Katherin, is most likely Catharine. When Catharine herself died is not known.

Notes

The printed Scituate register of births names no mother for any of the nine children, and no record of the 1644 marriage has been found. Savage’s source for the marriage and for her parentage is Deane’s history of Scituate, page 266; the marriage still rests on that compiled account alone, and her parentage now has a record as well (see below). Savage spells the husband “Rhodolphus Ellmes” and the father’s surname “Whitcomb, or Whetcumbe”; the register writes “Rodulphus” and “Elmes”.

Parentage

On the identification set out here, her parents were John Whitcomb and Frances Coggan, who married at St Mary Magdalene, Taunton, on 26 November 1623 (FamilySearch index of Somerset church records). The will of Frances, dated 12 May 1671 and sworn 23 March 1671/2, is in the Middlesex County probate records, volume 3, page 396. It names “my Eldest daughter Katherin” without a married name and names no son-in-law, so it does not by itself link Catharine to Rodulphus Elmes. The link is an identification, resting on these points: the Whitcombs were at Scituate in the 1640s and 1650s; Rodulphus Elmes and “John Whetcom” bought shares in the Conahasset land together by a deed of 1 December 1646 (Plymouth Colony Records, volume 12, pages 158 to 159), and both were proposed as freemen at the court of 5 June 1651; the Taunton baptisms of John, Jonathan and Robert match the names of the New England sons; and Holman’s Scott genealogy (1919, page 254) and The Whitcomb Family in America (1904, page 33) make Catharine the eldest child. No rival Katherine or Catharine Whitcomb of the right age has been found.

Her father’s estate

Savage’s dictionary gives John Whitcomb a will, naming his widow Frances, four sons and his youngest daughter Mary, whom he made executrix, and leaving out Catharine and Robert, whom Savage thought “were prob. provid. for at earlier day”. Holman writes that the other children known to be living, “Catharine Elmes and Robert and James Whitcomb, were in Scituate and doubtless had received their shares of his estate.” The 1904 family history gives the inventory of his estate as 2 October 1662, and the division petition of 7 October 1662 is known from a summary of the Middlesex probate papers (volume 2, pages 67 to 70). An inventory followed by a petition to divide the estate suggests that he left no will.