♀Dennys Forman

Dennys Forman (christened 16 August 1579 – buried 10 January 1625/6) was a woman of Brenchley, in Kent, who married George Lewes there at sixteen and was the mother of the George Lewis who took his own family to Plymouth Colony^W in the 1630s. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son George Lewis (died about 1663).

Early life and marriage

Dennys was christened at Brenchley on 16 August 1579, a daughter of Clement Forman and Margery Baldock, who had married at Lamberhurst on 16 February 1567/8. Her two sisters died young, Frances in 1573, the year she was christened, and Mary at thirteen in 1588, and Dennys is said to have been her parents’ only surviving child.

George Lewes and Dennys Forman are said to have married at Brenchley on 24 May 1596, when she was sixteen. Her father, a husbandman, made a will on 31 October 1599 that is said to name his wife, his daughter Dennys and his granddaughter Margery Lewis, and he was buried at Brenchley on 11 November 1599. Her widowed mother made her own will in 1610 and died within the next two years.

Children

Their first child, Margery, was christened at Brenchley in December 1597, and George followed on 31 August 1600, James in April 1603, John in November 1606 and Elisabeth in February 1613/4. A daughter Mary was buried at Brenchley on 17 March 1617, and Margery, at twenty-one, on 18 June 1619.

Dennys was buried at Brenchley on 10 January 1625/6, at forty-six, two weeks after her son George’s first child, Mary, was christened there. Her husband outlived her by four and a half years. A 1993 study of the family in The American Genealogist showed that two of their sons, George and John, went to New England and settled at Scituate, in Plymouth Colony. George, a clothier, was there by 1634, and later moved on to Barnstable.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son George Lewis, George’s son James Lewis (1631–1713) and James’s 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 Lewes and Dennys Forman. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one, through George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Notes

Sources

Her christening, to a father written Clement Forman, her marriage, written George Lewes and Dennis Forman, the christenings and burials of her sisters and her children, and her burial, written Dennis, wife of George Lewes, are from an index of the Brenchley parish registers. Her parents’ marriage is in the printed register of Lamberhurst marriages. Her father’s will (dated 31 October 1599, proved 16 January 1599/1600) and her mother’s (dated 6 May 1610, proved 20 February 1611/12) are known from a typescript Lewis genealogy that cites Robert S. Wakefield’s article “George and John Lewis of Brenchley, Kent, England, and Scituate, Massachusetts”, in The American Genealogist, volume 68 (1993), pages 24 to 28; a second compiled genealogy gives the same dates. That Dennys was the only surviving child rests on the two wills as abstracted there.

Her name

Her christening is written Dennys, and her marriage and burial Dennis. Some later compilations call her Denise.