♂Edward Gilman

Edward Gilman (baptized 20 April 1557) was an Englishman of Norfolk. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by five separate lines of descent, through his son Edward Gilman (1587–1655).

Caston

He is said to have been baptized at Caston, in Norfolk, on 20 April 1557, the son of Edward Gilman and Rose Rysse. His father, a yeoman of Caston, made his will on 5 February 1572/3^W and died that year, leaving Edward, by the usual account, a house called Halwicks with its pasture and meadow and three half acres in Moracres.

Hingham

Edward married Margaret James, a daughter of Robert James, a yeoman of Hingham, about five miles from Caston, about 1581. He seems to have been the first of the Gilmans to live at Hingham, and the couple made their home there. Seven children of Edward and Margaret are known: Bridget, Edward, Robert, Mary, John, Margaret and Sarah, the last two baptized at Hingham on 1 August 1602 and 4 December 1608. His son Edward took his own family to New England in 1638.

When Robert James made his will on 6 March 1601/2, he called Edward Gilman his son-in-law, apparently forgave debts Edward owed him, and left 20 shillings to his “bellchilde”, or grandchild, Bridget Lincoln, the wife of Edward Lincoln.

On 24 October 1605 an Edward Gilman presented the excuse of his brother-in-law Henry James for missing the Hingham manor court^W, and on 7 April 1608 Henry presented the excuses of Edward Gilman senior and Edward Gilman junior.

A brother-in-law’s estate

In January 1608/9 administration of the estate of Margaret’s brother Leonard James was granted to his brothers Henry and Samuel James, to Edward Gilman as the husband of his sister Margaret, written “Margaret Gylman als James”, and to Robert Jenepy, the brother of Leonard’s widow, while Leonard’s children were under age.

Death

Edward was perhaps the Edward Gillman buried at Caston on 15 May 1621, and Margaret perhaps the Gilman widow, her given name left blank, buried at Hingham in 1639.

Lines of descent

Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) descends from Edward Gilman and Margaret James by five separate lines of descent, all on her father’s side, through Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975). Every line runs through their son Edward Gilman (1587–1655). The nearest is eleven generations up, and four others are twelve generations up. The lines come together again in Elizabeth Gilman (1727–1806), whose parents Caleb Gilman (1678–1766) and Susanna Folsom both descended from them; in her son Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), whose parents Elizabeth Gilman and John Dudley (1725–1805) both descended from them; and in Nathaniel’s daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both descended from them.

Notes

Identification

The baptism at Caston on 20 April 1557, naming his father Edward, is from the FamilySearch collection “England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975”. That this child was the Edward Gilman of Hingham rests on Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Abel Lunt (1963), followed by Robert Battle in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (2023); no single document names both places. Davis builds the family from the emigrant son’s deposition of 1637, which names his father as Edward, from the 1611 marriage record of the son Robert, “son of Edward Gylmmynne of Hingham”, and from the Hingham baptisms of Margaret and Sarah, and he judged that Edward “seems to have been the first Gilman to live in Hingham”. The legacy of Halwicks is from Davis’s abstract of the father’s will (Archdeaconry of Norwich, 1573).

The James family

The 1601/2 will of Robert James and the Hingham manor court entries of 1605 and 1608 are from Battle’s abstracts. The 1605 entry does not say which Edward Gilman it was; the son was then about eighteen. The administration of Leonard James’s estate in the Archdeaconry of Norfolk act book names “Edwardo Gylman marito Margaret Gylman als James”, Edward Gilman the husband of Margaret Gilman alias James. The act is headed the fourteenth day; Battle gives 18 January 1608/9. The marriage “about 1581” is Battle’s estimate.

Burials

Davis and Battle both offer the Caston burial of 1621 and the Hingham widow’s burial of 1639 as possibilities only. Davis dates the widow’s burial 28 November 1639; Battle gives 13 December 1639.