♀Frances Coggan

Frances Coggan (baptised 24 February 1605 – 17 May 1671) was a clothier’s daughter from Taunton in Somerset who married John Whitcomb, crossed with him to New England and died a widow at Lancaster in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. Her will left her eldest daughter and her five sons one shilling apiece, “if it be demanded”, and almost everything else to her youngest daughter. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Catharine Whitcomb.

Early life

Frances was the tenth child of Henry Cogan, a clothier of Taunton, and his wife Joane Boridge, and she was baptized at the church of St Mary Magdalene on 24 February 1605. Her father died when she was seven. He was buried at the same church on 1 December 1612, and his will left £10 to each of his six daughters, Frances the youngest of them.

Marriage and the crossing

John Whitcomb and Frances Coggan were married at the church of St Mary Magdalene in Taunton on 26 November 1623. Their children John, Jonathan and Robert were baptized there in 1626, 1628 and 1629, and a daughter Joane in 1634, the last entry naming the mother as “Fraunces”. Catharine, the eldest daughter, was probably born about 1624.

In 1635 the family is said to have crossed to New England in the Hopewell, John and Frances with five children, and settled first at Dorchester. Job followed in 1636 and Josiah, born at Dorchester, in 1638, and the family was completed by two daughters, Abigail and Mary, the youngest. By 1640 they had moved on to Scituate in Plymouth Colony^W, where Catharine married Rodulphus Elmes in 1644. By the mid-1650s the family had moved inland to Lancaster, leaving Catharine and Robert in Scituate.

Widowhood and will

John died at Lancaster on 24 September 1662, and Frances lived on there as a widow for almost nine years. She made her will on 12 May 1671, written “12th 3rd mo.” in the colony’s reckoning, which counted March as the first month. To “my Eldest daughter Katherin and my five sons” she left one shilling each, “if it be demanded”, to her daughter Abigall “my greatest brass pott”, and the rest of her estate to her youngest daughter Mary, whom she made sole executrix. A shilling was a token sum, and it most likely marked children who had already been provided for. The Lancaster minister Joseph Rowlandson was one of the overseers. She is said to have died five days later, on 17 May 1671, and the will was sworn on 23 March 1671/2.

Notes

The baptism date

This page gives her baptism as 24 February 1605. The FamilySearch index of the Taunton register, which writes her “Frauncesw Coggen”, daughter of Henry Coggen, gives 24 February 1604 in the old reckoning, that is 1604/5, the year that ran on to March 1605. George E. McCracken’s study of the Cogan family in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (1957) prints 24 February 1605/6, which would be 1606 by the modern calendar. Her age at her father’s death is reckoned from that date.

Sources for her family

Her parents, her father’s trade, his burial and the £10 bequests come from McCracken’s article, which calls her the tenth child and “the youngest daughter mentioned in her father’s will.” The 1623 marriage and the children’s Taunton baptisms come from the FamilySearch index of Somerset church records. The crossing in the Hopewell is from Burton W. Spear’s Search for the Passengers of the Mary & John 1630; her date of death is from Charlotte Whitcomb’s The Whitcomb Family in America (1904) and Charles Holman’s Scott genealogy (1919). This page spells her maiden name Coggan; McCracken writes Cogan, and the marriage entry “Francis Coggan”.

The will

The will of “ffrancis Whitcombe” of Lancaster is copied into the Middlesex County probate records, volume 3, page 396, with the inventory on the next page. It is the record that names “my Eldest daughter Katherin” and so ties Catharine Elmes of Scituate to this family. Holman notes that Catharine and Robert had been left out of the division of their father’s estate in 1662 because they “doubtless had received their shares”, which fits the token shillings of 1671.