♀Frances Dighton

Frances Dighton (baptized 1 March 1611/2 – died about 1706) was the wife of Richard Williams, one of the first settlers of Taunton in Plymouth Colony^W, and the mother of the five sons and two daughters named in his will. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Samuel Williams (died 1697).

From Gloucester to New England

Frances was probably a daughter of John Deighton, a surgeon of the parish of St Nicholas in Gloucester who served as sheriff of the city, and his wife, Jane Bassett, and was baptized at St Nicholas on 1 March 1611/2. She is said to have married Richard Williams at Great Witcombe, Gloucestershire, on 11 February 1632/3.

The couple probably crossed to New England about 1637, in the years of the Great Migration^W, and settled at Cohannet, a new plantation in Plymouth Colony that was soon renamed Taunton.

Taunton

There Richard became a freeman of the colony, a deputy to its General Court and in time one of the town’s selectmen. The couple had at least seven children: five sons, Samuel, Nathaniel, Joseph, Thomas and Benjamin, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Hannah.

Widowhood

When Richard made his will on 5 May 1686, the last bequest was to “my beloved wife Ffrauncis”: for the rest of her life she was to have the easterly part of the dwelling house with the garden, land at Assonet, fifteen pounds a year, and two cows with their keep and the household goods. If she needed more, the Assonet land and his share in the town’s ironworks^W could be sold to support her. He named their five sons joint executors and charged them “to take care of her their said mother”.

Two of those sons, Nathaniel and Joseph, are said to have died in August 1692, a year before their father. Richard died at Taunton in 1693, before his will was proved on 10 October, and Frances lived on there as a widow. She is said to have been named as the children’s grandmother when Nathaniel’s estate was divided in 1698, and to have made a bequest to his widow in March 1703. She probably died at Taunton in February 1705/6, more than twelve years after her husband.

Notes

Her name and family

Richard’s will gives only her given name, “Ffrauncis”. Her maiden name comes from later printed genealogies. James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (vol. 4, 1862) and a Taunton genealogy in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (vol. 5, 1851) call her Frances Dighton; the Register says she came from Somersetshire and makes her a sister of Katharine Dighton, the wife in turn of Samuel Hagborne, Governor Thomas Dudley and the Rev. John Allin.

Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. 1, pp. 634–635, citing The American Genealogist (vols. 9 and 10, 1932–1934), spells the name Deighton. It gives her baptism at St Nicholas, Gloucester, on 1 March 1611/2 and her marriage at Great Witcombe on 11 February 1632/3, and names her parents as John Deighton, Gent., of St Nicholas, Gloucester, “surgeon, Sheriff of the City of Gloucester”, and Jane Bassett, a daughter of Edward Bassett of Uley, Gloucestershire. Her sisters Jane and Katherine also settled in New England, Jane at Boston and Katherine at Roxbury. Richardson has the Williams family come over about 1636 or 1637.

Her later years

Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, vol. 2 (1978), in its account of Nathaniel’s widow, Elizabeth (Rogers) Williams, abstracts the division of Nathaniel’s estate on 25 July 1698, which names the children’s grandmother Williams, and says that on 7 March 1703 Frances Williams of Taunton made a bequest to her son Nathaniel’s widow. Richardson gives her death at Taunton in February 1705/6. A later account in Richard’s probate papers, by one of the children, speaks of “my deceased mothers will”.

The will and her sons

Richard’s will is copied into the Bristol County probate register, vol. 1, pp. 79–80. Of the fifteen pounds a year, the five sons together were to pay eleven and Benjamin four, and after her death the Assonet land and the ironworks share were to pass to all five sons. Mayflower Families gives Nathaniel’s death at Taunton on 16 August 1692, and Savage gives Joseph’s as 17 August 1692.