♂George Lewes

George Lewes (buried 11 July 1630) was a man of the parish of Brenchley, in Kent, and the father of the George Lewis who took his own family to Plymouth Colony^W in the 1630s. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son George Lewis (died about 1663).

Life at Brenchley

George Lewes and Dennys Forman are said to have married at Brenchley on 24 May 1596, when she was sixteen. Their first child, Margery, was christened there 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, two weeks after their son George’s first child, Mary, was christened there. George lived on in the parish: his son is written “George Jr.” at the christenings of two more grandchildren in 1627 and 1629, most likely because the elder George was still alive. He was buried at Brenchley on 11 July 1630, though a published study of the family gives 11 July 1631.

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 his 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

The marriage, written George Lewes and Dennis Forman, the christenings and burials of the children, Dennys’s burial as the wife of George Lewes, and George’s own burial, written “George Levs or Lewes”, are from an index of the Brenchley parish registers. The same index names the younger George “George Jr.” at his children’s christenings in 1627 and 1629, and gives Elisabeth’s christening once as 2 February 1613 and once as 2 February 1614, the same baptism in the old and new reckoning of the year. 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, identified the two brothers and their parents. George Lewes’s own parents are not known.

The year of his burial

The index of the Brenchley burials gives 11 July 1630. Wakefield’s article is quoted as giving 11 July 1631. This page follows the index; the register entry itself would settle the year.