♂George Lewis

George Lewis (christened 31 August 1600 – died about 1663) was a clothier from Kent who came to Plymouth Colony^W in the 1630s and settled first at Scituate and then at Barnstable. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son James Lewis (1631–1713).

Early life in Kent

George is said to have been christened at Brenchley, in Kent, on 31 August 1600, a son of George Lewes and Dennys Forman. He was a clothier by trade. George Lewis and Mary Doggett are said to have married at Horsmonden, in Kent, on 1 November 1624, and their first four children, Mary, George, Thomas and James, were christened at Brenchley, his home parish, between 1625 and 1631. A son Edward was probably also born in England.

Scituate

George was in New England by 1634, when the church at Plymouth released him and others to gather a church of their own at Scituate. He joined it on 30 September 1635, and before October 1636 he had built a house on Kent Street, named for the settlers from his own county, “the men of Kent”. On 14 January 1636/7 he was admitted a freeman^W of the colony. His Scituate lot was only five acres, a servant’s share, and the colony had too few sheep to keep a clothier busy, so he most likely made his living as a planter. His son John was born at Scituate in March 1637/8.

Barnstable

In 1639 George followed the Reverend John Lothrop^W and his church to Barnstable, selling his Scituate house and land to Richard Willis of Plymouth for £19. His new home lot lay west of the Hyannis road, and he held land in the common field, marsh at Sandy Neck and a sixty-acre lot by Rowley’s Pond, which he sold to his sons Edward and John in 1652. Two more children were born at Barnstable, Ephraim on 23 July 1641 and Sarah on 2 February 1643/4.

He held only small town offices: surveyor of highways in 1648 and 1650, juryman in 1649 and constable of Barnstable in 1651. In 1654 he leased the estate of a Mr. Dimmock, whose health was failing, and seems to have lived for some years in its old fortified house. A deed he made that year is signed by Mary, his wife, and on 31 January 1654/5 he sold his Barnstable house and four parcels of land to Samuel Mayo for £28 5s.

George died at Barnstable about 1663, and his will is said to have named all his children. Writing in the 1880s, the Barnstable historian Amos Otis described a man who would rather yield to a neighbor than go to law, and who “was an honest Goodman, and got his living by his labor”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son James 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 Lewis and Mary Doggett. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one, through George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Notes

Brenchley, not East Greenwich

Amos Otis’s Genealogical Notes of Barnstable Families (1888 to 1890) calls George a clothier “from East Greenwich, County of Kent” and gives his wife as Sarah Jenkins, a sister of Edward Jenkins of Scituate. Otis took the Mary who signed the 1654 deed for a second wife, “living in 1670”, though he doubted the deed justified calling her one. In 1997 Gordon Lewis Remington showed, in two articles in The American Genealogist (volume 72, pages 311 to 328, with corrections in volume 74), that he was George Lewis of Brenchley, and that his wife “was not Sarah Jenkins, as many sources had claimed, but was Mary Doggett, daughter of Thomas Doggett of Horsmonden, Kent.” The Great Migration Newsletter, reviewing the articles, places him at Scituate by 1634 and at Barnstable by 1641. Otis notes that George wrote his own name Lewes.

Sources

His christening at Brenchley, written George Lewes, the marriage at Horsmonden, written George Leweis and Mary Doggat, and the christenings of Mary (27 December 1625), George (11 November 1627), Thomas (5 January 1628/9) and James (25 March 1631) are from an index of the English parish registers; the Great Migration volumes give James’s christening as 25 March 1632. The births of John, Ephraim and Sarah are in the Barnstable entries printed in the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, volume 8, under “Gorge Lewis, Seni’”, which give John as “borne att Scittuate, the 2 of March, 1637”; Otis gives the year as 1637/8. The same volume records the marriage at Scituate on 14 November 1643 of John Bryant and “Mary Lewis, the daughter of Gorge Lewis, of Barnstable”. His church membership, house, freeman’s admission, land dealings, lease, offices and character, the deed signed by Mary, and his death at Barnstable “in 1662 or 3” are from Otis, who drew on the town, church and colony records. Edward’s likely English birth is Otis’s suggestion.