♂Henry Cogan

Henry Cogan (died 1612) was a clothier of Taunton in Somerset, England, who married Joane Boridge at the church of St Mary Magdalen in 1590 and raised eleven children in the town. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Frances Coggan (died 1671).

Marriage and family

Henry Cogan and Joane Boridge were married at the church of St Mary Magdalen in Taunton on 30 November 1590. Eleven children followed over the next seventeen years, all of them of the same parish: Johane, the eldest, born about 1591, then John, Judith, Mary, Elizabeth, Jane, Grace, Richard, Marian and Frances, and last Henry, baptized on 6 April 1607.

Will and death

Henry made his will on 27 November 1612, describing himself as a clothier of Taunton, and was buried at St Mary Magdalen four days later, on 1 December. The will left £10 to each of six daughters, Johane, Judith, Mary, Elizabeth, Anne and Frances, to be paid when they married, and it named his son John. It was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W on 29 June 1613. Frances, the youngest of the six, was then about seven years old.

Notes

Sources

His marriage, his trade, his burial, the will and the baptisms of his children come from George E. McCracken’s study “Early Cogans English and American” in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 111 (1957), which gives the will’s reference as PCC 52 Capell. McCracken takes the daughter “Anne” of the will to be Marian, baptized in 1603. Jane and Grace, baptized in 1599 and 1600, are not among the six daughters the will names, and the will as printed does not say why.

His parents

McCracken suggests only that Henry “may have been son to Henry Cogan who married in Chedzoy, 1 July 1565, Elizabeth Carye”. Burton W. Spear’s Search for the Passengers of the Mary & John 1630 repeats that couple as the grandparents of Henry’s son Henry. No record ties them to him, and this page does not take them as his parents.