♂Robert Andrews

Robert Andrews (died 1644) was an early settler of Ipswich, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, where he most likely kept an ordinary, or inn. His will looked to the schooling of his younger son: Thomas was to spend two years helping his brother on the farm and a third back at school, to “recover his learning”, with an allowance if he then went on to the university. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by three separate lines of descent, all through his daughter Abigail Andrews (born about 1623).

Ipswich

Ipswich, first called Agawam, was settled in 1633, and Robert Andrews probably came over the next year, when he already had land in the town. By the colony’s records he was made a freeman^W on 6 May 1635, a standing open only to church members that gave him a vote in its elections, and that September the General Court licensed him to keep an ordinary at Ipswich. In May 1640 he was licensed to “draw wine at Ipswich”, and in January 1640/1 he is said to have been one of the first four surveyors of highways the town appointed, the men charged with making its lanes fit for ox-carts.

A family history of 1890, followed by the Hovey family’s history of 1913, made him Captain Robert Andrews, master of the Angel Gabriel^W, which was wrecked at Pemaquid in a storm in August 1635. But he had been made a freeman in Massachusetts that May, while the ship was still in England.

His will

Robert Andrews made his will at Ipswich on 1 March 1643/4, and it was proved on 26 March 1644, so he died within those few weeks. He named his eldest son, John, executor, but John was still under age, and Robert placed him with Thomas Howlet as guardian until he came of age. His wife, Elizabeth, was to have forty pounds. Thomas was to live three years with his brother, two of them helping him “in his husbandry” and the third at school; if he then went to the university or set himself to some other way of living, John was to allow him ten pounds a year for four years and fifteen pounds a year for two more. Thomas went on, it seems, to be the town’s schoolmaster.

Two grandchildren appear in the will. Eighty pounds was to be paid to Elizabeth Franklin, the daughter of his son-in-law William Franklin of Boston by Robert’s daughter Alice, who had died by April 1641, when the two men appear to have settled what remained of her marriage portion. If Elizabeth died before the money fell due, ten pounds of it was to go to “Daniell Hovey my grand child”, the young son of Robert’s daughter Abigail and her husband, Daniel Hovey, whom she had married about 1641, and the other seventy to John and Thomas. Only if both sons died as well were his kinsmen John, Thomas and Robert Burnham, two sons of Humphrey Griffin, and Daniel Hovey himself to share it. Humphrey Griffin’s son John was left sixteen pounds outright, to be paid at twenty-one, though the will does not say how the boy was kin to him.

Lines of descent

Robert Andrews stands twelve generations above Nancy Jane Blanchard, by three separate lines, all through his daughter Abigail and her son Joseph Hovey (1653–1693). The lines meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both descended from him, and once more in Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975), Nancy Jane Blanchard’s father, whose parents, George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Anna Walker Merryman (1869–1942), were both descended from him too.

Notes

The inn, the freemanship and the town office

His arrival in 1634, the freemanship of 6 May 1635, the licence of 3 September 1635 to keep an ordinary and the licence of May 1640 to draw wine come from Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England 1634–1635, vol. I, pp. 52–55, which cites the printed records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for the freemanship and the 1635 licence. His land at Ipswich by 1634 is from Anderson’s Great Migration Newsletter. The highway surveyorship of January 1640/1 is from the introduction to The Hovey Book (Daniel Hovey Association, 1913), which takes it from Waters’s history of Ipswich. Anderson gives his English origin as unknown and places his birth by about 1593, an estimate from the likely date of his marriage.

His wife and children

The will is printed in George Francis Dow, ed., The Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, vol. I, pp. 27–28, from the Ipswich Deeds, vol. 1, leaf 6; its witnesses were William Knight, John Whipple, Thomas Scot and Joseph Metcalfe. It names his wife Elizabeth but does not make her the mother of his children; Anderson has him married by about 1618 to an Elizabeth whose surname is unknown, “probably a widow”. When Thomas Andrews died unmarried at Ipswich in 1683, the county court divided his estate among the children of his “only brother” and of the two sisters, which makes Alice, Abigail, John and Thomas the whole family. Anderson takes Elizabeth, who married Humphrey Griffin and then Hugh Sherratt, to have been more likely the daughter of Robert’s wife by an earlier marriage than his own, which may account for the legacy to John Griffin. Alice’s marriage to William Franklin, a blacksmith of Boston, and the agreement of 2 April 1641 over her portion are from H. F. Andrews, History of the Andrews Family (1890), pp. 48–50, which prints the agreement, and James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary. Thomas’s post as schoolmaster is from The Hovey Book and Anderson. The will writes the kinsmen’s surname “Burnum”; Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700 calls them his nephews.

The Angel Gabriel story

The 1890 Andrews history and The Hovey Book identify him with Captain Robert Andrews, master of the Angel Gabriel, and make his Burnham nephews, his son John and his daughter Abigail survivors of the wreck. Anderson calls this “a physical impossibility”: the freemanship of 6 May 1635 required him to be in New England months before the ship came in. His Great Migration Newsletter suggests the story grew out of a confusion over the Rev. Joseph Avery, whom an early historian wrongly put aboard the Angel Gabriel and who was drowned off Cape Ann in the same storm. The inventory of Avery’s goods, on which administration was granted on 1 September 1635, lists two pounds due from “Robte Andrewes, of Ipswich”, which “he confesseth to be due” (Dow, Probate Records, vol. I, p. 3). The newsletter calls Andrews one of Avery’s creditors; the inventory makes him a debtor.

Dates

The will is dated “the first of March 1643”, in the old reckoning that began the year on 25 March, and was proved “26 : 1 : 1644”, the 26th of the first month. The Hovey Book gives his death as 1643, the will’s own year in that reckoning, and has him leaving Daniel Hovey “a legacy of ten pounds”; in the will the ten pounds was for the grandson, and only if Elizabeth Franklin died before her money fell due.