♂Samuel Williams

Samuel Williams (died 1697) was a freeman of Taunton in Plymouth Colony^W and the eldest son of one of the town’s first settlers. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Sarah Williams.

Life at Taunton

Samuel was born about 1638, probably at Taunton, the son of Richard Williams and his wife Frances. His father was among the first freemen of the settlement, then called Cohannet. Samuel was probably a tailor by trade. Like his father and his brothers Nathaniel and Joseph, he was a freeman^W of the colony, with a vote in the election of its governor and magistrates, and all four of them appear among the Taunton names on a list of the colony’s freemen.

When Richard made his will on 5 May 1686, he called Samuel “my Eldest Son Samuell” and named him first of the five sons he appointed joint executors, with the charge “to take care of her their said mother”. The will was proved on 10 October 1693, after Richard’s death.

Marriages

His first wife was most likely Mary Gilbert, whom he married about 1662. They had three daughters, Sarah, Mary and Hannah, and three sons, Seth, Daniel and Samuel. After Mary’s death Samuel married again, probably in the early 1690s. His second wife, Anna, had been widowed twice: her first husband, John Tisdale of Taunton, died in 1677, and her second, Thomas Terry of Freetown, in 1691. Samuel and Anna had no children together.

His will

Samuel died in 1697, soon after making his will. The probate of the will is dated 6 August 1697; a published abstract gives that same day for the will itself and 31 August for the inventory of his estate. He left land to his sons Seth, Daniel and Samuel, and to “my three Daughters Sarah Dean Mary Andros & Hannah Bun” he gave “Eight pounds apeice”, to be paid by his executor “within the space of seven years after my decease”. He is said to have given his wife leave to live with Seth.

Notes

Birth and parents

His birth is not recorded. Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, vol. 2 (1978), places it at Taunton about 1637/8, and Clarence Almon Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700 gives 1637 or 1639. The Great Migration Begins notes that Richard Williams of Taunton was still in England in 1636. Richard’s will of 1686 calls Samuel his eldest son; James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England calls him the second son, an elder brother John having died young. Richard’s will names his wife as “Ffrauncis”; her maiden name, Dighton, comes from Savage and later compiled works.

His wives

Torrey gives his first wife as Mary Gilbert, a daughter of Thomas Gilbert, married at Taunton about 1662, and marks as wrong the name Jane, which Savage and a genealogy in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (vol. 5, 1851) give her. Mayflower Families also names her Mary Gilbert and makes her the mother of all six children. Neither Samuel’s will nor his father’s names her.

The second marriage rests on the same two works. Mayflower Families identifies Anna as a daughter of John Rogers of Duxbury and a granddaughter of the Mayflower passenger Thomas Rogers. She married John Tisdale Jr. at Taunton on 23 November 1664, and Thomas Terry between 1678 and 1683; on 8 June 1704, as Anna Williams of Taunton, widow of Thomas Terry, she agreed to a division of his lands at Freetown. Mayflower Families places her marriage to Samuel between October 1691 and August 1697; Torrey has it after 25 July 1686 and before 6 August 1697.

Dates of the will

The will is copied into the Bristol County probate register, vol. 1. The probate index gives 6 August 1697 both for the will and for its probate. The abstract in Mayflower Families treats 6 August as the day the will was drawn and gives 31 August 1697 for the inventory; it also calls him a tailor, and records that he gave his wife, whom the will does not name, liberty to live with his son Seth.

The list of freemen

The Records of the Colony of New Plymouth (vol. 8) print the colony’s lists of freemen town by town. The Taunton list that names Samuell Williams also names Richard, Nathaniell and Joseph Williams, matching the sons in Richard’s will. Richard is also in the earlier list of the “Freemen of Cohannett”, the settlement’s name before it became Taunton.