♂Thomas Adnett

Thomas Adnett (died before 1586) was a man of Kingston upon Thames, in Surrey, England, in the middle of the sixteenth century. He was probably the eleventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Mary Adnett, who married Robert Chelsham. Between 1548 and 1554 he and his wife Margaret were parties to a lawsuit over land in Kingston and Surbiton.

Thomas and Margaret had two daughters, Mary and Agnes. After Thomas’s death Margaret most likely married John Mochett, a woollen draper of Kingston, who made his will on 11 December 1579. In a Kingston deed of 27 August 1586 the two sisters, Mary, the wife of Robert Chelsham, a beer brewer, and Agnes, the wife of John Gilpin, a tailor, are described as the “daughters and heirs” of an Adnett “late of Kingston”, most likely Thomas.

Notes

Sources

What is known of Thomas comes from Robert Battle and Henry B. Hoff’s study of the English ancestry of Rodolphus Elmes in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (2022), which cites catalogue entries of the National Archives and of local record offices: the lawsuit, which names Thomas Adnett and Margaret his wife, the 1586 deed, and a later deed of 1617.

His name

The 1586 deed leaves the first name of the sisters’ father blank. That he was Thomas is the article’s conclusion, drawn from the lawsuit naming Thomas Adnett and his wife Margaret, and from the 1617 deed naming Margaret as the mother of Mary and Agnes. The article names no parent for Thomas, and nothing is known of his birth or of the date of his death.