♂William Williams

William Williams (died 1618) was a yeoman of Synwell, part of the town of Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, England, and the father of Richard Williams, who settled at Taunton in Plymouth Colony^W. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Richard Williams (about 1606 – before 1693).

Life at Synwell

He was probably born in 1556, and is said to have been a son of John Williams and his wife Theobalde. A tradition among his descendants in America made the family kin to Oliver Cromwell, whose great-grandfather had been born a Williams, and a pedigree printed in 1897 carried William’s line back through his father to Wales. James Savage, the compiler of the Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, had already called the Cromwell tradition “wild” in 1862, and Douglas Richardson’s modern account of the family does not repeat it.

His first wife was probably Jane Shepherd, whom he married on 15 November 1585; she seems to have died about 1600, not long after a child of hers was baptized in December 1599. He then took as his second wife Jane Woodward, who is said to have come from Cam, a village near Dursley a few miles north of Wotton-under-Edge. William and Jane were married on 4 December 1603.

Their first child, Richard, was born about 1606; Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry gives his baptism at Wotton-under-Edge as 28 January 1607/8^W. Jane died on 2 February 1615 (an 1897 account gives the year as 1614), while Richard was still a small boy. William died in 1618, probably on 29 September, and Richard was named in his will.

Notes

Where he is known from

William is known only from printed genealogies. Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd ed. (2011), vol. 1, p. 635, in the account of Frances Deighton (Dighton), calls her husband Richard Williams “son of William Williams, of Synwell (in Wotton under Edge), Gloucestershire, yeoman, by his 2nd wife, Jane Woodward”, gives Richard’s baptism at Wotton under Edge on 28 January 1607/8, and says that Richard “was a legatee in the 1618 will of his father”. Richardson cites studies of the family in The American Genealogist, vols. 9 (1932–33) and 10 (1933–34). His Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 265, gives the same account. The parish entries and the will are known only as the compilers give them.

Birth, death and parents

The year of his birth, the day of his death (29 September 1618, at Synwell) and the names of his parents, John Williams and Theobalde, come from WikiTree. The 1897 account below calls his father “John Williams of Huntingdon, near Wotton-Under-Edge”, who “died in 1579, leaving son William”; WikiTree gives John’s death as 1578.

His two marriages

The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 51 (April 1897), pp. 211–212, places William at “Huntingdon” near Wotton-under-Edge and gives his first marriage, on 15 November 1585, to Jane Shepherd, who “died about 1600; a child of hers having been baptized December 2, 1599”, and his second, on 4 December 1603, to Jane Woodward, who “died February 2, 1614, and he in 1618”. It calls Richard, “born in January, 1606”, the first child of the second marriage. George Thomas Little’s Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine (1909), vol. 4, p. 2030, repeats the two marriages. Richardson names Jane Woodward as the second wife but not the first. In the Old Style calendar the year began on 25 March, so Jane’s death in February 1614 by that reckoning is probably the same day as the 2 February 1615 used here. Richard’s age agrees with his own will of 5 May 1686, which calls him “aged about Eighty”.

The Cromwell tradition

The 1897 Register article prints a pedigree traced for “Gov. Williams” from Howell Williams, “Lord of Ribour”, through Williamses of Glamorgan and Surrey and Richard Williams of Monmouth and Dixton (died 1559) to William’s father, and ends: “It is not believed that, in the light of Gov. Williams’s researches, the relationship of Richard Williams of Taunton, and the Cromwell family, will again be questioned.” Little’s 1909 work repeats it. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, vol. 4 (1862), discussing Richard Williams of Taunton, found two other stories about his origins very improbable, “tho. not so wild as the tradit. that he was a relat. of Oliver Cromwell”.

The Gloucestershire origin

Savage also doubted that Richard Williams of Taunton had married in Gloucestershire. The later studies that Richardson follows place him at Wotton-under-Edge. Two later items point the same way: Peter Wilson Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants 1607–1660 (1987), abstracts the probate in June 1655 of the will of Jane Williams of Whetenhurst (now Whitminster), Gloucestershire, spinster, “whose brother and sister Richard and Elizabeth Williams were in New England”; and Little’s 1909 work says that Richard appointed his brother Samuel his attorney on 21 October 1646 to sell his share of a “tucke mill at Sinwell”.