Bartholomew Hoskins, 'Ancient Planter'

On July 3, 1624, Mrs. Dorcas Foster was married at St. Dunstan's Church, in Stepney, London, England to Bartholomew Hoskins of Jamestown, Virginia and London, England. Dorcas Foster was described as a widow with several small children. Bartholomew Hoskins, an ancient planter, was in Virginia by 1616. He undoubtedly made a number of trips from Virginia and England as he maintained a home in each location. On one of these trips back to England he married Mrs. Dorcas Foster.. The maiden name of Dorcas is yet unknown as is the name of her Foster husband. Bartholomew and Dorcas made their home in Elizabeth City, Lower Norfolk County, Virginia.

notes

From Bartholomew Hoskins posted 2012:

My first immigrant ancestor, Bartholomew Hoskins, was born about 1600 in the Herefordshire area of England. He's apparently a descendent of the Lincolnshire line that goes back to the Hoskyns surname of the 1500s, who were English barristers and writers, so some historical accounts say (that English history is ongoing...)
Bartholomew was the first European to receive land in the Crown-controlled Colony, and in 1645 he received the first patent of 1,350 acres in an area that became became Tappahannock in Essex County, Virginia. There is a Hoskins Creek snaking through this area, feeding into the Rappahannock River to the east and winding several miles to the west.
Arriving in America in about 1615 (making him about 15 at the time), Bartholomew achieved in 1624 the status of “Ancient Planter” - a designation given to anyone who migrated to the Plantation of Virginia before 1616, paid their own passage, remained for three years, and survived the Jamestown Massacre of 1622 that wiped out a fourth of the colonial settlement.
Historical land patent records that I saw copies of show that Bartholomew received the first land grants in Virginia. He married Dorcas Mira Isham at St. Dunstan’s Church in the Stepney area of London on July 3, 1628, and records show he traveled frequently back and forth between Virginia and London during those early years and kept a residence on Fleet Street. He died about 1663 in Elizabeth River, Lower Norfolk, Virginia.
Records show that "Barth" was a distinguished gentlemen who became a man of prominence in his community. He was among the vestrymen for the Parish of Lynnhaven, a member of the County Court and the representative for Lower Norfolk County in the House of Burgess between 1649-1656. In the book "Hoskins of Virginia and Related Families," the author writes the following about our ancestor:

"He was a man of great bravery, a man of adventure, who faced many times a treacherous ocean and the dangers of a new and strange land. The evidence shows that he was very strong physically and mentally. He was a man familiar with the sea, with sailors and merchants. Bartholomew Hoskins was one of the very earliest of the colonial merchants, was in the vanguard of transporting British Civilization to the new world and a most worthy and distinguished immigrant ancestor."

His descendants would follow to become important parts of the new colony, and honoring this historic line in the Essex County Courthouse is a mounted tablet marking the impact made by Bartholomew and his descendants, some of which branch out from our particular line that ultimately moved away from this pre-colonial area.

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Source:

• St. Dunstan's Parish Register, Stepney, London, England;
• The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 27
• http://fosterfamily.surnames.com/dr_foster.htm
• http://www.geneajourney.com/hoskinfo.html
• http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/HOSKINS/2006-09/11591...

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• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Nov 8 2018, 3:51:55 UTC

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GEDCOM Note

No proof of filiation

Family Search lists this Bartholomew, b. 1624 Plymouth, Mass, US and d. 1651 West Nimba, Liberia. Records do not support this filiation from Stephen Hopkins. Several Plymouth Colony sources suggest the children born to Stephen Hopkins and Elizabeth (Fisher) are:

-Damaris (1619-1627)
-Oceanus (1620-1627)--only child born aboard the Mayflower -Caleb (1624-1644, Barbados) Bartholomew listed in Family Search as being born the same year as Caleb (1624-1651) but is not listed in Simon Neal's research summarized in Wikipedia and published in Mayflower Quarterly Sep 2010, Dec 2011, Jun 2012, Mar 2013. I am currently cross-checking the NEHG Mayflower Families Silver Books. -Deborah (1626-1674) -Damaris (1627-1669)--name used again? -Ruth (1630-1644) -Elizabeth (1632-1659) -Mark (1635-1635)--infant death

Furthermore, there is no mention of a Bartholomew in Stephen Hopkins' Last Will and Testament drawn up June 1844 (the same year Caleb apparently died) while it lists Caleb as his "sonn and heire" and "true and lawfull executor," and makes Caleb and Miles Standish supervisors of the will.

The 1627 Plymouth Division of Cattle, a document that serves as an unnofficial census, lists Caleb Hopkins as a son of Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins, and Deborah who was born 1626, but no Bartholomew. (The document does list a Bartholomew Allerton in Plymouth in 1627, son of Isaac & Ffeare Allerton.)

This Bartholomew Hopkins must be from someone and somewhere else. His wife is listed as Abigail Cook, b. 1630 in Montgomery, Wales and d. sans date in Salem, Essex, Massachusetts. By date that connects her to Bartholomew; by location she ends up in Massachusetts. But their supposed child, Martha Elizabeth (who married Henry Freeman--my ancestors), was born in 1642 in James City, Virginia--when Abigail Cook was 12 years old (unless the birth date is incorrect) and in Virginia, not unheard of but an unlikely migration.

Martha Elizabeth Freeman née Hopkins woukd be Stephen's granddaughter. (Abigail apparently died 8 Dec 1684 in Charles Corner, York, Virginia). Could this Bartholomew Hopkins have been in Virginia, coming from there (easy to check records) or perhaps England?

-- Daryl Lee, Ph.D. | Associate Professor Department of French & Italian | Brigham Young University 3133 JFSB | Provo, UT 84604 801.422.9055 | dlee@byu.edu | http://frenital.byu.edu/

GEDCOM Source

Modified via Ancestry.com

GEDCOM Source

Modified via Ancestry.com