

NEW EVIDENCE: by Keevin Biggs??? Hello, On a side-note, dealing with MESSENGER-related families, there is news. I know a bunch of us on this list descend from the Connecticut HOLCOMBE family, via Catherine HOLCOMBE, wife of Joseph MESSENGER and Experience HOLCOMBE, wife of Nathaniel ALFORD. Catherine and Experience were first cousins once removed.
The progenitor of said HOLCOMBE family was Thomas HOLCOMBE, who married Mrs. Elizabeth FERGUSON. For some time, it had been said that Thomas was *likely* the son of Gilbert and Anne (Courtenay) HOLCOMBE, both of incredible royal lineage. However, one problem with that claim was the plaque of HOLCOMBE ancestry above the tomb of Sir John de HOLCOMBE, Knight of the Third Crusade and ancestor of Gilbert HOLCOMBE. Thomas was not included on that plaque (although neither were some others who claimed descent).
Well, I have been informed by a HOLCOMBE researcher, to my complete surprise, that the missing part of that plaque has been found. A brother of Gilbert emigrated from England, (eventually his ancestors ended up in Australia), and had taken part with them. In 1995, that plaque was discovered and did, in fact, have Thomas Holcombe as the son of Gilbert and Anne (COURTENAY) HOLCOMBE.
I have a *monstrous* file on the ancestors of Gilbert and Anne, and am still in the process of putting it all together. As it goes through Charlemagne, among those in many other royal houses, some of the ancestry goes back to the first couple centuries A.D. King Alfred the Great's ancestry, from a book written in the 900's, goes back to B.C. time.
I have tons of ancestors of my MESSENGERS and related colonial families (including some not on your page, Debbie). I could see what I can do about posting lineages.
FROM: Lorin Snyder snyderl@acadl.stvincent.edu
Thomas lived in Connecticut from 1634 until his death.
Thomas Holcomb, the immigrant ancestor, was a freeman in Dorchester, Mass., 14 May 1634. Sold property there in 1665, although he removed to Windsor in 1639. He was a representative from Windsor to Hartford to assist in framing the constitution of Connecticut Colony. He died at Windsor 7 Sep. 1657. His widow, Elizabeth, married James Eno 5 Aug. 1658, and died 7 Oct. 1679. (NEB genealogy)
THOMAS HOLCOMBE was born about 1595 in Pembroke, Wales, England, the son of Gilbert and Anne (Courtenay) Holcombe. [disproven see Gilbert Holcombe, gent.]
He came to America in 1630 on the boat "Mary and John". This was the same boat on which William Buell came to America.
Thomas married Elizabeth Ferguson on May 14, 1634, in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She was born in England in 1610, the daughter of Thomas Ferguson. They were the parents of ten children, four sons and six daughters.
After marrying, the Thomas Holcombes lived in Dorchester, Massachusetts, then Roxbury and finally Poquonock, Connecticut.
After the death of Thomas Holcombe on September 7, 1657, Elizabeth married James Eno on August 5, 1658.
May have been born in Pembrokeshire, Wales or Hull/Hole Devonshire, England. Thomas was one of a company of one hundred forty Puritans who, in March of 1630, assembled at the hospital at Plymouth, Devon County, England, for the purpose of developing plans for their voyage to America. They chartered a 400-ton ship, the Mary and John, and soon set sail. After sailing for 70 days the group arrived 30 May, 1630 at Nantasket, Massachusetts. The party settledjust south of Boston.
They named the area Dorchester. It was later incorporated into greater Boston. Thomas was granted an eight acre Great Lot at Dorchester, 1 December 1634; granted Lot #65, three acres, in the meadow beyond Naponset; on 12 August 1635 Thomas Holcombe of Dorchester sold to Richard Joanes of Dorchester four parcels of land: four acres "with my houses and all things thereto pertaining"; eight acres in Great Lots; six acres meadow on this side Naponset; and three acres meadow on the other side Naponset.
Thomas married Elizabeth (a widow). Elizabeth survived him and married as her 3rd husband and his 2nd wife James Eno. Thomas was made a freeman 14 March, 1634. Within a few years--1635-1636--Thomas, along with sixty other people, settled Windsor, Hartford County, Connecticut. He sold his Dorchester property 12 August, 1635 and moved to a farm at Poquonock, Hartford County near Windsor. Thomas represented Hartford County in framing the constitution of the Colony of Connecticut, served on a Connecticut jury, September 1654. He was also a Deputy and a member of the Connecticut Militia.
The Windsor land inventory on 25 December 1640 states that "Thomas Holcom his former grants sold to Josyas Hull, William [illegible] and George Phelps." He had then granted "by virtue of purchase at Paquannick for an home lot with meadow adjoining twenty acres,"also adjoining "four acres and half more or less," also on the west side of the brook before his house "25 acres more or less," also by purchase from Henry Clarke "twenty-five acres with upland adjoining 68 acres more or less." On 7 February 1655[/6] Thomas Holcombe had twelve acres of woodland bounded out to him. On 4 March 1655[/6] he had ten acres of woodland bounded out.
Thomas died September 7, 1657 and is buried in an old cemetery near his home in Poquonock, Conn. The old stone has crumbled and been removed. The inventory of the estate of "Thomas Holcom of Windsor" was taken 1 October 1657 and totalled £294 10s., of which
To the inventory was appended the following list:
The related that survive the above said deceased are
Elizabeth, the relict and administratrix, was appointed 3 December 1657 and dealt with the cautions issued by George Griswold and his father Edward Griswold regarding division of the estate.
CHILDREN:
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=jrnichols&id=I1801
(f/g) Thomas Holcomb
Born by about 1609, based on estimated age of marriage. Came to Massachusetts Bay in 1633. First settled in Dorchester; moved to Windsor CT in 1635. Died in Windsor CT 7 September 1657. Thomas married by about 1634, an Elizabeth (assuming she was the mother of all his children), born about 1617. John Winthrop, Jr. attended her at Windsor in 1669, as the wife of second husband James Eno, and called her 52 years old. Previous authors have claimed that Thomas Holcomb married an Elizabeth Ferguson at Dorchester, Mass. on May 14, 1634. Such marriage is not on record and the date is synonymous with the date Thomas Holcomb was admitted a freeman of the Mass. Bay Colony. In 1964 Donald Lines Jacobus noted that "[h]er maiden name has been stated as Ferguson, without proof or probability."
In 1981 George E. McCracken published "Thomas Holcombe's Earlier Posterity," a definitive account of the immigrant and the first few generations of descent from him. In his usual style, he opened the article with an exhaustive discussion of previous writings on this family. The same author has also written two brief articles on the fraudulent claim of royal ancestry for Thomas Holcombe and on the inaccurate tombstone erected in his memory.
Thomas Holcomb(e), of unknown parentage, was b. likely in England about 1609. He arrived at the Massachusetts Bay in 1633 and first settled at Dorchester, Mass. He later moved to Windsor, Conn. in 1635 where he died on Sept. 7, 1657.
Thomas Holcomb died intestate, his estate abstracted by Manwaring from the Hartford Probate District records, Vol. I, Page 130-131, citing probate vol. II, pages 105-6:
…Thomas Holcomb of Windsor. Invt. £294-09-08 taken Oct. 1, 1657 by Benjamin Newbery and Daniel Clark. Children: Joshua age 17 years, Benajah 13, Nathaniel 9, Abigail 19, and Deborah 6-7/12 years of age. Signed, Matthew Grant. Adms. granted to the Widow Elizabeth Holcomb with order of distribution to:
Family links:
Spouse:
Children:
Burial: Palisado Cemetery, Windsor, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA
---
Likely more correct:
FINDAGRAVE http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=65163079
Children
it has been represented that Thomas moved from England to Boston,MA. He was a Puritan. He came to America on the "Mary and John" arriving at Boston May 30, 1630. He was one of 60 "Puritans and dissenters" who moved in 1635-36 to the junction of the Farmington and Connecticut Rivers and founded the town of Windsor.
The Holcomb Genealogy compiled by James Hallowell Holcombe Jr. 2006
MARY AND JOHN Thomas has been said to have come on the 1630 voyage of the Mary and John, but there is no proof of it, all passenger lists for that voyage being hypothetical.
Robert Charles Anderson in NEHGR, April 1993, addressed the many different lists of passengers on the Mary and John. He went about objectively establishing specific criteria for determining the likelihood that a specific individual was on the ship. By the criteria he established, which seem reasonable, Mr. Anderson concluded that Thomas Holcombe is not likely to have come on the Mary and John in 1630.
In 1649 he moved 4 miles NW to Poquonock. He represented Windsor and Hartford on the General Court, and served for both in framing the Constitution of the Colony of Connecticut.
Many of his descendants lived in and around the town of Simsbury in Hartford Co., later known as Granby..
The genealogical data on the north side of the stone contain a number of errors. Thomas Holcomb had no son named Thomas, and, though C.G. Flanders must have seen a stone for the son, with the date of death, given as 1736, he shows no first name. Thomas Holcomb did have a son who died in 1736, Benajah, who died 25 Jan. 1736/7, and it was probably he who was buried at Poquonock in 1736 Old Style, as he is known not to have accompanied his relatives from Windsor to Simsbury, out of which Granby was later taken. Benajah, however, married Sarah Eno, not Elizabeth Pettebone, and though there were Holcomb-Pettebone marriages, no Elizabeth Pettebone married any Holcomb in the period.
What has happened is that Benajah's death year has been appropriated for a son who was rather Joshua, Born Windsor, 7 April 1649, died Simsbury, 1 Dec. 1690 who married 4 June 1663 Ruth Sherwood, died 10 Sept. 1699, daughter of Thomas Sherwood of Fairfield. Joshua and his wife belong on that stone in the place of a non-existing Thomas. Joshua, however, had a son Capt. Thomas who was born in Windsor, 30 March 1666, died at Simsbury 5 March 1730/1, and his first wife was Elizabeth Terry; second wife, Rebecca Pettebone. The two views of Capt. Thomas have been condensed into one, Elizabeth from the first wife and Pettebone from the second, but the line to these later Holcombs really runs through Elizabeth Terry and the name Pettebone does not belong on the stone. In the next generation Daniel was the 2nd son of Capt. Thomas and Elizabeth (Terry) Holcomb, and was born 30 Sept. 1692, date of death not hitherto known to me. The stone is right in naming his wife Esther Buel, for she was Hester Buel, born Simsbury, 24 Nov. 1705, baptized there by Dudley Woodbridge, 10 March 1705/6, youngest daughter of Peter Buel (William) by his third wife MaryGillett, and the marriage took place on 1 Jan. 1735/6. Daniel was, indeed, the only son, but as he was born 31 March 1744, his age at death, if he died, 12 Oct. 1836, was 92 and not 85. Likewise, Daniel was aged 65, not 54, if he died as the stone says on 5 June 1836, for he was born 18 Jan. 1771, baptized 14 Aug. 1774.
This article has been written, not only to call attention to these errors, but to serve as an excellent example of the wisdom of not accepting sepulchral information at its face value.
Children of Thomas Holcombe and Elizabeth (--?--) were as follows:
Genealogical Vandalism As documented in the Holcomb Genealogy
Thomas Holcombe's Tombstone
The story of the vandalism was reported to me some years ago by the late Mrs. Carrie Marshall Kendrick who lived in a fine mid-victorian house near the intersection of Marshall Phelps Road with Poquonock Avenue in Windsor, Conn. The house had been formerly known as 1297 Poquonock Avenue but more recently has been given a number of Marshall Phelps Road. On the other side of the road but the same side of the avenue, so Mrs. Kendrick informed me, was formerly a small cemetery in which was originally buried Thomas Holcombe in October 1657.
Members of the Holcomb family "later" removed to what is now Granby and took with them Thomas Holcomb's tombstone, if not what was left of his remains also, and inserted the 1657 stone into an obelisk-type monument in the Granby Street Cemetery in Granby where it was read by C. G. Flanders in 1934 when he reported all the stones of that graveyard: "Thomas Holcomb, born in England, died Oct. 1657." Mrs Kendrick further stated, with considerable distress, that some years before she spoke members of the family had demolished the obelisk-type monument and replaced it with a modern granite monument, and the original slab was then thrown into a dump.
Family links:
Spouse:
Children:
Burial: Granby Cemetery, Granby, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA
Likely came to America on the "Mary and John." One of the founders of Windsor, CT
Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut
Christening: 1657
Pembrokshire, Wales
Arrival: 1630
Dorchester, Suffolk, Massachusetts, USA
Arrival: 1630
Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA
Immigration: May 30 1630
the Mary and John to Nantasket Bay, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Ancestral File Number: 3GLM-8W Residence: Dorchester, Suffolk, Massachusetts, USA _UPD: 02 JAN 2016 23:16:42 GMT+-0 Occupation: Freeman, May 1634, Farmer Marriage: Marriage to: elizabeth jacques Holcomb (born FERGUSON) May 14 1634
Dorchester, Suffolk, Massachusetts, USA
Residence: Suffolk, Massachusetts, USA Between 1700 and 1859 Death: Sep 7 1657
Poquonock, Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Burial: Sep 7 1657
Granby Cemetery, Granby, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA
1605 |
April 7, 1605
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North Tawton, Devon, England
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1630 |
May 30, 1630
Age 25
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1634 |
March 1, 1634
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Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay Colony
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1635 |
1635
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Dorchester, Windsor, Connecticut Colony
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1638 |
January 6, 1638
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Windsor, Connecticut Colony
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1640 |
April 7, 1640
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Windsor, Connecticut Colony
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1642 |
August 14, 1642
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Windsor, Connecticut Colony
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1644 |
June 23, 1644
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Windsor, Connecticut Colony
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