Thomas Morris, of New Haven

Thomas Morris and his wife Elizabeth came to Connecticut about 30 years before Richard Morris came from Barbados and located in Westchester County, New York. The Morris' were originally of Welsh descent.

Family

All we know of Elizabeth Morris was that she was married to Thomas Morris and came to Connecticut with him. He died in 1673 and she died in 1681. They had eight children:

1. John Morris (d.y.)
2. Thomas Morris
3. Hannah Morris
4. Elizabeth Morice Or Morrice
5. John Morris (again)
6. Eleazer Morris
7. Thomas Morris
8. Ephraim Morris
9. Joseph Morris (d.y.)
10. Joseph Morris (again)

Biography

Thomas Morris was a shipbuilder and a Puritan from London who had left England with other pilgrims on the Hector in 1637. It was said that two of his forebears had been killed during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary for refusing to give up their Protestant faith. He led a party in 1638 to New Haven, Connecticut and a forested area where he resumed his shipbuilding. He signed the Plantation Covenant in New Haven in 1639 and the Fundamental Agreement which made him one one of the founders of Newark Settlement on the Passaic in Newark, New Jersey June 24, 1667. He removed to New Haven and bought property at East Haven which was known as Morris Cove, now Morristown.

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Arrived in Boston, Massechusetts on June 26, 1637 on the Hector with his wife.

Abstracts from "The East-Haven Register", Compiled by Stephen Dodd, Pastor of the Congregational Church in East-Haven Published in 1824 for the author and originally sold by A.H. Mattby & Co., N. 4, Globe Building, T.G. Woodward & Co.

THE EAST-HAVEN REGISTER: IN THREE PARTS:

Note: All dates previous to Sept.14, 1752, are old or Julian-style of calendar; all dates after Sept. 14, 1752, are the new or Georgian style.

On the 4 June, 1639, all the free planters of Quinipiack convened in a large barn of Mr. Newman's and formed their constitution. Sixty-three names were subscribed to it on that day, and about fifty more were added soon after.

Among the subscribers who settled in EAST-HAVEN, or were concerned in that settlement, were: William Andrews, William Touttle (or Tuttle), Garvis Boykim, John Potter, Matthew Moulthrop, Matthias Hitchcock, Edward Patterson. To these were added: Thomas Morris and John Thompson.

3 Jul 1648: Thomas Morris was admitted a free inhabitant

In a 1993 article in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Douglas Richardson explained in detail that the discovery of a marriage between Anne Holyoke and John Morris "solves a long-standing mystery originating in the will of Anne's brother, the immigrant, Edward Holyoke, which included bequests to his kinswoman, Mary Mansfield, and kinsman, Thomas Morris of New Haven, Conn." The key to the connections that make Mary Mansfield and Thomas Morris kin to Edward Holyoke is the information that the two children of Anne Holyoke and John Morris were their son Thomas Morris who died at New Haven 21 July 1673, and their daughter Mary Morris, who married John Mansfield who died at Lynn 16 October 1671.

There is no marriage record for Thomas and Elizabeth. We don't know exactly when or exactly where they married. However, they appear to have lived their adult life in New Haven. Elizabeth's maiden name is unknown.

Thomas is first mentioned in the New Haven records in 1638 as a ship carpenter. Thomas is said to have had one of the seven families who lived on the "bank-side," that is on East Water Street. See the book, "History of the Colony of New Haven to Its Absorption Into Connecticut" which can be readily found online, page 152 and 702.

Thomas and Elizabeth are believed to have had 8 children in New Haven, Connecticut, starting in 1841 when Hannah was born. Elizabeth's name is not listed on the birth or baptismal records of any of her children.

Thomas left behind a will dated 1 July 1672. Thomas has a death record in New Haven vital records.

References

• http://www.rickster.org/tng9/getperson.php?personID=I81756&tree=32gen
• Families of Ancient New Haven by Donald Lines Jacobus, pg. 1118, 1210
• 5.0 5.1 Richardson, Douglas. The English Ancestry of Edward Holyoke and of His Nephew, Thomas Morris of New Haven. New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Jan 1993), p 21.
• https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/gen/report/rr02/rr02_104.html#P93938

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• Updated from WikiTree Genealogy by SmartCopy: Dec 14 2015, 18:02:30 UTC
• Updated from WikiTree Genealogy by SmartCopy: Dec 14 2015, 18:04:53 UTC
• "Connecticut Deaths and Burials, 1772-1934", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:H3HZ-RYPZ : 16 January 2020), Thomas Morris, 1673.
• https://archive.org/details/genealogyofmorri00carh/page/n19/mode/2up
• https://books.google.com/books?id=1soUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f...
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Morris-686