Person:Jeremy Adams (4)

Immigrated to Cambridge 1632. Owned land now owned by Harvard (it was a meadow for grazing at the time).^[1] He was an original settler of Hartford, CT, in 1636. (Name appears on an obelisk in the Center Church Burial Ground, erected 1837).^[5] He appears in Connecticut State Records as an emmissary to the Indians in the late 1630s. In 1641 he was cited for “passionat distempered speches, lowd languadge, & unmannerly cariedge in the face of the Court” over the issue of an unspecified execution. Licensed for exclusive right to retail liquors May 1660. In March 1661-2, the General Court granted him 340 acres and licensed him to keep an ordinary. He was appointed customs master May 1663.^[6] Age 60 when freed from "watching and warding" Mar 2, 1664-5.

In addition to his six lots in Hartford, by virtue of his marriage to the widow of Samuel Greenhill, he became guardian of his two children, Thomas and Rebecca Greenhill, and therefore had possession during their minority of the land granted by Hartford to Samuel Greenhill. Thomas made his will as a young man, leaving his land both to his mother’s children by Adams and his sister’s children. His sister and her husband contested the will for many years, but were ultimately unsuccessful.^[1]

Will

In his will, dated 4 August 1683 and proved 6 September 1683, "Jeremy Addams of Hartford" noted that he had "formerly given to my grandson Zachary Sandford my oxpasture lot in the way to Weathersfield" and confirmed that gift, and also bequeathed to Zachary Sandford "the lot that I have at the wolf pound by Mr. Webster's" [Zachary also received Jeremy’s house - it was mortgaged to the colony, which foreclosed, but Jeremy died about then so they conveyed to Sanford, who married a granddaughter Adams]; the residue of his estate he "equally divided to my grandchildren, the one half to my son John Adams his children & the other half to my son Willett's children"; he appointed Nath[aniel] Willett executor, and Major John Talcott and Captain John Allyn overseers. "The inventory of the estate of Mr. Jeremyah Addams who deceased Agust [sic] 11d 1683" totalled £243 5s. 6d., of which £81 was real estate: "3 acres of land in reversion in the South Meadow," £18; "10 acres of upland on the east side of the Great River in reversion," £20; "242 acres of upland on the east side the river," £24; "eight acres of land near Mr. Robert Webster's land," £16; and "30 acres of land in the west division," £3 ^[7]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6} Jeremy Adams, in Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995).

   Birth based on Cambridge land grant in 1633. Death from inventory record. (Hartford PD Case #32)

2.   Savage, James. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England: Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1860-1862)
   1:11.

   JEREMY, Braintree, perhaps 1632, rem. soon to Cambridge, then call. Newtown, freem. 6 May 1635, rem. next yr. to Hartford, had three ws. of wh. the first is unkn. by name, by her he had Samuel, b. it is said 1643, bapt. certain. 23 Nov. 1645; and perhaps more. His sec. w. Rebecca, wid. of Samuel Greenhill, d. 1678, and by her he had other ch. prob. Ann, wh. m. Robert Sanford; Elinor, wh. m. Nathaniel Willet; and John, unless one or two were by former w. Rebecca, wid. of the sec Andrew Warner, and d. of John Fletcher, was his third w. He long kept the ordinary, and d. 11 Aug. 1683, in his will, made seven days bef. he div. his est. half to childr. of s. John, and half to those of d. Willet. His wid. was 77 yrs. old at her d. 25 June 1715, and, no doubt, had provis. from the est.

3. ↑ Jim Adams. The Adamses of Harlem Township, Ohio, Descendents of Immigrant Jeremy Addoms of Hartford. (Jim Adams, 631 3rd St. NE, Washington, DC 20002Washington, DC 20002, 1994).
4. ↑ Original Proprietor
5. ↑ Atlantic County Historical Society Yearbook, Vol. 1-2, 1948-1955.
6. ↑ Colonial Connecticut Records, http://www.colonialct.uconn.edu.
7. ↑ Great Migration, citing Hartford PD Case #32; Manwaring 1:267; see also HaBOP 9, 291; Hartford PD Case #32.