Person:Thomas Holbrook (3)

Lived at Broadway, Somerset, England. Left Weymouth, England Mar. 30, 1635 at age 34 in the 'Marygold' with wife and oldest five children, arriving at Dorchester on Jun. 7, 1635 and settling at Weymouth the same month.^[6] The passenger list indicates "Thomas Holbrooke of Broudway," aged 34, "Jane Holbrooke his wife," aged 34, "John Holbrooke his son," aged 11, "Thomas Holbrooke his son," aged 10, "Anne Holbrooke his daughter," aged 5, and "Elizabeth his daughter," aged 1, were enrolled at Weymouth, Dorsetshire, as a passenger for New England on the Marygould.^[7]

Served on the committee to lay out the highway between Weymouth and Dorchester in 1649. There is no parcel accorded to him in the land inventory in 1643, but he is listed as a previous owner or abutter in several parcels. He was granted Weymouth lands in 1652 and 1663.^[8] A selectman at Weymouth six times (1641-1654), and a grantee of Rehoboth, MA, although he forfeited the grant and remained at Weymouth.^[9] Ten acres were granted to him in the First Division and thirty acres in the Second Division 14 Dec 1663. A deposition made in Nov. 1666 gives Thomas' age as 77 years (11 years off of his age of “34” in the 1635 passenger list). ^[10]

In compiling records for the Great Migration project, the editors discovered there were in fact two Thomas Holbrooks settled in Dorchester. This one was in Weymouth consistantly, while another one purchased land in Dorchester in 1649, sold it in 1652 (transactions attributed to this Thomas by Pope), bought other land “about three miles from Naticke” in 1652, and is linked in deeds in 1656, 1668 and 1672 as being of Medfield and then Sherborn by 1682. ^[11]

He died at Weymouth, MA about March 1677, leaving a will dated December 31, 1668 in which he mentions wife Jane, sons John, William and Thomas and daughters Anne Reynolds, Elizabeth Hutch and Jane Drake, and grandchildren John, Peter and William Holbrook. The will was confirmed December 2 1, 1673 and proved April 4, 1677, and the inventory was dated March 10,1677.

Great Migration notes: In 1992 The Mary & John Clearing House published many English records on the Holbrook family, but the section on the immigrant has many errors and should not be relied on. See M&JCH 17:85-90.

Ancestor of Pres. Garfield, Taft and Bush.

Text References

1. ↑ Compiled by Waldo Chamberlain Sprague. Genealogies of Families in Braintree, MA (1640-1850), including the Modern Towns of Randolph and Holbrook and City of Quiincy. (Published on microfilm, in cooperation with the Quincy Historical Society, by NEHGS).
2. ↑ Anderson, Robert Charles; George F. Sanborn; and Melinde Lutz Sanborn. The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635. (Boston, Massachusetts: NEHGS, 1999-2011).
3. ↑ Holbrook, in Davis, Walter Goodwin. The Ancestry of Joseph Neal: 1769-c.1835 of Litchfield, Maine. (Portland, Maine: Portland, Maine : Southworth-Anthoensen Press, 1945, 1945)
   128.

   Thomas Holbrooke..was born about 1589, presumably at Eversley in Glastonbury, co. Somerset.

4. ↑ ^4.0 4.1 Holbrook, in Davis, Walter Goodwin. The Ancestry of Joseph Neal: 1769-c.1835 of Litchfield, Maine. (Portland, Maine: Portland, Maine : Southworth-Anthoensen Press, 1945, 1945)
   129.

   He made his will December 31, 1668, and it was proved April 24, 1677.

5.   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)
   2:443.
6. ↑ Davis, Walter Goodwin. The Ancestry of Joseph Neal
7. ↑ Great Migration 1634-1635, citing Hotten 286; GMN 7:9
8. ↑ Great Migration
9. ↑ #S5
10. ↑ Steve Lawson, http://kinnexions.com/smlawson/index.htm
11. ↑ Great Migration Newsletter, 11:2