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Bigod Eggleston
chr.20 Feb 1586/87 Settrington, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
d.1 Sep 1674 Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut, United States
Family tree▼ (edit)
m. Bef 1586
(edit)
m. Est 1612
(edit)
m. Est 1634
Facts and Events
[edit] WillIn his will, dated 13 November 1673, "Bigat Egllstone of Windsor" bequeathed to "my son Benjamin" house and land (on the condition "that he shall maintain his mother and pay my debts"), to "my son Joseph" 40s. "should [he] come and demand a portion," to sons James, Samuel and Thomas and daughters Mary, Sarah and Abigail, 3s. apiece. His inventory, taken 24 October 1674, totalled £116 3s. (against which were debts of £39 8s. 5d.), of which £74 was real estate: "his dwelling house & houseland 2 acres & half," £40; "in the Great Meadow six acres," £33; and "for poor land on the Sandy Plains 20 acres" £1 []. (Great Migration, citing Hartford PD Case #1890; Manwaring 1:194) [edit] FamilyGreat Migration gives two wives, names unknown, and gives parents as James Eggleston and Margaret Harker. From Eggleston-L: "I have seen records that claim his wife was Mary Talcott, Sarah Talcott or Mary Wall. From wills of John Talcott, Ann (Skinner) Talcott Wall, Moses Wall, and Ann's parents, William Skinner and Margery Skinner show that daughters Mary, Ann and Grace Talcott had apparently died before 1616; that Sarah Talcott had m. (William) Wadsworth & Mary Wall had m. (Martin) Aylett by 1637. This would indicate that Bigod could not have married Mary Talcott nor Sarah Talcott as his 1st wife not Mary Wall or Sarah Talcott as his 2nd wife. His oldest son James was b. 1612, his youngest child b. in England b. abt.1629 and he was in America by 1630." (Marie Taylor mtaylor -at- vvm.com) Bygod1 Eggleston was among the founders of Dorchester, Massechusetts, in 1630 and of Windsor, Connecticut, in 1635. He was born to JamesA Eggleston in 1586/7 and baptised at Settrington, Yorkshire, England. Probably no early colonist has had more erroneous conjectures made about him than Bygod Eggleston. This is due to the total absence of records relating to his mother and his wives. We now have proof that his mother was not Juliana Harker, as has been widely accepted in the past. The conjecture was based on the fact that in his will of 1612, James Eggleston named Julian as his wife and a neighbor, Ralph Harker, as his brother. The assumption was that Ralph had an older sister named Juliana or Julian who married James Eggleston and became the mother of his eight children. (For details of Eggleston and Harker families, see the 1991 book by the present authors: Bygod Eggleston: Englishman & Colonist and some of his Descendants The Mary & John Clearing House, 562-305th St., Toledo OH 43611, hereafter Eggleston.) Three recently discovered wills prove that there was no Juliana in the Harker family and that the wife mentioned in James Eggleston's will was Juliana Frear, daughter of John Frear of Thorp Bassett, a parish adjacent to Settrington. (We are indebted to Robert Charles Anderson, coeditor of TAG, for discovering the will Richard Harker of London and to Tim Owston for discovering the wills of John Freer [Frear, Frere, Fryer] of Thorpe Bassett and Juliana Bainton of Settrington.) If we assume that Juliana Frear was the mother of all eight of Jame's children, then we are left with the problem of why he called Ralph Harker his brother. The solution to this problem may lie in a fact which seems to have escaped the notice of earlier writers on Bygod's family. There was an age difference of about twenty-five years between the eldest child, Bygod, and the youngest, Alice. That seems a long time for one mother to bear children in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. James Egleston's family can be divided into two sets of four children separated by a lapse of eight years. This suggests that Jame's first wife died and he remarried. Following is a list of names and baptismal dates of those children which are recorded in the Settrington Parish Register with the exceptions of Dorothy and Alice; we know of their existence from the wills of James and Juliana. Date of baptism Name of child
[a gap of nearly eight years ]
Genevieve Tylee Kiepura has a very detailed discussion of Bigod Eggleston in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 57, no 4, December 1969. It discusses whether he was a passenger on the MARY AND JOHN, when Mary died, whether James and Samuel were twins, and whether Bigod was descended from Sir Ralph Bigod. In each of these cases she determined that there was no evidence to support the claims. References
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