Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: An Immigrant Ancestor

Randy Seaver has issued this week’s challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

1) Tell us about one of your immigrant ancestors? Where and when did they come from, how did they migrate, where did they land, where did they settle?

Two of my immigrant ancestors were Walter and Mary Tybbot, who are thought to have arrived in the colonies, first at Plymouth with the Rev. Richard Blinman, about 1640.  Walter Tybbot was made a freeman on 2 March 1641 in Plymouth.

Shortly after, Rev. Blinman and his party left Plymouth for Marshfield, Massachusetts, but after only a year or so, there was a disagreement leading to their removal to Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The reason I chose the Tybbots is because Rev. Blinman was the pastor of a church in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, Wales. It is assumed, but not proven, that those in his party were all parishioners at Chepstow.

That means that I have one possible ancestral home identified in Wales. In spite of the fact that I’ve known since the 1980s that the Tybbots were in my family tree, it seems no one has made any progress is proving that they were, indeed, from Chepstow.

Walter was born about 1584, so not a young man when the family arrived in Massachusetts. I have no years of birth or death for Mary, who married John “Harding” in 1652. Given that there are no Harding vital records whatsoever to be found in Gloucester, I wonder if he was actually a Harraden. Mary’s daughter, Sarah, married Edward Harraden.

Walter had two daughters, Agnes and Mary. Agnes was about ten years older than Mary, born about 1611. She married (1) Mr. Dike or Dick, probably in Wales and (2) Edmund Clark. Her daughter “Elizabeth Dick” was named in her father’s will.

Mary was born about eleven years later in 1622. Given the gap in birth years, it is possible that Walter had a first wife who died and Mary was not the natural mother of Agnes or that Walter and Mary lost several children in between their two daughters. Daughter Mary married William Haskell on 6 November 1643 in Gloucester and were the parents of nine children. My line is through their first born child, William (born 26 August 1644; died 5 June 1708, both in Gloucester, Massachusetts).

Walter Tybbot wrote his will on 5 June 1651 and died on 14 August 1651 in Gloucester. Mary survived Walter, marrying John “Harding” on 22 April 1652, another clue that she might have been a younger second wife.  There are Hardings in Medfield, Norfolk, Massachusetts, but I haven’t identified John and Mary there or anywhere else. When and where they died is a mystery to me.

Thank you, Randy, for another fun challenge this week.

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