This is part of a series about my New England colonial ancestors who arrived by during the Great Migration. If you have early Massachusetts ancestry, be sure to check out AmericanAncestors, as the Great Migration Study Project can be viewed there with a membership to the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
This family sketch will be shorter than most, as the family was very small – one known child, to be exact.
Patience (Bigg) Foster was baptized on 5 May 1588 in Cranbrook, Kent, England, the daughter of John Bigg and Rachel Martin.
She married Richard Foster (not a Hopestill Foster, who never existed) at an unknown date.
Richard Foster was born c1582, likely in Kent and possibly in Biddenden, England, the son of Thomas Foster and Dorothy Austen. Richard was living at the time his mother wrote her will on 27 December 1619, but Patience was a widow when she and son Hopestill left for New England in 1635.
Patience (Bigg) Foster died between 18 March 1638, when she was granted some land in Dorchester, and 17 November 1646, the date her mother wrote her will and didn’t name her.
There are various online trees that give a 1608 marriage date and several children who died young. However, the Great Migration Study states that the couple had one known child, Hopestill.
I don’t have the at home resources to determine when Richard and Patience married and/or whether the online children assigned to them are correct.
In any case, it is immaterial since only one son survived to adulthood and left descendants.
Child:
- Hopestill, born c1621, probably in Kent, England; died 15 October 1676, Dorchester, Suffolk, Massachusetts; married Mary Bate, c1640, as their eldest known child was baptized there in December of the same year. If Hopestill was at least 21 when he married, his birth year might be as early as 1619.
My line of descent:
- Richard Foster & Patience Bigg
- Hopestill Foster & Mary Bate
- James Foster & Anna Lane
- Robert Spur & Jemima Foster
- John Spur & Rebecca Blackman
- Joseph Coleman & Ruth Spur
- Thomas Coleman & Mary Elizabeth Astle
- William Coleman & Sarah Moriah Crouse
- Hartwell Thomas Coleman & Anna Elisabeth Jensen
- Vernon Tarbox Adams & Hazel Ethel Coleman
- George Michael Sabo & Doris Priscilla Adams
- Linda Anne (Sabo) Stufflebean – Me!