| Notes |
- RESEARCH_NOTES:
1. TAG 74(1999):97-100, article "The Skinner Wives of Robert1 Reeve and John1 Colt of Hartford and Windsor, Connecticut; An Old Mix-Up," by Gale Jon Harris, FASG:
"The inventory of the estate of John1 Skinner of Windsor, Connecticut, taken on 23 October 1651, lists daughters Mary, aged 18, Ann, aged 16, and three younger sons: John, Joseph, and Richard.[1] Records of the sporadic probate proceedings at Hartford on Skinner's estate over the following two decades mention sums of money to be paid to each of these sons and include two undated receipts for the daughters' portions. The first receipt, signed by Robert Reeve, lists house-hold items "delivered to Robert Reeve's wife," and the second, signed by John Coalt [sic], lists similar items "delivered to John Coalt's wife."[2] The obvious imÂplication is that Reeve had married one of the Skinner sisters and Colt the other, but these records do not explicitly state which sister in either case.
Nonetheless, standard printed compilations for Hartford and Windsor families state that Reeve married the older sister, Mary, and that Colt married the younger sister, Ann.[3] These statements apparently were based on the undocumented "Skinner Family" section in Elias Loomis's genealogy of the Loomis family of Windsor.[4]
While preparing a 1991 article on the Edwards family of Wethersfield, Connecticut, which presents evidence that John Colt married in 1665, as his second wife, Hester2 Edwards (John1), I saw no reason to question the repeated asserÂtions that his former wife had been Ann Skinner and that her sister Mary had become Robert Reeve's first wife.[5] But I had not fully deciphered previously unÂpublished records that definitely associate these sisters by their given names with these men.
Based on prescription entries in the medical records of John Winthrop Jr. of Hartford, it was shown in that article that John1 Colt and the Skinner sisters, while still single, had been employed in prominent households at Hartford in the period 1658-1660. Relevant entries from that article are:[6]
Jan. 1657/8[7] Skinner Ann, servant to Mr J: Allin ... again Jan. 8
Feb. 1658/9 Colt John, Servant to Mr Megat speck on Ey. ...
April 1659 Skinner Anne: 20 y [sic], serv[an]t to Mr J Allin ... againe April 14 ... againe June 24
April 1659 Skinner Mary [blank] y: at Mr Megats ... [again] April 21
Dec. 1659 Skinner [Ann? Record obscured, possibly "John"]
Aug. 1660 Skinner Mary at Mr Megatts...
The second, fourth, and sixth entries place John Colt and Mary Skinner in the home of Joseph Mygatt, who had been licensed by the General Court in 1656 "to sell strong lyquors by retaile"[8] and who in February 1659[/60] was chosen at a town meeting as townsman for Hartford's "south side."[9] The first and third entries place Ann[e] Skinner in the home of John Allyn, who was chosen at the same meeting as townsman for the "north side" and who subsequently, after 1663, became the well-known Secretary of the Colony of Connecticut.[10]
Based on the birth date of his first child in about 1661,[11] John Colt must have married one of these Skinner sisters during or soon after the period of these preÂscription entries. But which one-Ann, as generally supposed, who was employed in the Allyn home on the north side of Hartford, or Mary who, with John, was employed in the Mygatt household on the south side in 1659? The answer is provided by a closer examination of Winthrop's December 1659 entry, the fifth one in the list above.
The entry appears in Winthrop's notes as the last two lines on page 175, headed "Hart[ford]: Dec [10?] 1659." These lines and many others on that page are partially obscured by reversed script caused by his neglect to use a blotter or by ink bleed-through from the back of the page.[12] A closer study of the microfilm, including examination in mirror image, shows that the given name in this entry should be read as "An[-]" and that the earlier possible reading, "John," is clearly eliminated. Certainly, it is not "Mary."
More importantly, the examination reveals that a significant detail of the preÂscription note had been overlooked in the general clutter of the page. Extending below, downward, and to the left of the patient's name is a line apparently added after the rest of the entry had been completed. The line extends to the left margin of the page and partially encloses a small note in Winthrop's hand: "Reves R his wife." The full entry on 13 December 1659 is reproduced below from a photograph of the original, which is considerably clearer than the microfilm version:[13]
[Image of record.]
It reads: Skinner Anne [bleed-through] had a fall of[f] an horse 6 weekes Since & Reves R [inserted: "his wife"] in small off Back.
Thus Winthrop explicitly identified Ann[e] Skinner as R[obert] Reeve's wife. The full sequence of entries above shows that her sister, Mary Skinner, was still single and still residing in the Mygatt home eight months after that entry.
Winthrop's December 1659 entry probably marks closely the date of Robert Reeve's unrecorded marriage to Ann Skinner. The chronology indicates that she was the mother of his first two known children, Sarah and Mary, born in DecemÂber 1663 and July 1665, but not of his seven later children born from December 1668 to March 1679/80.[14] Ann had died before 10 March 1667[/8], when Winthrop entered a prescription for "Reeves Eliz: [blank] th[e] wife of Robert Reeves of Hartford," and added that he had also seen her on 5 June 1666, "then Eliz: Nott."[15]
This note, with Winthrop's subsequent entry in August 1660, also shows that John1 Colt's first wife had to be Mary Skinner and that they did not marry until sometime after that August. It cannot have been long, however, as their sons John2 and Joseph2 Colt were born about 1661 and about 1663, respectively.[16] Through these sons, Mary had many descendants, including Colonel Samuel Colt (1814-1862), inventor of the famed revolver.[17]
The last known record of Mary (Skinner) Colt is dated 14 July 1663, when Winthrop noted a prescription for "Colt John at Hartford his wife."[18] She had died by the summer of 1665, when John married Hester Edwards, with whom he had at least seven more children.[19]
Gale Ion Harris (1312 Basswood Circle, East Lansing MI 48823) is Coeditor of The Genealogist.
Footnotes:
1. Charles William Manwaring, A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records: Hartford District, 3 vols. (Hartford, 1904-b), I:150 (hereafter cited as Manwaring, Conn. Probate RecÂords). A few years later, on 18 Jan. 1655[/6], these children were again listed, with the same stated ages, in the record of a Court of Magistrates at Hartford ordering payment of debts and a distribution of the remaining estate to them and to the relict, "now the wife of Owin Trudor [sic] of Wyndsor" (Records of the Particular Court of Connecticut, 1639-1663, Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., 22[Hartford, 1928]:l58-59); the surname of the widow's second husband is an error for Tudor in the original or the published transcript (see Henry R. Stiles, The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, 2 vols. [Hartford, 1892], 2:767 [hereafter cited as Stiles, History of Windsor]).
2. Manwaring, Conn. Probate Records, 1:150-51.
3. Lucius Barnes Barbour, Families of Early Hartford, Connecticut (Baltimore, 1982), 192, 474, 533 (hereafter cited as Barbour, Families of Early Hartford); Stiles, History of Windsor, 2:687.
4. Elias Loomis, "The Descendants [by the Female Branches] of Joseph Loomis... Who Settled in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1639," 2 vols. (New Haven, 1880), 1:108-28, at 108.
5. Gale Ion Harris, "John Edwards of Wethersfield, Connecticut," The New England HistoriÂcal and Genealogical Register [NEHGR] 145(1991):317-41, at 326-29. For further discussion of John1 Colt's wives, see Gale Ion Harris, "The children of Captain Joseph1 and Mary (Stone) Fitch of Hartford and Windsor, Connecticut," TAG 68(1993):1-10, 95-105, at 5-10, where it is shown that Colt did not marry a daughter of Joseph Fitch named Mary or Lydia, as is sometimes stated.
6. Harris, "John Edwards of Wethersfield," NEHGR 145(1991):328, citing "Medical Records of John Winthrop," MS, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 78, 139, 155, 175, 216 (hereafter cited as Winthrop Medical Records).
7. Corrected here from Dec. 1657.
8. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 15 vols. (Hartford, 1850-90), 1:283 (hereafter cited as Public Records of Conn.).
9. Hartford Town Votes, 1635-1716, Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., 6(Hartford, 1897):129.
10. Hartford Town Votes, Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., 6:129; Public Records of Conn., 1:406. For Joseph Mygatt and John Allyn, see also Barbour, Families of Early Hanford, 6-7, 411-12.
11. The inscription for his son, Capt. John Coult, in Duck River Cemetery at Old Lyme, Conn., states that he died on 2 Jan. 1751, aged 90 years ("Inscriptions from Gravestones at Old Lyme, Conn.," NEHGR 77(l923): 194-213, at 198), thus born about 1661.
12. Also, as explained by his biographer, Winthrop's "handwriting was not a thing of beauty [and] constantly reflected a fast-racing mind which usually was well in advance of the words being written... [T]oo often his irregular calligraphy was rendered still worse by a failure to sharÂpen his quill" (Robert C. Black III, The Younger John Winthrop [New York and London, 1966], 391, n. 23).
13. Winthrop Medical Records, 175 (photograph courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society). A figure "13" about a third of the way up the left margin of the page probably indicates that this note and four others preceding it were entered on 13 Dec. 1659.
14. Names and dates for Robert Reeve's nine children are given in his Feb. 1680/1 inventory (Manwaring, Conn. Probate Records, 1:353-54). His 1680 will and that of John Nott of WethersÂfield in 1679 (Manwaring, Conn. Probate Records, 1:342) show that Reeve had married secondly Nott's daughter Elizabeth.
15. Winthrop Medical Records, 792. On 5 June 1666, Winthrop prescribed for "Nott Eliz: 21y: Mrs Lords maid" (Winthrop Medical Records, 659).
16. Harris, "John Edwards of Wethersfield," NEHGR 145(1991):329.
17. Elisha Scott Loomis, Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America and His Antecedents in the Old World ([Berea?], Ohio, 1908), 126-27.
18. Winthrop Medical Records, 513.
19. Harris, "John Edwards of Wethersfield," NEHGR 145(1991):326-33, with additions and corrections in Harris, "Joseph Fitch," TAG 68(1993):6-l0, and NEHGR 150(1996):215-16."
2. The book "Families of Early Hartford, Connecticut," Lucius Barnes Barbour, 1982 ed.:
"John Colt came to Harford 1638, mar. (1) Mary Fitch, mar. (2) Ann dau. of John and May (Loomis) Skinner. She was b. 1639."
"John Colt mar./1 Mary Fitch, mar/2 Ann Skinner, dau. of John Skinner and Mary Loomis. Children: Jonathan, bp. Dec. 6, 1685 (1 Ch. Rec.)"
3. Henry R. Stiles, "The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut," 1892, v. 2, p. 687: "John Skinner, of Hartford, one of the Hooker party and orig. proprietor there. As John Talcott in his will, dated 12 Aug 1659, mentions his kinsman, John Skinner, as 'living in his service,' and as Talcott's mother was Ann (dau. of William) Skinner, it is prob. that John Skinner, Sen., came ffom Braintree, Co. Essex, Eng. - 'Hartford Co. Memorial History,' i. 259. There seems also to be a family tradition that after the Revolution in England, three Skinner brothers (one of whom had been a High Sheriff) fled to this country, one of whom settled in Connecticut, another in Vermont, and the third in Maryland. John Skinner m. Mary (dau. Joseph, Sen.) Loomis of Windsor, and d. 1650. Will dated 23 Oct 1651 ('Probate Records Hartford.' ii.), contains this entry: 'A Courte of Magistrates of Hartford, 18 Jan 1655, orders Mr. Loomis (Joseph, his father-in-law) to distribute the estate among the following chiildren: Mary, age 18; Ann, age 16; John, age 14; Joseph, age 12; Richard, age 8, and to his wife, m. to Owen Tudor.' Mrs. Skinner m. (2) Owen Tudor of Windsor, 13 Nov 1654, and removed with her children to Windsor, where she d. 19 Aug 1680. Children:
A. Mary, b. 1638; m. Robert Reeve of Hartford.
B. Ann, b. 1639; m. John Colt, ancestor of Hartford Colts.
C. John, b. 1641.
D. Joseph, b. 1643.
E. Richard, b. 1646; res. Hartford; desc. removed to Colchester."
[Note: Stiles' book does not have biographies of Reeves, Colts, Eastons, or Gaines.]
4. From the book "The Descendants (by the Female Branches) of Joseph Loomis, who Came from Braintree, England, in the Year 1638 and Settled in Windsor, CT, in 1639," by Elias Loomis (Yale Professor), 1880, v. 1, pp. 149: "John Colt came to Hartford, CT, in 1638. He m. 1st, Mary Fitch; m. 2d, Ann Skinner, daughter of Mary (Loomis) Skinner. Children of John Colt, Hartford:
A. Sarah, bap. 7 Feb 1646-7. Hartford.
B. Capt. John, b. 1658, m. Mary Lord. He removed to Lyme, Ct., and d. 2 Jan 1751, ae. 93.
C. Abraham, b. ___, m. Hannah Loomis 1 Jul 1690. He removed to Glastonbury in 1691, and d. 1730.
D. Joseph, b. ___, m. Ruth Loomis 29 Oct 1691. He d. 11 Jan 1719. Windsor.
E. Jonathan, b. ___, d. 1711.
F. Jabez, b. ___.
G. Esther, b. ___, m. Stephen Loomis 1 Jan 1690-1. He d. 1711. She d. 6 Nov 1714."
5. The 14 Mar 2008 website http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Orchard/3217/Loomis/pafn03.htm#292: "There is a lot of confusion on John Colt Sr.'s wives. Gale Ion Harris has written two articles that cover John Edwards and Joseph Fitch. These two articles, one in TAG, the other in NEHGR, seemingly unrelated, together give a very detailed, documented picture of John Colt Sr. and Jr. In particular, the NEHGR article gives considerable detail under the listing for Hester. There are also additions and corrections in NEHGR Vol. 150, April 1996, pages 215-216.
Dr. Harris also notes in a letter that a lot of information on the Colts was fictiously created to please Colt descendants. Statements that he arrived in 1638 are based on Royal R. Hinman's inventions in the mid-19th century and somehow on a misunderstanding of the record of the baptism in Hartford on 7 Feb. 1646 [/7] of Sarah, daughter of John Cole of Farmington. By some carelessness this record was misinterpreted to be for a daughter of John Colt. John Colt never had a daughter Sarah. The subsequent history of John Cole's daughter Sarah is known and there is no possibility that John Colt was her father.
Dr. Harris also cites the Great Migration Newsletter, 7 [Jan.-March 1998], 8, in demonstrating the error in assuming that John Colt arrived in New England on the Griffin in September 1633. John Colt, Sr.'s, origins and parentage are unknown (TAG 68:7 or NEHGR 150:215). He also had no third wife as was speculated.
The earliest record of John Colt Sr. is 5 June 1656 when he is found in a card game with some companions at Hartford. No specific record of his age survives.
Dr. Harris notes that Ann Skinner was born about 1635, not "1639" as Loomis has it. Her age is given as 16 years in the inventory of her father's estate in Oct. 1651. Dr. Harris is currently (Aug 1998) conducting studies that should shed more light on sisters Ann and Mary.
John married Ann Skinner, dau. of John & Mary (Loomis) Skinner, b. 1635; appeared on a list of Windsor Freeman, 27 Apr 1703. He and Mary Skinner were employees of Joseph Mygatt, a weaver, who had received a license to sell strong liquors by retail. John Allyn's servant Ann Skinner was still single in Jun 1659 and probably that December. She evidently married John Colt soon afterward, she was his "wife" at Springfield, just North of Windsor and at Hartford during July 1663. (NER, April 1996, p. 215)
(Corrections): "John Edwards of Wethersfield, Connecticut" by Gale Ion Harris (145[1991]:317- 341). The following corrections are made by the author: 145: pp. 326, 329-30. John Colt was living and "of Windsor" as late as Sept. 1713 when he conveyed land at Podunk to his "dutiful son" Benjamin Colt of Windsor (Windsor Deeds, 3:182). A more recent study of the Fitch family shows that John Colt almost certainly did not have a third wife, Lydia Fitch, a possibility considered likely in the Edwards article. For a full discussion, see the article, "The children of Capt Joseph and Mary (Stone) Fitch of Hartford and Windsor, Connecticut," The American Genealogist 68, [1993]:1-10."
6. The book "Ancestors and Descendants of Thomas Rice Lyon and his wife Harriet Wade Rice with related families," by Patty Barthell Myers (2003), pp. 448-51:
"MARY Loomis, b. Eng., c1620; d. 19 Aug 1680; m/1 JOHN SKINNER of Hartford, d. 30 Oct 1650; m/2 13 Nov 1651 OWEN TUDOR of Windsor, d. 30 Oct 1690. Children (SKINNER): Mary b. 1 Dec 1637, m. Robert Reeve; Ann b. 1639 m. John Colt; John b. 1641, m. Mary Easton; Joseph b. 1643, m. Mary Filley; Richard b. 1646. Children by Owen Tudor (TUDOR): Samuel (twin) b. 5 Dec 1652, m. 1685 Abigail (Filley) Bissell, wid. of John Bissell; Sarah (twin) b. 5 Dec 1652, m. James Porter; Owen b. 2 Mar 1654, d. unm.; Anne (twin) b. 16 Oct 1657; Jane (twin) b. 16 Oct 1657, m. Samuel Smith of Wethersfield; Mary b. 6 Mar 1661, m/1 John Orton, m/2 John Judson. (Manwaring, Vol. I, 1687-1695, p. 513; Savage sv Owen Tudor.)
(William Richard Cutter, New England Family History, p. 985; (Elias Loomis, Desc. of Joseph Loomis)"
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Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy
Bef 1635 - Aft 1713 (> 79 years)