ANDREW PIERCE REPORTS - MARCH 8, 2000

Mr. Tim Farr
P.O. Box 449
Ferron, UT 84523

Dear Ron,

In accordance with your requests and $300 advance retainer of some weeks ago, I have continued research in an attempt to answer several of your genealogical questions.

The best info on John Baldwin of Billerica is found in Stone-Gregg Geneaology (1987); this notes that his parentage is unknown, but that he may have been related to Henry Baldwin of Woburn and that he traditionally came from Hertfordshire about 1640. Any presumed connection between John and Richard & Sylvester Baldwin is most probably erroneous. The 1881 Baldwin Geneaology gives some info on both John & Henry; apologies for faintness of copies. I note that both John & Henry named daughters Susanna & Phebe.

So far I have not found the will of Stephen Skiff; will keep looking.

The parentage of Anthony Snow of Plymouth & Marshfield MA has not been researched to anyone's knowledge. Robert S. Wakefield's Mayflower Families book on Richard Warren (1999) states that he was in Plymouth by 1638, and married there in 1639; nothing is known of his whereabouts before 1638.

An article by Ruth Gray in the NEHGS Register (1986) entitled Sarah, Mother of Jeremiah Bumstead notes that Anna Rolfe, born about 1626, daughter of Henry & Honor (Rolfe) Rolfe, married (1) about 1645-48, Thomas Blanchard, who died at Charlestown in 1650; she married (2) Richard Gardner of Woburn. Nothing is stated about Gardner's origins; Newhall Ancestry states he was born in Surrey, England about 1619; this is so far the best source as to his origins, and his parentage is unknown. He was definitely not the Richard Gardner born ca. 1632, son of Thomas & Damaris (Shattuck) Gardner; this man wen to Nantucket and is well chronicled in Robert C. Anderson's The Great Migration Begins (enclosed).

Carl Boyer's Ancestral Lines Revised (3rd Edition, 1998) offers the best discussion of the POSSIBILITY that Margaret, wife of Edmund Freeman, Jr., was a sister of Ezra and other Perrys in Sandwich, MA; they may have been the children of Sarah Perry. In 1986, Henry J. Perry of 5 Tudor Lane, Lockport NY 14094, was conducting intensive research on this family.

The scenario as to William Taylor & Mary Merriam which I presented in my last report remains the same; i have so far found no new sources to corroborate it (Cannot find a marriage for them in Vital Records of Concord , so am not sure where the presumed date of 1650 came from). According to an article entitled "John Hubbard's Descendants" (The American Genealogist, Volume 11, 1934), it was believed that Mary, the wife of John Hubbard (b. ca. 1630) of Wethersfield CT and Hadley MA, was a Merriam because their son Jonathan inherited a farm in Concord, MA from his uncle, Deacon Robert Merriam (source being Bond's History of Watertown MA ).

However, a footnote in that article refers us to Putnam's Historical Magazine, Vol. 6 p.50 where reasons are stated for the belief that Mary may have been related to Mary (Sheafe) Merriam, the wife of Robert Merriam. So it is probably that Mary Hubbard was NOT a Merriam; but we still do not know for certain that your Mary, who married William Taylor, was one either.

Sincerely,

R. Andrew Pierce