a genealogist's sketchbook

Heavy, thick and dark, this book. It’s actually four books in one: a Book of Common Prayer, a (Geneva) Bible, a Concordance, and paraphrases of the Psalms. All printed in London, 1599 and 1600. A typical omnibus for devout and plain, but respectable if not substantial folk: a quarto, period bound in blind-stamped leather, much repaired. Whisked out for me in the reading room of the Houghton Library.

Samuel Andrews, a draper, of London, and his wife Jane, came to New England in 1634, and settled at Saco, Maine, with their children. After Samuel’s death Jane married Arthur Mackworth of Saco and Falmouth, and had two more daughters with him. The bible records the first four of Jane and Samuel’s children, born in London before their emigration. It does not record Samuel and Jane’s later two children, Samuel (b. and d. in London) or Philippa (b. probably about 1636, probably at Saco, Maine); nor does it include Jane’s children by her second husband Arthur Mackworth. It passed subsequently to James Andrews, her eldest son, and thence down through the generations to Mrs. Winifred Teele, of Concord, who gave it to Harvard in 1965. It is well described (and the families in it covered genealogically) by Robert J. Dunkle, “The Andrews-Cogswell-Page Bible,” The Genealogist 3 (1982-3), 45-95. Dunkle’s transcription of this earliest page of entries, written by Samuel or Jane, was partially corrected by David L. Greene in a letter published in The Genealogist 3 (1982-3), 263-64 (though these corrections were not incorporated in Robert C. Anderson, The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-5, 1:56-59). Dr. Greene was working from the photocopy printed in Dunkle’s article, and wanted to note Dunkle’s misreading of ‘sixt’ as ‘first’ in three (actually two) places. But Dunkle was generally not careful in rendering the wondrous spelling of these earliest entries. My luxury of looking at (and photographing) the original has allowed further correction and I give my transcription below.

But the greater luxury by far is to hold such a record written and brought by one of my own ancestors in the Great Migration—I descend from Jane and Arthur Mackworth’s daughter Rebecca (Mackworth) Wharff, the second of Jane’s two daughters named ‘Rebecca’.

On the back of the New-Testament title page:

the bearth of all my Ch[ildr]en¹ was
—————————————————————–
James woas boarren in the yeare 1625
one the twenteth & one² day of ffebruarey
at Eaight of the Clocke in the afternowne
—————————————————————–
Rebecka woas boaren in the yeare 1628
& one the sixt of Aprill att three of
the Clocke in the morning
—————————————————————–
Jane woas boaren in the yeare 1629
& one the twenty & sixt day of ffebray
—————————————————————–
Elizabeth woas boaren in the year 1632
att Eaight of the Clocke in the forenowne
one the 4 day of may

¹written at the top of the page; chipping has removed much of the word
²Greene corrected this to ‘sixt’, but it is ‘first’