GILLETT Family Bible on Display at the Windsor Historical Society
Jonathan Gillett Sr.
BIRTH: By about 1609 (based on presumed age at marriage), son of Rev. William Gillett.
MARRIAGE: Colyton, Devonshire, 29 March 1634 Mary Dolbiar, bp. Colyton, Devonshire, 7 June 1607 [TAG 15:208-17]. She died Windsor 5 January 1685[/6] [CTVR 56; TAG 15:210].
ORIGIN: Chaffcombe, Somersetshire.
MIGRATION: 1633
FIRST RESIDENCE: DorchesterREMOVES: Windsor 1638
RETURN TRIPS: To England in 1633 and return 1634
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP: Admission to Dorchester church prior to 6 May 1635 implied by freemanship.
DEATH:
THANKS: This News Paper Article was shared by Jason Eichner another descendant of Jonathan Gillett our Immigrant Grandfather.
Page
B8 Henderson Home News, Boulder City News, Green Valley News
Thursday, Friday, September 29 & 30, 1994
The
Long Trail of the Centuries-
Old Bear Claw Bible —
across the Atlantic in 1630
it had
not yet earned its unusual name
—
The Bear Bible.
Long, long
ago this Bible was placed in a
window to keep the sash raised.
One
day a bear, trying to get into
the
house, clawed it, leaving marks
so
deep on the edges of its pages
that
they are still, in 1993, plainly
visible!
The Bible has had an interesting
joumey
down through time.
Stiles, in his History ofAncient
Windsor
(Vol. 2, pg. 289),
says
it passed from the Gilletts to
the
Holcomb family, probably
when
Jonathan Holcomb wed
Mary
(Saxton) Gillctt, widow of
William
Gillett (1673-1718), son
of
Jonathan Gillett Jr., who had
died
by 1698. (Jonathan Holcomb,
born
1673, was the son of
Nathaniel
Holcomb (1648-1740)
and
grandson of Thomas
Holcomb,
the emigrant.)
The
Bible is also described in
the
1955 book Gillett Families:
Some
of the Descendants of
Jonathan
and Nathan Gillett, by
Bertha
Beal Aldridge (p. 13). It is
the
size commonly called "quarto"
—
about eight inches tall, seven
and a
half inches wide and two
and a
half inches thick. It is printed in
Roman
type. Although both
title
pages arc missing, internal
evidence
identifies it as having
been
printed in Amsterdam, Holland
in
1599, according to Mrs.
Aldridge,
who says it is one of the
many
editions of the very popular
Geneva
translation of the Bible,
with
marginal notes. Commonly
called
the Geneva edition, it was
first
printed there in 1559. It was
the
favorite edition of the English
Bible
among the Puritans in England,
where
the authorized version
was,
of course, the King
James
translation of 1611.
This
Bible is sadly torn and
damaged.
Many pages are missing
and
one assumes some of its
owners
did not revere it for either
spiritual
or family reasons. How
sad,
since the cover is a rough,
home-made
leather binding which
today
conveys an inspiring aura
of
antiquity. In spite of the damage,
the
precious pages left blank
between
the Old and New Testament
for
family entries are still
intact.
Their meager pen and ink
entries
establish the copy as having
belonged
to the early Gillett
family.
The script of the Gillett
family
entries is in the very old
style
which was in use in England
in the
late 1500s and early 1600s.
These
entries are in the hand of
Jonathan
Gillett of the second
generation
(ca. 1635 - ca. 1698).
His
identity is proven by his reference
to
himself in the following
item:
"My father Gille came into
new
Inglon, the secon time in June
in the
yeare 1635, and Jonathan
his
sonn was bom about half a
yeare
after he came to land."
The
1635 date agrees with his
marriage
to Mary Dolbiar at
Colyton,
Devon, England March
29,1634.
His name also appears
on the
passenger list of the Recovery
of
London, which left
Weymouth,
Dorset, Mar. 31,
1633.
Also aboard this ship were
many
other people closely associated
with
the Mary & John
passengers
who settled in
Dorchester,
Mass., and Windsor,
Conn.,
including Stephen Terry,
Sarah
Hill, Thomas Bascomb and
Thomas
Newberry — all well
known
early pioneers to New
England.
With
reference to this Bible's
journey
down through time. Apparetly
it
came into the possession
of
Lois Holcomb, bom 1748,
to
Jonathan Holcomb by his second
wife,
the widow Gillett. Lois
married
in 1772 Noah Cooley of
North
Granby, Conn. During
Windsor's
350th "Founders Day"
anniversary
other descendants of
Windsor's
founders were brought
together
in 1983. Among them
were:
The Rev. Lyman Gillett
Potter,
then minister of First
Church
of Christ, Simsbury,
Conn.,
attended as a direct descendant
of
Jonathan-Gillett. He brought
with
him and placed on
exhibit
the Bear Bible. Then, when
the
Windsor Historical Society
planned
a local history exhibit in
1990,
director Robert T. Silhman
wrote
retired Rev. Potter in
Saratoga
Springs, N.Y., and asked
to
display the Bible. A few weeks
later
Rev. Potter telephoned to
say he
was in nearby Simsbury
and
would visit the next day to
donate
the Bible to the Society as
a
memorial to all descendants of
Jonathan
Gillett. What a wonderful
contribution!
And
now, the rest of the story!
How
did Rev. Potter get the Bible?
That's
the amazing clincher to
this
story. When the last Cooley
in
Granby died, a foster son named
Charles
Coffey came from westem
New
York, settled the estate
and
took the Bear Bible as a curio,
though
he was not a Gillett descendant.
A
Raymond A. Beardslee, who was a Gillett
descendant
through his mother,
traced
its whereabouts and bought
it
from Coffey about 1915. When
he
preached the June 15, 1947,
ordination sermon for his nephew,
Lyman
Gillett Potter, at the Congregational
Church
in Norfolk, Conn, (where Lyman's father
was a
pastor), Beardslee presented the
young
minister with the Bear
Bible
once owned by his ancestors,
charging
him to prize it as a symbol
See
History, Page B9
History, from
Page B8
of
the continuity of the Christian
faith
through the generations!
[Your
columnist joins the editors
of
Second
Boat in
grateful
acknowledgement
in the use of
material from
Vol.
15
of Search for
the
passengers of the Mary &.
John
1630 published
by Burton
W.
Spear's Mary & John Clearing
House,
5602 305th St., Toledo,
Ohio
43611. We urge readers who
descend
from Windsor, Conn,
families
to contact Burton to exchange
data.
His volumes contain
much
additional material on
members
of the Gillett and allied
families,
and Vol. 15 lists additional
inscriptions
for members
of
Jonathan Gillett Jr.'s family in
the
pages of the Bear
Bible.]
Briggs,
a
valley
resident,
writes
a
column about genealogy.
Ancestry Chain 1: (10th gr.grandfather) Jonathan Sr. GILLETT (GYLETTE) Immigant b.1604, Mary GILLETT b.1638, Abigail BROWN b.1662, Jonathan FOWLER b.1685, Catherine FOWLER b.1723, Lydia NOBLE b.1768, Horace Datus ENSIGN-76 b.1797, Martin Luther ENSIGN b.1831, Harriett Camilla ENSIGN b.1859, George Ensign SMITH b.1898, Camilla SMITM b.1926, Lark, TR. Ancestry Chain 2: (10th gr.grandfather) Jonathan Sr. GILLETT (GYLETTE) Immigant b.1604, Samuel GILLETT, Hannah GILLETT b.1674, Mary TAYLOR b.1708, David BRONSON b.1733, Sylvanus BRONSON b.1769, Mary BRONSON b.1806, Martin Luther ENSIGN b.1831, Harriett Camilla ENSIGN b.1859, George Ensign SMITH b.1898, Camilla SMITM b.1926, Lark, TR. Ancestry Chain 3: (11th gr.grandfather) Jonathan Sr. GILLETT (GYLETTE) Immigant b.1604, Joseph GILLETT, Joseph GILLETT b.1664, Elizabeth GILLETT b.1688, Esther MARSH b.1714, Esther SAWYER "GUNN" b.1739, Esther REMINGTON b.1772, Mary BRONSON b.1806, Martin Luther ENSIGN b.1831, Harriett Camilla ENSIGN b.1859, George Ensign SMITH b.1898, Camilla SMITM b.1926, Lark, TR. |
