James Adams (bef. 1627 - 1654)

Born before 22 May 1627 in Plymouth, Plymouth Colony

Husband of Frances (Vassall) Adams — married 16 Jun 1646 in Scituate, Plymouth Colony

Descendants

Died 19 Jan 1654 after age 26 in Died at Sea

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Al Adams [send private message], John Putnam [send private message], and Donna Fox [send private message]

Biography

JAMES² ADAMS (John¹), "resided on a farm on the Marshfield side of North River, nearly opposite Mr. Vassall's, the father of Mrs Adams. They worshipped with the second church in Scituate, and their children were carried there for baptism." ^[1]

The Plymough Colony Records, under date of June 10, 1651, record that James Adams came before the goveror and acknowledged that he had received from Kenelm Winslow the £5 which was to be paid to him when he became of age, and "on the 26th of December 1651, it was ordered to bee entered upon the publicke record as payed and received."^[2]

James Adam's widow, Frances, had 150 acres of land laid out to her by the Massachusetts General Court, May 7, 1673, "About eight miles northward from Lancaster."^[3]

Both Kenelme Winslow and his stepson, James Adams [age 16 or older] appear in a list of those able to bear arms in the colony of New Plymouth in 1643. They are listed consecutively under the town of Marshfield See NEHG Register Vol 4, July 1850, p. 259.

Children of James Adams and Frances Vassall:

i. William, born May 16, 1647; bapt. by Mr. Witherell, May 23, 1647.

ii. Anna, born April 18, 1649; bapt. May 20, 1649

iii. Richard, born April 19, 1651; bapt. April 27, 1651.

iv. Mary, born Jan 27, 1653; bapt. Feb 5, 1653.

v. Margaret, (no record of birth), bapt. March 18, 1654.^[4]

James was born in 1626. James was the child of John Adams and Eleanor Newton. James passed away in 1673. ^[5]

Per Robert Charles Anderson, Great Migration Begins:

"i James, b before 22 May 1627; m. Scituate 15 or 16 June or 16 July 1646 Frances Vassall, daughter of WILLIAM VASSALL [ScVR 2:11; PCR 2:108; 8:19]

James Adams: "Who died at sea in the good ship called the James of London on the 19th of January, 1651, to which Captain John Allin was master, and chief commander of said vessel." His inventory amounted to £34.15. His stepfather Kenelm Winslow was the administrator of his estate. ^[1][6]

Note

James Adams was known to have had interests in Barbados. In 1643 James was listed as capable of bearing arms from Marshfield. He lived in Marshfield but belonged to the church in Scituate where his children were baptized. Subsequently he moved to Scituate, where he married Frances Vassall and later lived at Concord. On 15 May 1672 Frances Adams petitioned the court for, and was granted, 150 acres of land in Plymouth and on 7 May 1673 the court noted that a farm of 150 acres belonging to Frances, wife of James Adams of Concord, was returned to the court.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a continuous flow of settlers from Barbados to virtually every point on the Atlantic seaboard, with the result that many families in America today trace their origins in the New World first to Barbados. Records of Barbados families exist in a variety of places and indeed a great many have been written up and published in the turn-of-the-century journal Caribbeana and The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.This present work contains every article pertaining to family history ever published in these journals.The combined articles, reprinted here in facsimile, range from conventional genealogies and pedigrees to will abstracts and Bible records and refer to some 15,000 persons, all of whom are listed in the index.

Note

According to Hughes-Queree, the plantation was established by Sir Robert Hackett between 1674 and 1679. Under his will of 1679, his wife, Dame Frances Hackett was to have ‘sole possession & management’ for life of the plantation of 400 acres. She re-married in 1679 to Thomas Walrond, who became the owner of the 340 acres. By 1715 the plantation was reduced to 246 acres. Walrond died in 1694. His heirs included Frances and Elizabeth. Frances married William Adams. Their grandson, Thomas Maxwell Adams, inherited the plantation from his great aunt, Elizabeth Maxwell neé Walrond in 1750.

According to the Adams Castle Development Inc. website (2015), "The first recorded history of Adams Castle Estate was in 1674 as seen on Forde’s map of Barbados, only 47 years after the first English settlement on the island. It was then called Hackett’s Plantation and owned by Sir Robert Hackett, who left the 400 acre plantation to his wife Dame Frances Hackett in 1679 with instructions that it would go to his son William Hackett on her death. Unfortunately for William, Frances remarried in that same year to Thomas Walrond and the plantation passed to her husband and was renamed Walrond’s Plantation.

Frances and Thomas had two daughters, Frances and Elizabeth. The elder, Frances, married William Adams and inherited the property in 1694 upon the death of Frances Walrond formerly Hackett. Frances and William Adams had a son, Thomas Adams who later married Margaret Maxwell. They in turn had a son named Thomas Maxwell Adams. On the death of her first husband Frances Adams remarried to the Honourable George Graeme, owner of Graeme Hall, and the estate became his. The younger sister, Elizabeth Walrond, married James Elliot and in 1715 he began a seven year process which resulted in his ownership of the estate.

On his death James Elliott bequeathed the property to his wife Elizabeth who, although remarrying to Thomas Maxwell, had no children to whom to pass the estate. Hence, on her death in 1750, Elizabeth bequeathed Walrond’s Plantation to her great-nephew Thomas Maxwell Adams and at that time its name changed to Adams Castle.

The Estate remained in the Adams family until the 1850s after which it changed hands many times among some of the leading families in Barbados including the Gills, Ashbys, Inces, Wards and Deanes."

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Memorials of Marshfield, by Marcia A. Thomas, pp. 36-37. Miss Thomas adds this quotation: "James Adams died at sea, on board the good ship James, 16 Jan. 1651; " but the year must be an error, perhaps, typographical, as he had a child born in March 1651. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, James Savage, Vol. 1, pg. 11 gives the date "19 Jan 1653 " meaning 1654 in our modern calendar.
2. ↑ Plymouth Colony Records (Boston, 1855), vol. ii. p.176.
3. ↑ Massachusetts Colony Records (Boston, 1854), vol v. pp 524 and 539.
4. ↑ Letter of Charles E. Bailey, Esq. of South Scituate.
5. ↑ Entered by Al Adams, Monday, October 7, 2013.
6. ↑ "Massachusetts, Plymouth County, Probate Records, 1633-1967," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G97D-VSPM : 5 March 2023), Wills 1633-1686 vol 1-4 > image 117 of 616; State Archives, Boston. page 107

• Genealogies of Barbados Families: From Caribbeana and the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.

• The Natural History of Barbados in Ten Books,Griffith Hughes, 1750

• The Mayflower Quarterly September 2010 page 257

• BANKS, CHARLES EDWARD. The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers Who Came to Plymouth on the "Mayflower" in 1620, the "Fortune" in 1621, and the "Anne" and the "Little James" in 1623. New York: Grafton Press, 1929. 187p. Reprinted with corrections Arrival 1623 Plymouth, Massachusetts

• GOODWIN, JOHN A. The Pilgrim Republic: An Historical Review of the Colony of New Plymouth .... Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1888. Second edition. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920, pp. 183-186, 190-191, 242-244, 297-300. Page: 244 Arrival 1623

• See also John Adams Family, of Mass., N.Y., and N.J.

• "Family of John Adams of Plymouth." New England Historical and Genealogical Register 33:410-413 link Archive.org. (1879)

• Wakefield, Robert S. Men of the Fortune: John Adams, The American Genealogist (The American Genealogist, Barrington, RI, 1979). Pages 212-214. NEHGS Member link. [Note: Anderson in the Great Migration Begins (p. 12) calls this the best treatment in print of John Adams and his two sons.]

Acknowledgments

• Thank you to Al Adams for creating Adams-13601 on 7 Oct 13.
• WikiTree profile Adams-6024 created through the import of oldweymouth families072011.GED on Jul 5, 2011 by Alyson X. See the Changes page for the details of edits by Alyson and others.

• Adams-22466 was created by Wendilyn Printy through the import of Printy Family Tree-v1.ged on Dec 4, 2015.

Thank you to Cindy Ramsey for creating WikiTree profile Adams-12220 through the import of Cindy Barnett family tree.ged on Jun 5, 2013. Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Cindy and others.