Jane
Swain
formerly [surname unknown] aka Bunker
Born about in England
Daughter of [father unknown] and [mother unknown]
[sibling(s) unknown]
Wife of
George Bunker
— married
[date unknown] [location unknown]
Wife of
Richard Swain
— married
12 Sep 1658 in New Hampshire
Descendants 
Died
at about age 38
in Nantucket, Province of New York
Profile managers:
Andrea Powell 
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| Created 9 Dec 2016
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| Jane (Unknown) Swain migrated to New England during the Puritan Great Migration (1621-1640). Join: Puritan Great Migration Project Discuss: pgm |
Note: Godfrey was the maiden name of George's first wife Elizabeth. See below, Jane's maiden name was probably not Godfrey.
Contents |
Geographic Note
Nantucket was part of Dukes County, New York, until 1691. It is now Nantucket County, Massachusetts.[1]
Disputed Origins
George Bunker's first wife was Elizabeth Godfrey whom he married May 5, 1644 in England. When George Bunker died in 1658, Massachusetts probate records named his wife Jane Bunker (along with children Elizabeth, William, Mary, Ann and Martha).
There is no known record of any marriage between George and Jane of any last name in either America or England. George's wife could possibly have been Elizabeth "Jane" Godfrey[2], being known as "Elizabeth" in England and "Jane" after the families immigration to America; however middle names at that time were extremely rare and "Jane" would not normally be used as a nickname for "Elizabeth". No record for the death of Elizabeth (Godfrey) Bunker has been found. The first mention of Jane as "Jane Godfrey" is the Nantucket records compiled 200 years after her death, and it is noted that the records are only conjecture. No "Jane Godfrey" is to be found in the American records that could have married George. [3]
Whether George had one or two wives is very much an open question, with no answer being provided by written records of the time. It seems unlikely additional records will be found and the only way to resolve the issue is through an mtDNA study including descendants of Elizabeth Godfrey and Mary, Ann or Martha as possible daughters of "Jane".
What we do know is that George's first two children, Elizabeth and William, were baptized in Bedfordshire. Three daughters were born after the family's immigration to America - Mary, Ann and Martha. After his death in 1658, George's widow married as her second husband Richard Swain. In 1660 Richard & Jane Swain had a son, Richard Swain Jr. Jane Swain (previously Jane Bunker) passed away in 1662 and Richard Swain raised all six of the children.
In any case, there was no "Jane maiden name Godfrey". The woman who gave birth to the last three of George's children and was named in George's will was either "Elizabeth Godfrey", aka Jane; or she was "Jane", maiden name unknown.
This profile assumes Jane Bunker named in George's will is a second wife whose maiden name is unknown. This women was the mother of the three of George's three children born in America: Mary, Ann and Martha. She married her second husband, Richard Swain, on July 15, 1658; gave birth to son Richard Swain Jr. in 1660, and died in 1662.
Some sources speculate that Elizabeth and William were the children of George's (presumed) first wife Elizabeth. Most sources presume Jane to be the mother of Mary, Ann and Martha.
Biography
It is unknown when she married George Bunker, but when he drowned on May 26, 1658, Jane Bunker was named as his widow and given the administration of his estate.
Some two months later, Jane married Richard Swain on July 15, 1658 and they shortly after removed to Nantucket Island where their son Richard Swain Jr. was born January 13, 1660.
Jane died October 31, 1662 at Nantucket, Massachusetts,[4] and Richard Swain raised the orphan Bunker children: Elizabeth Bunker (16), William Bunker (14), Mary Bunker (10), Ann Bunker (8), and Martha Bunker (6).
Sources
- ↑ Wikipedia article "Nantucket, Massachusetts
- ↑ Currently (December 2016), the Bunker Family Association tends to refer to single wife named Elizabeth "Jane" Godfrey
- ↑ "George Bunker of Nantucket", prepared January 14, 2009 by Bette Bunker Richards and published by the Bunker Family Association (www.bunkerfamilyassn.org)
- ↑ The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1847-. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-2013.) Reference Volume 7, page 181
- Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).
- U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2012
- Nantucket Historical Association (Mass., 1902) Vol. 2, No. 2, "Nantucket Lands and Landowners". Page 63
- The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, New York City, 1886) Vol. 17.
- Page 8: "Among others who came... William Bunker, 1650-1712, carried to Nantucket by his mother, Jane Godfrey, whose first husband, George, was drowned, 1658, when she married Richard Swaine, married, 1669, Mary, daughter of Thomas Macy..."
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/124028077/jane-elizabeth-swain NOTE: Shows last name at birth of Godfrey but no sources or headstone shown
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DNA
No known carriers of Jane's DNA have taken a DNA test.
No known carriers of Jane's DNA have taken a DNA test.
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Rejected matches › Jane (Turner) Godfrey (abt.1632-bef.1684) › Elizabeth (Godfrey) Holness (1727-) › Elizabeth Godfrey (bef.1608-abt.1690) › Elizabeth (Godfrey) Bunker (abt.1627-abt.1650)
Featured National Park champion connections: Jane is 11 degrees from Theodore Roosevelt, 18 degrees from Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, 11 degrees from George Catlin, 10 degrees from Marjory Douglas, 20 degrees from Sueko Embrey, 12 degrees from George Grinnell, 23 degrees from Anton Kröller, 11 degrees from Stephen Mather, 19 degrees from Kara McKean, 15 degrees from John Muir, 14 degrees from Victoria Hanover and 23 degrees from Charles Young on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.
[Do you know Jane's family name?] | S > Swain > Jane (Unknown) Swain
Categories: Nantucket Founders and Descendants | Founders Burial Ground, Nantucket, Massachusetts | Puritan Great Migration
Wright wasn't completely confident of the genealogy, which he is says is "according to Mrs. McVickar," and has a footnote to "see the McVickar article for more on John Godfrey."
Will see if there's any sources cited in the article when I'm next at the library.
Margaret McVickar identified John Godfrey, an accused witch of Essex County, Massachusetts, as the father of Jane "Godfrey". He doesn't have a Wikitree profile, but was the subject of an article by John Demos in WMQ in which he was said to be a lifelong bachelor, with no known family origins or heirs when he died in 1675. No source is provided for the relationship, McVickar only references a couple of his court cases. He is an enigma, interesting, and well documented, hopefully someone in the Witch Trials project takes him on.
Demos, John. “John Godfrey and His Neighbors: Witchcraft and the Social Web in Colonial Massachusetts.” The William and Mary Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1976): 242–65. https://doi.org/10.2307/1922164.
It seems impossible from Demos' article that the witch John fathered Jane HOWEVER I find it interesting that Richard Swain and Jane had their one child, Richard, in Hampton, New Hampshire, and that there is a large contemporary family of Godfreys living there at the time, all descendants of William Godfrey (abt.1600-1671). This family group is large and not completely sourced, it is possible she could be one of the Hampton Godfreys? Maybe " dau. Godfrey b.1634"?
edited by H Husted
LNAB formatting/wording would be more suitably discussed in a G2G forum.
Unknown-346517 appears to be correctly describing a woman called Jane NN who married both Bunker and Swain.
I suspect some previous merge was made INTO Godfrey-3003 in error. They may need to be unconflated.
Note that the actual George Bunker (in real life) who married Jane NN who later remarried to Richard Swain was either the son of Timothy Bunker OR his brother Francis Bunker. Wikitree is currently incoherently saying there are two different George Bunkers (son of Timothy, son of Francis) EACH married to the non-merged profiles representing the person Jane NN. The profile managers should fix that. It creates a loop in the ancestor pedigree chart and family connections which means depending on which profiles you're looking at there is always some wrong information visible (live on the web to the public) for example representing Elizabeth Godfrey and Jane NN m. Bunker, Swain as sisters. If they ARE in fact sisters, then Jane NN isn't Unknown and the merge directionality should be reversed. If they are not sisters but merely both wives of the same man then their sisterhood needs to be disconnected.
Cheers
I haven't seen that before. Is it manually entered or an automatic insertion into a blank field? In some ways it's nicer than having a fake name 'Unknown'.
Lastly, while on the topic, it's too bad we can't rejigger the surname templates to shift the 'formerly' stuff to the end (or omit) when we know married names but don't know LNAB eg:
'Jane Swain, formerly Bunker [surname unknown]'
Wouldn't that be easier on the eye? And flow in a linear reverse-chronological order.
Our current style syntax is clunky because it jumps around in time, from Unknown LNAB, then most-recent married name, then all others as AKAs. This has the unfortunate effect of emphasizing late-life renamings and suppressing actual historical identity.
I mean that in a general sense (for widows remarrying late to widowers, after child-bearing years etc) not specific to this Jane-- and with no insult intended to the descendants of Jane's son Richard Swain Jr.
The place of death on this profile is factually wrong. The Wikipedia "source" provided is self-contradictory and if you follow the links within that page the assertion copied to the Geographical Note here on Wikitree unravels.
Nantucket was NOT part of Dukes County, New York "until 1691." Rather, only between 1683-1691. Dukes County did not exist prior to 1683 ie during this woman's lifetime.
Nantucket was sold (deeded) Oct 1641 by William, Earl of Stirling to Thomas Mayhew of Watertown/Cambridge, Massachusetts; who later sold most of it. Therefore between 1641 and 1683 it ought to be top-level domain Massachusetts or left alone as "Nantucket" which is unambigiously unique.
At NO point during this Jane's life was Nantucket ever part of 'New York' and only after she died, was it temporarily (for less than a decade) part of the 'Province of New York' eg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_New_York
Morever, during her lifetime there was no such thing as 'New York' as both the city now called that and the associated settlements up the Hudson etc were collectively New Netherland, broadly speaking between 16141674.
Could the profile managers or project czars fix this? Or perhaps there is a Nantucket focal project which could "crawl" across the thousands of colonial profiles to paint placename styles according to the historical, factual timelines?
"US History|sub-project=Massachusetts" instead. Replace the quote marks with double brackets {{