Thomas Symons (abt. 1605)

Born about 1605 in England [uncertain]

Died [date unknown] in Massachusetts [uncertain]

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Puritan Great Migration Project WikiTree [send private message]

Thomas Symons migrated to New England during the Puritan Great Migration (1621-1640). (See Great Migration Begins, by R. C. Anderson, Vol. 3, p. 1790) Join: Puritan Great Migration Project Discuss: pgm

Biography

Thomas Symons was an early immigrant to New England. His origins are not known. Thomas Symons is mentioned in the will of Samuel Fuller, created on 30 July 1633, which directed that "my two servants Thomas Symons & Robt Cowles" should be employed "for the remainder of their several terms ... for the good of my children." He is mentioned in Plymouth County Records on 1 February 1641/2, when he and Edward Doty were in court due to a disagreement over keeping of cows. In 1643, a list of Plymouth Colony men able to bear arms included Thomas Symons of Scituate. On 26 1649, "Thomas Simmons of Scituate" sold land to Gilbert Brooks of Scituate, identified as a planter.^[1]

Disputed Origins and Identity

There is no basis for published claims that Thomas Symons/Simmons was a brother or son of Moses Simonson/Simmons, nor that he married Elizabeth Nash, nor that he had a daughter who married Gilbert Brooks. In The Great Migration Begins, Anderson wrote: "Various authors have tried to make Thomas Symons a son or brother of Moses Simonson, but there is no evidence for this. Raymon Meyers Tingley went so far as to fabricate a deposition by Symons making him brother-in-law of Samuel Nash and father-in-law of Gilbert Brooks, but this alleged document is impeached by its own internal chronological impossibilities."^[2] Claims that Symons was born in Leiden, Holland (the birthplace of Moses Simonson), probably are also derived from the fraudulent Tingley-Meyers genealogy.

Thomas Symmonds has also been conflated with Thomas Symmonds of Braintree who arrived in New England in 1638 (see [NEHGR 3:248; Lechford 351; BTR 1:49; MBCR 1:282]).

Sources

1. ↑ Anderson, vol. 3, page 1790
2. ↑ Anderson, vol. 3, page 1790. Anderson cites pages 371-372 of Raymon Meyers Tingley's 1935 book Some ancestral lines : being a record of some of the ancestors of Guilford Solon Tingley and his wife, Martha Pamelia Meyers as the location of the fabricated deposition.

• Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995. p. 1790. link for subscribers $
• Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England , Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, eds., 12 volumes in 10 (Boston 1855 – 1861) 2:33. 8:191, 12:217-18