who was the father of John Cogswell Jr of Ipswich, Essex, Mass?

Question

Hi folks. Please see my public comment here: 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cogswell-22

We had a parent for this guy, apparently based on an 1800s source we're now discrediting. Anybody have a better source? Shame to leave him as a dead end, from such a locally-prominent family.

Cheers, 

Isaac in California

Comments

It would seem most likely to be John Cogswell Sr.

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Not necessarily. In that time and place, "Junior" only meant that there was an older man in the community with that name, who could have been a father, an uncle, a cousin, a half-sibling (or very rarely, a full sibling) - or totally unrelated.

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Good to hear that. There are two entries for John Cogswell born 1666 that show William Cogswell as his father and Susanna Hawkes as his mother, but those entries are from User Submitted Genealogies which are not verified for accuracy.

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There's a probate file for a William Cogswell of Chebacco parish (then part of Ipswich) in 1700, with a will. I looked at it briefly, but it's very hard to read and since it's not my line, I didn't dig into it. Might be worth pursuing. It's Essex Co. PR 5865. If you have an AmericanAncestors.org subscription, it's available at https://www.americanancestors.org/DB515/i/13763/5865-co1/245182038

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I have two Cogswell's in my database, Temperance and Hannah. They are early American 1600's and 1700's distant cousins.

The Cogswell surname is said to be of Anglo-Saxon origin and the name is a variant of "Coggeshall." Surnamedb.com has more details about the Cogswell surname origin and very early examples.

Answer 1

Start with John (1 d. 1669) He had two sons who had children.

William (2 1619-1700)   and John (2 1622-1653)

William (2 1619-1700) had a son John (3 make him John 1665-1710)

John  (2 1622-1653) had a son John (3 1622-1653) he also had a son John (4 1650-1724)

Contemporaries; John (4 1650-1724) and John (3 make him John 1665-1710)

John (3 make him John 1665-1710) son of William is the younger of the two contemporary Johns, so could easily be called John Jr in the records.

There is a receipt (signed by John Hawkes) in the probate documents of William that was witnessed by John Jr.

I wouldn't want to bet my life on it, but I think it's safe to go with the old genealogy "Cogswells in America" and attach John Jr as son of William. If you leave Jr. out of the suffix and just mention it's use in the bio, it will make it less confusing.

Answer 2

I don't see "The Coggswells in America" in your list of sources. I found him in this book on p.9

There is also a free space page for this book.

Comments

This is probably the source of the incorrect information according to Isaac.

On a brighter note - A couple of years ago I added a whole lot of Cogswells to my desktop database and couldn't remember why. Now I know why. It was the Perley connection.

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Cutter also agrees that William was his father:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Rdk4AQAAMAAJ&q=cogswell#v=snippet&q=cogswell&f=false

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To be clear I'm not saying there was wrong info, just that somebody saw fit to disconnect previously-connected parents so now he has none. Which is a shame, because the Cogswells are kinda a big deal.