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Contents 1 The Seven Most Common Errors Concerning Robert Blood 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Error 1: Parentage 1.3 Error 2: Place of Birth 1.4 Error 3: Year of Birth 1.5 Error 4: Year of Arrival in the Massachusetts Bay Colony 1.6 Error 5: Original Place of Residence in the Massachusetts Bay Colony 1.7 Error 6: From Concord or from Near Concord? 1.8 Error 7: Ownership of The Bloods’ Farms or Blood’s Farms 1.9 Sources

The Seven Most Common Errors Concerning Robert Blood

Author: Garry Michael Blood, 24 Jun 2021

Introduction

Reference: The subject of this is Robert Blood born in 1625 or 1626 in Ruddington, Nottinghamshire, England, and an emigrant to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639. This is the same Robert Blood who married Elizabeth Willard and was the progenitor of many of the Bloods in the United States today.

Problem: There is an immense amount of erroneous information and poor scholarship concerning Robert Blood in circulation, made even worse with the advent of the Internet. The bad information has been copied and repeated so many times without being questioned, critically assessed, or even given any thought at all that it has now taken over.

Overview: The information and analyses presented here constitute my effort to start correcting the record and hopefully begin turning back the tide in favour of accurate, documented information concerning this remarkable and interesting man. I will address the seven most common errors concerning Robert in order of their importance or significance. Where appropriate I will provide references to primary information provided by original sources or lacking that, references to reliable derivative sources. The source notes will also be used to provide further background or explanatory comments.

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Error 1: Parentage

Robert Blood was not the son of James Blood and Ellen Harrison. This is one of the oldest and certainly the most egregious of the errors concerning Robert. I have traced the origin of this error back at least as far as 1855 in Lemuel Shattucks’ “The Blood Memorials”^[1] although it may be older than that. For Robert to be James’ and Ellen’s son the following problems would have to be resolved:

1. According to his own testimony Robert was born in either 1625 or 1626 (see Error 3: Year of Birth). His brother John^[2] is generally thought to have been a few years older, and there is some evidence for this; let’s say his year of birth is 1623, but even if he was a few years younger than Robert it does not lessen the problem we’re about to confront. Which is, given that James wasn’t married until 1631^[3][4] this means he fathered not just one but two illegitimate children in very Puritan early 17th century Nottingham. Worse, James did not marry their alleged mother until some six years after Robert’s birth!^[5] To call such a thing ahistorical would be a vast understatement; you might as well believe Robert was delivered by a stork. And it is very unlikely James had a previous marriage -- the parish records for all three Nottingham parishes are generally complete from 1583 onwards, so we would probably have a record of it. Given that 26 to 27 years old was the average age of marriage for men in early 17th century England, and James was born in 1605, a marriage at 26 years old in 1631 is almost exactly what we should expect for his first marriage. Further, we know James had just completed an apprenticeship as a cordwainer in Nottingham, and under English law of the early 17th century apprentices were forbidden from marrying until the end of their apprenticeship, which by law could not end before 24 years of age. This leaves a two-year window for James to have had a previous, unrecorded marriage, two unrecorded children, and then the unrecorded death of his "first" wife before he married Ellen Harrison in Feb 1630/1. Yet he is never noted in either his marriage allegation & bond or in the parish marriage entry as a widower, which would have been the norm.
2. The Bloods of Nottingham and Ruddington commonly named the first son for the father, a tradition that continued in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for several generations. While there were some possible exceptions to this pattern, it is nonetheless likely that James’ proven son James, Jr., born in 1632^[6] in the first year after James’ marriage, was his first son – meaning that the much older Robert Blood was unlikely to have been a son of James.
3. Once in the Massachusetts Bay Colony James, wife Ellen, and proven son James, Jr. appear to have moved quickly to the new frontier town of Concord; they were very likely there by the summer of 1639 and are confirmed there not later than the summer of 1641. Robert and brother John meanwhile, both still children, appear to have settled in Lynn where elder brother Richard and his wife Isabell resided. They would live there until about 1649. If Robert and John were also the minor children of James Blood, why did he take proven son James with him to Concord but leave “sons” Robert and John behind in Lynn for a decade? In 1639 Robert would have been at most 14 years old and John was probably a bit older (let’s say 16). Given that James was a farmer in Concord, 14-year-old Robert and 16-year-old John would have been valuable free labour. So, if James was their father why did he leave them in Lynn with Richard Blood, who in this scenario would have at best been a first cousin? All sentimentality aside, why give free labour to a relative of yours when you would sorely need it yourself on a frontier farm? This defies common sense, basic economics, and the social conventions of the day, which are good indications that’s not how it happened.
4. James mentions only his proven children James, Jr. and Mary in his will of 18 Jun 1683. At this time Robert was not only still alive, but living close by, just outside Concord. Yet he isn't mentioned in the will. Robert was older than James, Jr., and it would have been very unusual indeed for his “father” to not even mention him in his will, even if his intention was to leave most of his estate to James, Jr.^[7] However, if James, Jr. and Mary were James’ only children, then the lack of mention of Robert is unremarkable.
5. In a deed dated 4 Feb 1690, James Blood, Jr. referred to “the lands of my unckle John Blood…”^[8] The term uncle was as broad in the 17th century as it is now. Then, as now, it could also refer to an older male relation other than the brother of one’s father or mother, or even to unrelated males who were dear to the children of the family or to the community.^[9] Uncle could mean a lot of things, but what it could not mean either then or now was brother. If John was also a son of James, Sr. (which he had to be if Robert was) then James, Jr. was his brother. The fact James, Jr. refers to him as uncle means just what it looks like –-- whatever family relation he was to John, they weren’t brothers.

Having said all this, I do believe that James was a close relative of Robert, along with John and Richard. But it will take new original documents to establish the nature of that relationship.

Error 2: Place of Birth

This is probably the second most common error, and while not as significant as the paternity error nonetheless causes lots of problems of its own – it’s hard to do good research on the Bloods in England when you’re looking for records from non-existent villages or worse, researching in the wrong county. While there is no primary evidence from original sources for this, strong circumstantial evidence points to Robert’s place of birth being the village of Ruddington in the parish of Flawford^[10] in the Rushcliffe Wapentake of Nottinghamshire, five miles south of Nottingham itself. Circumstantial evidence that Robert was from Ruddington is as follows:

1. He and his brother John owned shares in a group of properties in Ruddington.^[11] Given that they emigrated as children in 1639 and sold these properties as young adults in 1649, it is probable they already owned them before they left England.^[12] This strongly points to an inheritance from their father. It stands to reason that their father’s family home would have been their family home, and likely the place they were born.
2. Both Robert and his brother John had ongoing dealings with William and John Lakin in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to include founding the town of Groton together,^[13] having lands near each other in Groton, and their descendants intermarrying over the next several generations. This points to a typical pattern seen in the New England colonies, where families that were allied through kinship in England continued that alliance in the New World. There is circumstantial evidence that Robert’s mother was a Lakin woman, and John and William Lakin were his first cousins.^[14] John and William were without any doubt from Ruddington.
3. Ruddington was the home of the largest concentration of Bloods in Nottinghamshire in the early 17th century.^[15] Given the other evidence pointing to Ruddington, it makes statistical sense that Robert is more likely to be from that village than from other parts of Nottinghamshire with much smaller Blood populations.

  Commonly seen erroneous places of birth for Robert include:

• Puddington, Nottinghamshire – This is by far the most common erroneous place of birth, but the problem is no such place exists or has ever existed.
• Ruddingham, Nottinghamshire – No such place exists or has ever existed.
• Puddington, Northamptonshire – No such place exists or has ever existed.
• Paddington, Northamptonshire – No such place exists or has ever existed.
• Puddington, Cheshire – The first place on the list of errors that actually exists. But there is not one shred of evidence linking any of the early colonial Bloods to Cheshire. This is one to blame on the previously mentioned Lemuel Shattuck, whose genealogical work on the early colonial Bloods is riddled with errors.^[16]

Possible explanation for the “Puddington” error: In some original 17th century documents from Nottinghamshire, the scribes used a capital R to spell Ruddington that looked almost indistinguishable from their capital P. You can tell the difference with a bit of squinting and comparing words, but if you’re not aware of the problem you could easily transcribe Ruddington as Puddington. I suspect that’s how Lemuel Shattuck went off on the Cheshire tangent – he knew there was no place called Puddington in Nottinghamshire, but rather than question the name of the village he cast about to find a place called Puddington elsewhere in England and found one in Cheshire. It was also Shattuck who contributed “Puddington, Northamptonshire”^[17] to our catalogue of errors, so he really couldn’t see the obvious problem here –- he had the village name wrong.

What about Rempstone? Finally concerning his place of birth, Robert Blood was not from Rempstone. Around 2000 or so a researcher uncovered baptismal records from this Nottinghamshire village six miles south of Ruddington in the Rushcliffe Wapentake. These records listed a Robert Blood baptized there on 25 Nov 1627, with an older brother John baptized on 4 Jul 1625. They were the sons of an elder Robert Blood and his wife Isabell. It appeared that Robert’s birth records and family had finally been found. The problem was nobody thought to check the burial records for Rempstone until sometime later. Those records show that the same John Blood born in 1625 was buried there on 17 Mar 1628, aged less than three years old. Therefore, this cannot be the John Blood who emigrated to New England and died there in 1682. If it’s the wrong John, then it’s also the wrong Robert as the two emigrants to New England of those names were proven brothers, and the emigrant John Blood lived a long life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In addition, Robert Blood was named in the 5 Jul 1690 will of his younger brother Richard. Richard did not specify where Robert lived at the time, which is usually taken to mean they lived in the same place, i.e., Rempstone.

Error 3: Year of Birth

Robert was born in either 1625 or 1626 based on his own written testimony:

• On 16 Jun 1684, in the case of Robert Blood Jr. vs. Thomas Brown, Robert submitted a written deposition in which he stated his age as “58 or there about.”^[18] This equates to a year of birth of 1626.
• On 29 May 1700, he submitted a written petition to the General Court in which he stated his age as “about seventy-five.”^[19] This would mean a year of birth of 1625.

As was not uncommon for the era Robert probably did not know his exact date of birth, likely only recalling the year.^[20] Knowing only the year of birth causes some ambiguity as to a person’s exact age, which is why people of the era often stated their age as “about X years” or “X years or thereabouts.” But given the consistency of his 1684 and 1700 testimonies over a gap of 16 years, even if he didn’t know his exact date of birth it is nonetheless clear Robert had kept a reasonably good track of his age over his life. Therefore, we can narrow his birth down to one or the other of these two years with a reasonable level of confidence. Other common but erroneous years of birth such as 1627,^[21] 1628, 1629, 1630, and even 1632 have no evidence to support them.

Error 4: Year of Arrival in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

This is often reported as 1647, but in digging into some of the derivative sources that list colonists’ years of emigration I have found that they almost always use the year the person first showed up in colonial records as their year of arrival. The reason for this is simple – very few ships’ manifests survive from the English migration period (the Puritan Great Migration), and what remains is patchy at best. Therefore, their first appearance in the colonial record is used as a proxy for their date of arrival. There is an obvious problem here in that a person might have been in the colony for some time before they made a mark in any (surviving) records. This is especially true in the case of Robert who did not become an adult^[22] until 1646 or 1647, and therefore would have no reason to have appeared in any records prior to then. And lo, almost as if on cue, in 1647 we have a record of Robert and John being arraigned in the Essex County Court at Salem for an altercation involving assault and battery.^[23] This is the first record of either of them, so is commonly listed as their year of arrival for the reason discussed above.

This is where understanding the wider historical context becomes critical. The English migration to the New England colonies, mainly made of up of disaffected Puritan families fleeing what they viewed as a religiously oppressive Church of England-dominated government, came to a near-complete halt in Dec 1640/Jan 1641 (on the modern Gregorian calendar; Dec/Jan 1640 on the Julian calendar of the time). In November of 1640 what would later come to be known as “the Long Parliament” was seated in London. This parliament was dominated by Puritan members and so the Puritan faction of English society effectively took control of the government. From that point on the main reason for Puritan emigration – government religious oppression – ceased to exist. The families that emigrated in Dec or Jan were the ones that were already so far along in the emigration process they had little recourse, having already sold their lands and homes and packed up their households. The Puritan families not so far into the emigration process by-and-large gave up their plans and elected to stay in England. As one historian put it (paraphrasing), virtually all the English colonists who would arrive in New England for the next 200 years were already there by the end of 1640. From about Jan 1641 onwards the previous flood of English arrivals was reduced to barely a trickle, and even that came to its ultimate end with the outbreak of the English Civil War on 22 Aug 1642. Past that point Puritans were far more motivated to stay and support Parliament’s war against the king, and in any event, there were few ships available to make the journey even if there had been a desire to leave – they were by then being pressed into service by one side or the other to support the war.

What history tells us is, unless Robert was an improbable anomaly (and we have no reason to believe he was), then if he was in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1647, he very likely arrived there by the end of 1640. We know James Blood was in Concord not later than Jun 1641 and had probably been there since 1639^[24] and we know Richard Blood married Isabell Wilkinson in Apr 1639 in London, almost certainly on their way to the New World. These are two strong indicators that there was a general Blood migration from Nottingham and Ruddington to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639.^[25] There is no reasonable alternative to the conclusion that Robert and his brother John, being children at the time, would have been part of this family migration.^[26] Further, a 1684 deed confirmation explicitly states that Robert bought the property in question, lying near Concord in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1642,^[27] while in a subsequent court case concerning this same property, Robert himself stated in a sworn affadavit that he had indeed purchased the property in 1642.^[28] These two items of evidence prove Robert as in the colony prior to 1647 and was almost without question part of the Blood emigration of 1639.

Error 5: Original Place of Residence in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Robert did not originally reside in Concord. This error is a natural extension of the error that James was his father, which as we’ve seen cannot be true. It is now certain that Robert and his brother John first settled in the port town of Lynn in Essex County upon arriving in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the same town in which probable older brother Richard first appears in the record in 1651, already a landowner in the town and surrounding area. We know Robert and John first lived in Lynn based on two key items of evidence:

1. Their 1647 arraignment before the Essex County Court at Salem for assault and battery took place in the portion of the court’s docket reserved for cases from Lynn. Colonial law dictated that accused persons were to be dealt with by the court that had jurisdiction over their place of residence, not over the place of the alleged crime.^[29] Therefore, this is significant evidence that Robert and John lived in Lynn at the time of this case.
2. In their testimony in the 1694 case of Robert Blood vs. Josiah Blood, the brothers William and John Lakin referred to Robert and John Blood as being “late of Lynn.”^[30] We know that by 1649 Robert and John were already describing themselves as “of Concord”^[31] and that they never lived anywhere else other than either Concord or the Bloods’ Farms to the north of the town after that point. In other words, the only time they could have been “of Lynn” as the Lakins stated was in the period prior to 1649.

Taken together and combined with the fact that Richard Blood also initially settled in Lynn, it appears virtually certain that Robert and John resided there as well. A natural extension of this is that, if these two were living in Lynn, they were living with Richard Blood - especially during the period up to 1647 when Robert was still not yet an adult. Children were no more permitted to live alone then than they would be today.

Could Robert have not settled initially in Concord with James Blood even if they weren't father and son? This scenario is not impossible, but I see no purpose or value in it. I can't figure out what problem this unlikely scenario is trying to solve. If we had even a hint from the early records that Robert was in Concord at any point prior to 1649 then this scenario would need to be entertained -- but no such hints exist. Based on the 1647 Lynn arraignment record, the 1694 Lakin testimony, and the documented presence of Robert's highly likely eldest brother Richard in Lynn from his arrival in the MBC until 1660, the most parsimonious and Occam-approved explanation would be that Robert also lived in Lynn until 1649.

Error 6: From Concord or from Near Concord?

Another persistent error is that Robert is commonly listed as being a resident of Concord for most of his adult life. His children are often listed as having been born in Concord, and both his and his wife Elizabeth’s place of death is invariably listed as Concord. Robert would probably find this both funny and frustrating, as he spent considerable time in court over his long life asserting that he did not live in Concord.

When Robert and brother John left Lynn between 1647 and 1649 it does appear that they moved to and resided within the town of Concord itself, meaning inside Concord’s town limits or “Old Bounds.” At this early point they really were “of Concord” as they had described themselves in 1649. But in 1650 Robert and John acquired nearly 2,000 acres of land comprising four farms lying outside Concord’s town limits but bordering directly on the town to the north-northeast. John established his homestead on Allen’s Farm and Robert established his on Hough’s Farm. I hypothesize that Robert’s marriage to Elizabeth Willard in 1653 marks the point by which he had established his Hough’s Farm homestead and functioning farm infrastructure; he was ready to marry because he finally had a home of his own to bring his new wife to. From this point on (the establishment of their respective homesteads) Robert and John consistently described themselves as being from “near Concord,” or even more generally living “in Middlesex County,” and in fact whether Concord had jurisdiction over these extra-territorial farms was the subject of a legal battle that raged for decades. Robert and John were always careful not to describe themselves as “of Concord” once the Bloods’ Farms were established, probably because it would have undermined their position that Concord had no tax jurisdiction over them. While Robert and his family were part of the congregational church at Concord,^[32] and therefore many of their life events were recorded in the town’s book, it is very unlikely any of Robert’s children were born there. They were all probably born in his homestead on Hough’s Farm, which was well outside Concord’s northern limit.^[33] Likewise, we can be reasonably certain this is where both Robert and Elizabeth died, and we know for a fact based on a deed that Robert’s son Jonathan executed in 1734 that both of them were buried close to the main house on Hough’s Farm.^[34]

Error 7: Ownership of The Bloods’ Farms or Blood’s Farms

Several crowd-sourced genealogy sites and public family trees assert that James Blood’s farm in Concord was called Blood’s Farm (he had more than one, so which one is never clear). This is not true. In every original document found to date, the names Blood’s Farms or The Bloods’ Farms refer exclusively to the group of three farms bordering Concord to the immediate north-northeast of the town’s northern boundary line, in a region now partly in Billerica and partly in Carlisle. These three were called Nowell’s Farm, Allen’s Farm, and Hough’s Farm after their original owners.^[35] Weld’s Farm, while purchased at the same time as the others, was never considered part of the Bloods’ Farms and may have been either sold or traded to the new town of Billerica at a very early date. But the point is that James Blood never owned any of these farms, and no farm of James Blood was ever referred to as "Blood's Farm(s)" in any surviving period document.

Sources

1. ↑ Shattuck, Lemuel. Memorials of the Descendants of William Shattuck, the progenitor of the families in America that have borne his name; including an introduction, and an appendix containing collateral information, Dutton and Wentworth Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts, United States: 1855, Appendix III, "The Blood Memorials," p.368. The Internet Archives, https://archive.org/details/memorialsofdesce00shat/page/368/mode/2up
2. ↑ Robert and John were definitely brothers. Source: Case of Robert Blood vs. Abraham Shephard, 3 & 27 Apr 1677 (digital images of 57 original documents), Middlesex County Court Folio Collection, Folio 79, entry 1678-79-2, Published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Online at: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/210946 - three references in two documents in this case explicitly identify John Blood and Robert Blood as brothers.
3. ↑ Marriage Allegation and Bond of James Bloud and Ellen Harrison (digital image of original document), University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Doc. Ref. AN/MB 37/109, University of Nottingham King's Meadow Campus, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
4. ↑ Phillimore, W.P.W. and Ward, James. Nottingham Parish Registers, Marriages, Phillimore's Parish Register Series, Vol. XXV (Nottm., Vol. III), Phillimore & Co., London, United Kingdom: 1901, p. 26. The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/nottinghamparis02wardgoog/page/n8/mode/2up
5. ↑ Premarital sex was reasonably common even in Puritan communities of England in the early 17th century. Studies have shown that upwards of 30% of English brides were pregnant on their wedding day based on the date of birth of their first child. But premarital sex was informally tolerated under two circumstances: a) it was only between betrothed couples and b) the couple would marry long before any resulting child was born.
6. ↑ "England & Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906," database, Ancestry.com (https://ancestry.com : accessed 11 Apr 2021), entry: James Bludd, 11 Mar 1631 (OS date; NS year is 1632, father James Bludd. Data derived from British Isles Vital Records Index, 2nd Edition, Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States: 2002.
7. ↑ This was permissible under the law of ultimogeniture, also known as “Borough English” inheritance.
8. ↑ Harris, Roger Deane. The Story of the Bloods, G.K. Hall & Co., Sanbornville, New Hampshire, United States: 1960, p. 143. Online at https://archive.org/details/storyofbloodsinc00unse
9. ↑ American culture is full of ‘uncle’ used in this way, with Uncle Sam being the most well-known example.
10. ↑ Although by the time of Robert's birth, the parish was almost universally referred to as "Ruddington parish" due to the fact there was no such village as Flawford and the parish church of Flawford was a derelict ruin that had not been used for services for a generation or more. Because most routine church activities had shifted to the Chapel of St Mary in Ruddington, that village had informally taken over as the parish seat to the point its name had come to be used for the parish at large.
11. ↑ Record of Sale of Property in Ruddington, England by John and Robert Blood (digital image of copyist's entry), Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986, Essex County, Deeds, Vol. 1, 1639-1658, Published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
12. ↑ As an aside, it is often overlooked that Robert and John knew the name of the tenant of the cottage, one John Symple. This implies the brothers were still in communication with someone in Ruddington who was keeping them apprised of the status of the properties.
13. ↑ Response to a Petition to the General Court for the Establishment of the Town of Groton, 25 May 1655 (digital image of original document), Groton Historical Papers, Ms. N-1340, Box 1, Groton Town Papers, 1646-1849, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
14. ↑ See Research Notes for Richard Blood at WikiTree, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Blood-224
15. ↑ However, this was not the largest concentration of Blood in England or even in the Midlands. The Bloods of Derbyshire, centred on the parish of Dalbury Lees, were far more numerous at that time, as they continue to be today.
16. ↑ Shattuck, Lemuel. Memorials of the Descendants of William Shattuck, the progenitor of the families in America that have borne his name; including an introduction, and an appendix containing collateral information, Dutton and Wentworth Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts, United States: 1855, Appendix III, "The Blood Memorials," p.368. The Internet Archives, https://archive.org/details/memorialsofdesce00shat/page/368/mode/2up
17. ↑ For a period in the 18th century when Shattuck and others were doing their research, the village of Podington in Bedfordshire was briefly known as Puddington as its name evolved into its modern form from the medieval Podintone/Potintone. This village is very close to the border with Northamptonshire and could be another possible explanation for the origin of that erroneous Puddington.
18. ↑ Case of Robert Blood, Jr. vs. Thomas Brown, 16 Jun 1684 (digital images of original documents), Middlesex County Court Folio Collection, Folio 107, entry 1684-107-2b, image 901, Published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
19. ↑ Massachusetts Archives Collection, 1603-1799, Vol. 243, Ancient Plans & Grants, 1649-1774, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, pp.5-6, Microfilm Reel B-002 (GSU 00500-002-2318835).
20. ↑ The alternative is that he did know his exact date of birth. While unlikely, if so, then in order to square his two testimonies his date of birth must have fallen after 29 May but on or before 16 Jun. If that’s the case, then his year of birth was 1626.
21. ↑ This year of birth comes from the error that the Robert Blood born in Rempstone was the same Robert Blood who emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. See Remptsone under Error 2: Place of Birth.
22. ↑ 21 years of age under the English common law of the 17th century.
23. ↑ Dow, George Francis and Tapley, Harriet S. Records and Files of the Quarterly Court of Essex County, Volume 1, 1636-1656, The Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts, 1911. Entry 9:5:1647, pp. 132-133. Online at http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/Essex/vol1/table/index.html
24. ↑ James was made a freeman of the colony in Jun 1641. This was a difficult and lengthy process, and even in the best of circumstances usually took two years to complete. Therefore, he is generally inferred to have been in Concord since the summer of 1639.
25. ↑ The apparent coincidental timing in the arrivals of Richard on the one hand and James on the other in the summer of 1639 indicates this was a coordinated move; that these two Bloods families (Richard & Isabell with Robert and John; James and Ellen with James, Jr.) emigrated as a single unit, only splitting up once in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This matches a family story passed down from my grandfather, supposedly from his grandfather, that my line of Bloods (via Robert) are descended from five male Bloods who all came to New England together and then split up. So the fact that the five males – James, James, Jr., Richard, Robert, and John – were remembered as a single group is further evidence the Bloods all migrated together.
26. ↑ It is important to note that the 9 Mar 1642 Protestation Return for Ruddington shows no male Bloods over 18 left in the village. If Robert and John were in fact anomalies and stayed in England past the end of 1640, then who were they living with? Also, if John was older than Robert as evidence strongly suggests, he would have been 18 in time for the 1642 protestation and should have been listed on the return for Ruddington.
27. ↑ Confirmation of Deeds held by Robert Blood, 3 Jun 1684 (digital image of a hand-written copy of original document entered into the county deed book), Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986, Middlesex County, Deeds, 1696-1716, Vol. 12, pp.110-111, Massachusetts State Archives, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
28. ↑ Petition by Robert Blood for a general settlement of the bounds between his farms and the surrounding towns, 29 May 1700 (digital image of the original document), Massachusetts Archives Collection, 1603-1799, Vol. 243, Ancient Plans and Grants, 1649-1774, Microfilm Reel A-87 (GSU 00500-002-2318835), pp.5-6, Published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. https://www.sec.state.ma.us/arc/arccol/colvol3.htm
29. ↑ Dow & Tapley, Vol. 1, p. iv.
30. ↑ Case of Robert Blood vs. Josiah Blood, Jul/Sep 1694 (digital images of original documents), Middlesex County Court Folio Collection, Folio 182, entry 1694-182-3, image 561, Published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
31. ↑ Record of Sale of Property in Ruddington, England by John and Robert Blood (digital image of copyist's entry), Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986, Essex County, Deeds, Vol. 1, 1639-1658, Published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, United States, p. 59.
32. ↑ Case of John Wheeler vs. Robert Blood, 17 Jun 1684 (digital images of original documents), Middlesex County Court Folio Collection, Folio 108, entry 1684-108-2, image 939, Published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Comment: In this case Timothy Wheeler testified that Robert Blood was dissatisfied with the place he had been assigned in the new Concord meeting house and refused to pay higher church rates for what he saw as an inferior seat.
33. ↑ The main house of “The Gardens at Clock Barn” in Carlisle, Massachusetts sits either on or very close to the site of Robert’s original home. Therefore, it would be more accurate to place most of Robert’s life events post-1653 in Carlisle, not Concord.
34. ↑ In 1734, Jonathan, who had inherited the Hough’s Farm from his father, sold some 240 acres of it to Ephraim Jones, with Jones deeding back to Jonathan a plot "about 20 feet square of the northwest corner of the orchard, the place where my father and mother are buried...behind or on the north side of the dwelling."
35. ↑ Both Robert and John also owned several lots totaling about 220 acres or so inside Concord’s town limits, but these were never considered to be part of the Bloods’ Farms / Blood’s Farms. Likewise, Robert’s 1,000-acre Virginia Farm in Concord Village (now Acton) was a separate entity.