Month: March 2022

Landed

One of the earliest of our family groups to have landed  in North America is the Gillette brothers. Jonathan and Nathan reportedly arrived in Massachusetts in 1633.  The book New England, The Great Migration and the Great Migration Begins 1620-1635 compiled by the New England Historic Genealogical Society documents their arrival from Chaffcombe, Somersetshire. 

Sons of a pastor William Gillett who resided at the church in Chaffcombe, Devon, England (As shown below. We visited a few years ago and took these pictures then.), Jonathan and Nathan presumably left to come to the New World seeking religious freedom, but we really don’t know for sure.   Nathan left behind property which he deeded to his father, so one can imagine that land ownership was probably not the motivation.  

The current Chaffcombe Parish Church
Marilee in front of the Chaffcombe Church

According to the entries in the Bear Bible (Breeches bible…see an earlier blog), Jonathan’s son Benjamin writes that “My father Gillett came into the new-inglan the second time in June in the year 1634…” Our family traces their line back to John (1644-1682), a brother to Benjamin.

The family emigrated with a group of families that came from the West shore of England on the ship the William and Mary.  Although they are found on some passenger lists for this ship, the NEHGS cannot confirm they were indeed on it.  Both brothers are definitely here in 1634, but did they come on the William and Mary? 

The William and Mary group initially settled on the Eastern Seaboard of Massachusetts, but found the Puritan rules to be too restrictive.  They moved further west to Dorcester, but even the rules there were too onerous for their taste.  The group then moved even further into the wilderness, finally settling in Windsor, Connecticut, just north of Hartford. 

In 1634, Jonathan almost immediately returned to Chaffcombe to marry Mary Dolbere and to bring her back to Dorcester.  We know for sure that their names were found on the manifest of the ship Recovery, which brought them back to the New World.  (TAG 15:210; NGSQ 71:171, 77:250)  According to the NEHGS research, Jonathan and Mary left Dorcester sometime before 20 Jun 1638, shortly after their first child Mary was born.  All of their other children were born in Windsor, CN.

Mary Gillet Brown, first daughter of Jonathan and Mary Dolbere, gravesite in the Windsor cemetery
Peter Brown, Mary’s husband. (NOT the Peter Brown of the Mayflower line, per the NEHGS)

In Windsor they bought land, farmed and flourished, founding an incredibly large family tree.  According to the modern day Church Historian in Chaffcombe, the Gillette brothers must have populated the entire United States!  They see more visitors from the Gillette family every year than any other group of Americans.

While the Gillets (Gillette, Gyllet, Jellet…oh so many ways to spell their name) weren’t the first to come to the New World, they certainly were here early.  I’d love to more about what this world looked and felt like when they arrived, wouldn’t you?

Courting

My parents Marilyn Hope Johnson and Maurice Earl Ford Jr. met at Fullerton Union High School in Southern California.  Marilyn was the first-born daughter of pioneer orange ranchers in Yorba Linda, CA and Maury (or Fordo) was the only son of parents with deep roots in Orange County and in North America.  On his father’s side, Maury’s great-grandparents were founders of the City of Placentia in Orange County, as well as being some of the first orange ranchers in the area.  His ancestors on his mother’s side landed in Massachusetts in the early 1630s.

I don’t know exactly when Marilyn and Maury (or Fordo as she affectionately called him) met.  However, in her senior yearbook The Pleaides (1941), I found pictures of both of them on the yearbook staff pages. Maury was the Business Manager and Marilyn was an Art Editor.   In his inscription to her, he wrote, “It’s been swell working on the staff with you.  Don’t forget the annual never would have come out if we hadn’t checked all that proof that night,” signed Ford.  We can only imagine what checking all the proof “that night” really meant. 

Maury being Business Manager of the Pleaides
Marilyn and the other art editors for the Pleaides

Their actual courtship was relatively short.  Like most young men of this era, Maury was called to military service and enlisted on 4 September 1942 in the US Naval Reserve, a short year after their graduation from high school.  He became a member of the famed SeaBees and remained in the service until 16 July 1946, when he was released from the New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn. 

Marilyn Johnson and Maurice Earl Ford, Jr.
Wedding portrait, Brooklyn NY

Maury was due to be shipped to the Pacific when the bombs were dropped over Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  He always said he wished he’d gone to sea, but it was not to be.  Instead he invited Marilyn to come back to New York to get married.  She left home, alone and without food for the trip, aboard a train that traveled across the US to Brooklyn.  They were married on 22 August 1945, setting up housekeeping in a brownstone in Brooklyn, near the Naval Shipyards. When they returned to California after his discharge, they started their family. Starting in 1947, when I was born, they had six children: me (Marilee), Judy, Gale, Dennis, John and Janis.

Marilyn and Maury on the steps of their brownstone in Brooklyn
A day at the beach, probably on Long Island

Marilyn and Maury had a long life together. They were married 1 day shy of 50 years, when, on 21 August 1995, Maury passed away from the complications of a stroke.  Marilyn lived another 22 years, passing away from old age also on 21 August, but in 2017. 

I’ll never forget her last words to him as she leaned over and rested her forehead on his arm, “Oh Fordo”, the two of them surrounded by most of their grown children and a grandson.