It was once popular (likely still is) to find if one’s family had any connection to a president.
Pansy Noyes Bryant (1895 – 1985) recorded, for her family, the Noyes connection to President Adams. The Henry Adams she writes of (breathless confusion follows) was father of Joseph, father of Joseph, father of John the 2nd president. Henry Adams was also the father of Thomas, father of Peletiah, father of Elizabeth who married Deacon John Cummings who were parents of Deacon William Cummings, father of Bridget Cummings who married John Atwell who was father of Nathaniel who was father of Hiram who was father of Caroline Atwell who married James Noyes. So Elizabeth Adams who married Cummings, a contemporary of John Adams, was his 2nd cousin once removed.
I have transcribed from the document supplied me by Nancy Benton.
About the year 1608 in the little village of Charleton Mackrel on the river Cary, among the Polden Hills in the heart of English Somersetshire, a young girl was being courted by a lad from the neighboring village of Barton St. David.
The girls name was Edith and she was the daughter of a certain Henry Squire. The lad who made her his wife in 1609 or there abouts was Henry Adams – a young farmer who held some land by the old English system of copyhold from the lord of the Manor of Barton St. David. How rapidly children came to fill the farm house we do not know but in all eight sons and one daughter lived to grow up.
For some reason Henry Adams decided to abandon the home where his family had probably lived for generations and to try his luck in the New World. The moving may have been religious or it may have been economic or as was often the case, a combination of the two.
About 1636 he arrived at Boston Mass with his wife and nine children.
He was granted land at MT. Wollaston afterward called Braintree, and managed to establish a foothold.
After his buriel on Oct. 8, 1646, the inventory of his estate reveals that he had a house and barn, a cow and calf, some pigs, furniture and utensils and three beds – one in the parlor and two in the chamber. More noteworthy and probably relics of the old days in England were a silver teaspoon and some books.
The estate was worth 75 pounds, equally divided between real and personal property.
This Henry Adams was the great grandfather of John Adams, our second president.
The earlier generations of the Adam’s family are buried at Quincy Mass. where the old family home still stands.
This information is from the Prologue of “The Adam’s Family” by James Thuslow (?) Adams published 1930.
Written by Pansy Noyes Bryant
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