Citation
  • Benjamin H. Gaylord, "TAG: The English Ancestry of Deacon William Gaylord".
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  • Category: Research
Detail
  • Author: Benjamin H. Gaylord
Content
  • Text: New Light and Observations

        Despite diligent research by genealogists, professional and amateur, over the last forty years, not one shred of evidence has come to light to prove the ancestry of Deacon, William Gaylord of Dorchester, Mass., and Windsor, Ct. The only solid piece of evidence was supplied by John Insley Coddington back in 1937 when he proved that William Gaylord resided at Crewkerne from 1619 to 1624 when three of his children, Samuel, John and Joseph, were baptised there (TAG 17:71-74).

        The little that has been published about William Gaylord since then, notably articles in the Hartford Times 1947-1949, has done more harm than good because what was written was stated as fact with little or no documentation and these same so-called "facts" have been repeated over and over. Thus, we get from the Hartford Times of 22 Nov. 1947: "A-7996-(2) L.M.C. Sept. 20, 1947 GAYLORD-WHITE-PORTER. GAYLORD, John, Hugh, Christopher and Edmund Gaylord were brothers living in Pitminster Eng. where there was a Huguenot Colony. Hugh Gaylord was father of Alice, wife of Richard Treat. John mar. Pitminster Jan 15, 1572 Jane Wallen and had a son John bap. 1577 and William bap. May 21, 1582. William, son of John, emigrated to Dorchester, Mass. 1630; was of Windsor 1635 and d. there July 1673. His wife Mary (not Walter) d. June 1657 ... William (2) Gaylord mar. Feb. 24, 1643 Anna, dau. of John and Anna (White) Porter; she d. 1651; he mar. 2nd Elizabeth, dau of John and Elizabeth (Rogers) Drake ... S.D.M.D."

        From the Hartford Times of 17 April 1948: "A-8534-(1) L.M. February 31, [sic] 1948. GAYLORD-GAILARD-GAYLOR-GAYLARD. Nicholas Gailard 'from the dominion of the King of France,' was naturalized April 16, 1537; was of Pitminster, Eng. He mar. Jehane who d. after 1573. His son Nicholas was naturalized April 16, 1540. Hugh of Pitminster died 1614; Alice bap. there May 10, 1594 mar. April 26, 1615 Richard Treat-Trett-Trott. Ref. Old Taunton Calendars pub. by the Huguenot So. in London; Letters of Denization and acts of Naturalization for aliens in Eng. 1509-1603... S.D.M.D."

        From the Hartford Times of 12 Feb. 1949: "A9687- (5) H.K.B. Dec. 24, 1948. TREAT-GAYLORD. Nicholas Gaillard came from France to Pitminster, Somerset Co. [sic] Eng. 1546 [sic] had sons John, Hugh, Christopher and Edward (sic), Hugh d. there 1614; his dau. Alice bap. Pitminster May 10, 1594 mar. April 27, 1615 Richard Treat bap. 1584. Ref. Stiles Wethersfield, B.M.M."

        There you have in a nutshell what has been published on William and his supposed family which has been copied as fact over and over and taken up by the L.D.S., put on tape, and made available to genealogists here and in London.

        The first article by S.D.M.D., quoted in part above, has no references at all. The second article by S.D.M.D. is more helpful because it lists references. The third, by B.M.M., by making the slight mistake in capitalizing the word "county" and placing it after the name rather than before, gives the year of Nicholas's arrival in England as 1546, actually the year of his death, and calls his son Edward instead of Edmund. Stiles's History of Ancient Wethersfield had no mention of Nicholas Gaillard-Gaylord or any other spelling but did state (p. 711) that Alice was the daughter of Hugh and gave 27 April 1615 as the date of her marriage in England to Richard Treat, which, it seems, is correct.

        In 1977, I asked Mr. Michael Wood, a professional genealogist in London, to see what he could find regarding William Gaylord's ancestry. As background preparation, I sent him among many published articles, the abstracts of a number of Gaylard (Gaylord etc.) wills published in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 41 (1910), pp. 183-190. These were also mentioned in Mr. Coddington's article (vol. 17, supra).

        Using the extracts and Phillimore's Somerset Marriages, Mr. Wood found that there were three main Gaylard families in co. Somerset at Pitminster, Drayton and Long Sutton. A transcript of the Pitminster register was the only one avail able at the Society of Genealogists in London. From that and the will extracts, he was able to put together the following pedigree for the Pitminster family. The Drayton and Long Sutton families will require further local research because only the marriages were available in London and the will abstracts did not give relatives enough to construct connected pedigrees.

            1. Nicholas Gaylard, will dated 25 March 1546, proved 8 April 1546; m. Joan ----- who m. (2) Giles Alvyn of Pitminster. Her will was dated 29 Aug. 1572, proved 31 Aug. 1572. Giles Alvyn's will was dated 4 May 1667, proved 17 Aug. 1572.
                Children:

                2 i. Hugh Gaylard
                3 ii. Christopher Gaylard

                 iii. William Gaylard, m. ----- -----, possibly a sister of Robert Manley. Two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, both under age in 1572.

                 iv. Elizabeth, m. 9 Nov. 1572 John Bullpaine.

                4 v. John Gaylard

                 vi. Mary Caylard

                 vii. Edmund Gaylard, bur. 9 June 1614, m. 22 Nov. 1574 Margaret Langham, bur. 14 June 1610. Five children: Joan, d.y.; Joan, bapt. 28 Nov. 1576, and m.; Valentine, bapt. 7 March 1577/8; Honor bapt. 8 Nov. 1579 and m.; Robert bapt. 14 Nov. 1580, bur. 21 July 1590.

            2. Hugh Gaylard, executor of his mother's will; buried Pitminster 21 Oct. 1614; held land in Trull and of the Manor of Taunton Deane; m. possibly Alice ----- who was bur. Pitminster 17 Feb. 1628/9.
                Children:

                    i. Catherine, bapt. 26 Sept. 1576.

                    ii. Elizabeth, bapt. 30 April 1581; m. 13 Aug. 1617, Tobias Barrett, a minister.

                    iii. George, bapt. 20 Sept. 1583; overseer of the estate of his brother Edmund, 1661; will dated 9 Sept. 1665, proved 1 June 1667; m. (1) Margery -----, who was bur. 11 Feb. 1628/9; (2) Elizabeth -----, executrix of her husband's estate, 1667. Seven ch.: John, Joseph, Thomas, Edmund, Matthew, Jacob and George, of whom George may possibly have been by 2nd wife.

                    iv. Edmund, yeoman, will dated 14 Nov. 1661, bur. 10 Nov. 1661, proved 18 April. 1663; m. 16 May 1615 Joan Crosse bur. 12 July 1649. Five ch.: Joan, bapt. 11 Aug. 1616, m. Potter Se(a)ly and had issue; Martha, bapt. 25 Nov. 1621, living unm. 1661; Elizabeth, bapt. 14 March 1623/4, d. by 1661, having m. 19 May 1653 Joseph Stod(d)en and had one child Sarah; Agnes, bapt. 17 June 1630, living 1661.

                    v. Richard, bapt. 1 April 1591, bur. 26 March 1656; m. (1) 22 April 1616, Mary Pococke (?) who was bur. 12 March 1616/17; m. (2) 24 Sept. 1617, Martha Bennett, bur. 10 Oct. 1648. Eleven ch.: Elizabeth, Jane, Martha, Catherine (d.y.), Sarah, Robert, Hannah, Mary (d.y.), Joseph (d.y.), Richard (d.y.) and Rachel.

                    vi. Alice, bapt. 10 May 1594; m. 27 April 1615, Richard Trott of Pitminster. They came to New England with 9 children in 163-, ancestors of the Treat families of Connecticut and elsewhere.

            3. Christopher Gaylard was buried 6 March 1600/01; married 19 Nov. 1576 Elizabeth Pase who was buried 21 Nov. 1625.
                Children:

                    i. John, bapt. 7 Sept. 1578; bur. 4 April 1641; m. ----- ----- and had dau. Anstis, bapt. 28 Jan. 1604/5.

                    ii. Alice, bapt. 4 March 1579/80, bur. 23 Sept. 1591.

                    iii. William, bapt. 20 June 1582. No further record. It is tempting to think he may have been the emigrant but only so as we shall see.

                    iv. Mary, bapt. 30 May 1585.

                    v. Luce, bapt. 2 Feb. 1588/9; m. 25 Oct. 1614 Edward Mead of Dinicott.

                    vi. Joan, bapt. 14 March 1590/1, m. 8 Sept. 1614 Richard Scadding of Pitminster.

            4. John Gaylard, named in his mother's will, was buried 26 May 1607; married 25 Jan. 1572/3 Jane Wallin who was buried 5 June 1589.
                Children:

                i. Agnes, bapt. 5 Dec. 1574.

                ii. John, bapt. 6 Oct. 1577.

                iii. Joan, bapt. 16 Oct. 1579.

                iv. William, bapt. 11 May 1582. This is the William so consistently called the immigrant who, some claim, married Jane or Jone Ashwood. A William Gailard did marry a Jone Ashwppd [[sic]] on 11 June 1610 at Long Sutton, co. Somerset, where there was another large family of Gaylords. These have yet to be researched in detail. Note that this William is given a wife, "Mary (not Walter)", by S.D.M.D. in the Hartford Times of 22 Nov. 1947. William Gaillard in The History and Pedigree of the House of Gaillard or Gaylord, (Cincinnati 1872), p. 31 footnote, states: "The following are the other principal dates on the old gravestones of the Gaylord lot (Windsor, Ct.) Still legible: Mary Walters, first wife 1657 ..." Unfortunately no husband is given in the note but Stiles in The History of Ancient Windsor 2:278 says that the wife of William Gaylord died 20 June 1657. I have personally examined the stones in the Gaylord lot--the whole cemetery, for that matter--in 1976 and found no stone for Mary [Walter(s)] Gaylord, However, I see no reason why, in this case, the stone might not have been standing in 1872 probably badly eroded. The red sandstone used for the early graves has not stood time and the elements and there are no stones for Williams or for any of the next generation.

                v. Ede or Edith, bapt. 19 May 1588, m. 8 April 1619 John Sealy.

        There one has the Pitminster Gaylard family of the period. We see that there were two William Gaylards, both with brothers named John (a John Gaylord, thought to be a brother of William, is recorded at Dorchester, Mass. 1632). One was baptized 20 June 1582, son of Christopher and Elizabeth (Pase) Gaylard; the other, bapt. 11 May 1582, was the son of John and Jane (Wallin) Gaylord. We are confident that Alice (Gaylard) Treat, wife of Richard, was the daughter of our Hugh[2], Nicholas[1].

        Now, Mr. Wood doubts, and I agree, that either of the two William Gaylards baptized 1582 is our William?, the immigrant, for three not very strong but cogent reasons:

            (1) Early colonial records often overstated a person's age at death, but rarely understated it. Deacon William Gaylord or Galler, as he wrote it, died at Windsor, Ct., 20 July 1673 aet. 88 Matthew Grant's "Old Church Record" at the Connecticut Historical Society. Grant wrote: "Deacon Gayler 88 old." Of course, 88 could mean that he was in his 88th year but not yet 88. Deacon William was reasonabley well educated for the period, signed the first Dorchester land grants, was a Representative of Dorchester on 1636, 1636 and 1638, and served for 41 semi-annual sessions as Representative of Windsor to the Connecticut General Court. He surely would have been proud of his being 91 and so would the Windsor townsmen if indeed he was that old. William had children named Elizabeth, William, Samuel, John, Joseph and Walter. The latter may have been born before 1619 and therefore the 2nd oldest son.

            (2) If William was the son of Christopher and Elizabeth Pase one would expect to see children named Christopher and Nicholas, Elizabeth, as one does, and possibly Joan. If William were the son of John and Jane Wallin, one would expect a John, which there was, but since the wife was Jane, and mother was Joan or Johan, one would expect to see one of these names rather than Elizabeth. One would also expect to find Nicholas among the boys.

            (3) In Long Sutton, co. Somerset, where a William Gailard married Jone Ashwood 11 June 1610 (a fact mentioned by John Insley Coddington in his article cited above), we find numerous marriages of Gaylords, spelled Guilard in 1562, Gailard up to Samuel Gailard who married Agnes Parsons, 2 May 1614. After that the spelling is uniformly Gaylard. The spelling is probably beside the point which is that none of these Gaylords have been investigated in anything like the depth that those in Pitminster have been. Why should any genealogist fasten on the Pitminster family just because there were two Williams born there three years earlier than we think William was born, both of whom have brothers named John?

        Then there are dozens of Gaylards with various spellings in Devon, e.g. John Gayler 1381 (Transactions of the Devonshire Association 70:281). There were two Walter Gaylards 1397 and 1428, a William 6 Sept. 1361 who was vicar of Paignton and died 30 Nov. 1361.

        At Drayton, co, Somerset, there is another concentration of Gaylards. Crewkerne, where we know William had three of his children baptised, had quite a few. I could go on for pages on Gaylords found in the late 16th century in Devon, Somerset and Dorset.

        Then there is the co. Norfolk and London family of Joshua Gallard, Esq., one of the Receivers to King Charles I. He was granted arms by Sir William Segar, Garter King of Arms (no date given) but probably 1633/34 when his pedigree was recorded at the Herald's Visitation of London in those years. This pedigree, according to Conrad Swan, Esq., Ph.D., M.A., F.S.A., York Herald, in a letter to me dated 1 Dec. 1976, "shows his descent from a Henry Gallard of the City of NorWich." Dr. Swan didn't disclose the arms but I found it in The Genealogist, New Series, 15:175 in a list beginning in vol. 13 and running for many volumes by Arthur J. Jewers, F.S.A. This coat, which is quartered, is almost identical in the first and fourth quarters to that given by William Gaillard in his History (Cincinnati 1872)) and no doubt he took it from this grant. The coat granted to Joshua Gallard reads "Quarterly 1 and 4, Az a bend Arg. betw. three roses, Or, slipped and leaved Vert; 2 and 3 Gu. a falcon closed Arg., armed, jessed and belled Or., Crest: An arm emb. vested Gu., cuff Arg., in the hand ppr. a rose Or, slipped and leaved Vert." If one cares to look at the "family arms" given by William Gaillard in his genealogy on page 6, one will find nearly those same arms without the 2nd and 3rd quarterings. The crest is also very nearly the same. There was at least one armigerous family of Gaylords who came from East Anglia.

        P. H. Reaney, in his Dictionary of British Surnames, 2nd ed. (London & Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), certainly one of the best and probably the best of its kind, gives the following list of early Gaylords spelled Galliard, Gaillard, Gallard, Gaylard; Gaylardus of 1206 from the Rotuli Roll; Robert Gaylard 1225, from the Rotuli litterarum clausarum, 2 vols. London (1833); John Galard 1232 in Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus ... tempore regis Johannis, London (1835) and several more, one with the spelling Galyard. These derive from the French, meaning "lively, brisk, gay, full of high spirits."

        Further, Dr. Heaney lists families whose names come from the occupation of jailor or gaoler. These surnames are spelled Galer, Gayler, Gaylor, Jailler. He has found a Robert le Gaoler in 1255 in the Assize Roll of Essex (unpublished) and Richard le Gaylor in 1275 in Subsidy Rolls, co. Worcester, published by the Worcestershire Historical Society, 4 vols. (1898-1900).
Personal Names
PersonClaimDetailEvidence
Deacon William GaylordNameDeacon William Gaylord [S2053] [S2940]
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