Mystery solved? An English researcher finds evidence of Thomas Dewey where no one thought to look.
As descendants of Thomas Dewey, we owe him everything. Yet we don't know much about him.
The outlines of his life are clear: a Puritan Englishman who emigrates to the New World, settles in Massachusetts in the early 1630s, and quickly resettles in Windsor, Connecticut, helping establish the town as part of Rev. John Wareham's congregation.
There he marries the widow Frances Clark, fathers five children, and dies in 1648. Frances remarries and moves the children to Westfield, Massachusetts, where the family prospers.
But what were Thomas's origins? Where in England was he from?
Tradition has it that Thomas came from Sandwich, Kent, England. It's listed as fact in countless sources. The authoritative Dewey family genealogy, Louis Marinus Dewey's 1898 Life of George Dewey, says it "seems" to be true.
But generations of researchers have found no traces of Thomas in the county of Kent, despite the existence of extensive parish records that date to the 1500s.
Maybe we were all looking in the wrong place.
11th Great Grandson, Henry Dewey, looks out over the waters of Swanage, Dorset, England. This port town was called Sandwich in the early 1600s, when Thomas Dewey made his voyage. This is likely the Sandwich from which he sailed to the New World. (Photo by Evelyn Dewey)
A little background...
There is no firm arrival date for Thomas Dewey in the New World. He doesn't appear, conclusively, on any ship's roster of the Puritan Migration. Most sources say he arrived between 1630 and 1633.
The first solid record of his life in America dates to 1633, when he signs as a witness on another man's will.
In 1634, Thomas takes the freeman oath, which didn't mean that he was freed from some sort of bondage, like indentured servitude. It meant that he was a member, in full standing, of his church. A person of stability, character, and reverence. A man who could vote and own land. A certified Puritan.
Return now to the idea that Thomas came from Kent.
Thomas was a Puritan, but the Puritans didn't come from Kent, which is on the southeast coast of England. They came in parish groups from churches in the "West Country," southwest of London, in the county of Dorset.
A Dorset map by Peter Keer, from 1627.
“(The settlers of Dorchester, Massachusetts) were the most homogeneous of all those shiploads of emigrants who constituted the Great Migration. They came largely from one West Country locality, gathered themselves into a church there and settled together on the Massachusetts Bay.”
So it never made sense that Thomas came from Kent.
This is where Englishman Terry Dewey comes in. He's a Dewey, but not descended from Thomas. He loves a mystery, though, and as an engineer has a mind for facts, details, and things that fit.
Terry set about researching the mysterious origins of Thomas Dewey, the settler, the founder of the Dewey family in America. Our Thomas.
Terry had lived for years in Kent, and as he researched the Dewey family's history there, he found nothing from the late 1500s and early 1600s. Despite the era's detailed record keeping that survives to this day, there was no evidence of a Thomas Dewey.
Puzzled, Terry and his wife, Julia, found themselves studying an old map and wondering about Thomas's origins.
Then they had their "eureka moment."
In the 1630s, there were TWO towns on the south coast of England named Sandwich.
There was Sandwich, in Kent...
...and Sandwich, in Dorset. Dorset, home of the Puritans.
In this 1695 Dorset map by Robert Morden, the town of Sandwich is visible near the southeast corner, next to Sandwich Bay. On later maps, and in the present day, this town is known as Swanage.
Likely, Thomas was from Sandwich, and genealogists assumed it was Sandwich, Kent, because for the last several centuries, that was the only Sandwich in England.
Moving his research to Dorset, Terry quickly found evidence that a Thomas Dewey was Christened in the parish church of Hinton Martel, a small Dorset farming community, in 1606.
Thomas Dewey (Dewye) appears on a list of baptisms from the year 1606, found in church records in the Dorset village of Hinton Martel. Note that his father's name was Thomas, also. Spellings were not standardized at that time, and the name Dewey could appear as Dewey, Dewye, Dueey, or other variants. (photo researched by and courtesy of Terry Dewey, found in Parish Register Transcripts located in the Dorset Record Office, reference PE/H1M.RE1/1_3272)
The birth year of 1606 matches our Thomas's life. He would have been 28 when he became a freeman, 32 when he married our ancestor, the widow, Frances Clarke, and 42 when he died.
Hinton Martel, a tiny crossroads village, is only a couple of dozen miles from the coastal town of Sandwich (now called "Swanage"), from which Thomas likely sailed sometime in the early 1630s.
Terry Dewey continued his research, and hired others to help. They found more clues--documentation of Thomas's father, Thomas Dewey Sr., mother Mary Moore, and brother John, plus evidence of Thomas Sr.'s previous wife, Agnes, and her death, along with the deaths of their children, prior to Thomas Sr. marrying Mary Moore.
There were Dewey birth and death records, property leases, religious records, and more evidence of a Dewey cluster in and around Dorset, and in the county to the north, Wiltshire.
Terry found links between the Dewey and Moore families in Dorset, and, later, in Massachusetts, which is consistent with members of both families emigrating to America in tight social groups.
Finally, he found links between both of those families and the family of John Russell. It was the witnessing of Russell's will by Thomas Dewey in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1633 that constitutes the first record of Thomas Dewey in America.
Terry has compiled his research in detail, along with some theories about how Thomas might have travelled to America:
The parish church and graveyard in Hinton Martel (also spelled Hinton Martell). The parish would have stood in this spot during the early 1600s, but this is the latest of several church structures on the site. Inscriptions on most of the headstones in the surrounding graveyard have worn away, but the gravesites are said to include many Deweys.
Here's how Terry pieced it together:
Father: Thomas Dewey, b. tbd, married 12 Oct 1601 to Mary Moore in Hinton Martel, buried 7 January 1636.
Mother: Mary Moore, baptized 30 Oct 1586 at Dorchester Holy Trinity, buried 24 Nov 1637.
Thomas: baptized 20 Dec 1606.
Brother: John, baptized 15 Apr 1609. There are additional records referring to John that show he lived in Dorset, but no marriage or death info.
But no more records of "our" Thomas in Hinton Martel. No record of him dying, or marrying, or fathering children there.
He likely disappeared from England, and made his way to the New World, as our ancestor.