Joseph Fuller

Notes:

"In 1740 he removed to Kent, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was one of the founders of the church at Kent, April 29, 1741; his wife joined by letter May 10, 1741. He was a deacon in the church, and next to the minister the foremost man of the town. He owned extensive tracts of land at Kent." [Homer W. Brainard, citation details below]

The inscription on his grave at North Kent reads:

In Memory of Deacon
Joseph Fuller who
died July ye 19th 1775
aged 75.

Joseph married Lydia Day on 22 Dec 1722 in Colchester, New London, Connecticut. Lydia (daughter of John Day and Grace Spencer) was born on 11 Apr 1698 in Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut; died on 2 Nov 1763 in Kent, Litchfield, Connecticut; was buried in North Kent, Litchfield, Connecticut. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Mindwell Fuller was born about 1730 in Colchester, New London, Connecticut; died on 24 Oct 1780 in Kent, Litchfield, Connecticut.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 1656

Notes:

John Fuller and Mehitable Rowley were 3X-great grandparents of LDS founder Joseph Smith, and great-great grandparents of Smith's close associate Oliver Cowdery (1806-1850).

They were also first cousins once removed, being both descendants of Mayflower passenger Edward Fuller and his unknown wife.

John Fuller (~1655-1726) = Mehitable Rowley (1661-1732)
Shubael Fuller (1684-1748) = Hannah Crocker (1688-1751)
Lydia Fuller (1709-1778) = Daniel Gates (1706-1776)
Lydia Gates (1732-1817) = Solomon Mack (1732-1820)
Lucy Mack (1775-1856) = Joseph Smith (1771-1840)
Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844)

Making TNH a fourth cousin 5 times removed to Joseph Smith, Jr.

John Fuller (~1655-1726) = Mehitable Rowley (1661-1732)
John Fuller (1697-1769) = Mary Cornwall (1694-1758)
William Fuller (1729-~1769) = Rebecca Spencer (~1736-~1768)
Rebecca Fuller (1768-1809) = William Cowdery (1765-1847)
Oliver Cowdery (1806-1850)

Making TNH a third cousin 6 times removed to Oliver Cowdery.

John married Mehitable Rowley about 1678 in Barnstable, Barnstable, Massachusetts. Mehitable (daughter of Moses Rowley, Sr. and Elizabeth Fuller) was born on 11 Jan 1661 in Barnstable, Barnstable, Massachusetts; died about 1732 in East Haddam, Middlesex, Connecticut. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 11 Jan 1660, Barnstable, Barnstable, Massachusetts

Notes:

Emigrated 1620 to Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Mayflower.

"He grew up under the care of his uncle, Dr. Samuel Fuller. From Plymouth he removed to Scituate, where he married, and in 1644 he removed again, this time to Barnstable and settled at Scorton Neck, where he was joined in a few years by his relative Matthew. He was a church member at all three places, eminently pious and retired in his habits. He was not much in public affairs, living in a secluded spot where few had occasion to pass. He was one of the latest survivors of the Mayflower passengers." [Homer W. Brainard, citation details below]

Samuel married Jane Lathrop on 8 Apr 1635 in Scituate, Plymouth, Massachusetts. Jane (daughter of Rev. John Lothropp and Hannah Howse) was born before 29 Sep 1614 in Egerton, Kent, England; was christened on 29 Sep 1614 in Egerton, Kent, England; died before 31 Oct 1683 in Barnstable, Barnstable, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

According to Homer W. Brainard (citation details below), the wedding took place "at Mr. Cudworth's in Scituate", and was officiated by Miles Standish.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1630, England
• Alternate birth: Abt 1632

Notes:

Ancestors of air-conditioning pioneer Willis Haviland Carrier (1876-1950).

Moses married Elizabeth Fuller on 22 Apr 1652 in Barnstable, Barnstable, Massachusetts. Elizabeth (daughter of Dr. Matthew Fuller and Frances Hunsden) died after 7 Mar 1715 in Colchester, New London, Connecticut. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 1713

Notes:

Emigrated 1620 to Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Mayflower. A signer of the Mayflower Compact, he died in the first winter.

In 2020 Don Blauvelt (citation details below) published evidence that, contrary to many authorities, including the eminent Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Edward Fuller and his (name unknown) wife were never among the separatists living at Leiden from 1611 to 1620, and that the documentary evidence that had previously been taken to point to Edward Fuller of Redenhall actually referred to an Eduwaert Fauwler of the Hague, spelled in English Edward Fowler, who in 1612 owed Leiden stonemason Pieter Biijs (i.e. Buys) for stone that Biijs had delivered to Fauwler. Edward Fowler also appears in records of the Hague in 1613 and 1622, and his signature on the 1622 record is identical to that on the record of 1613.

It has been noted that the evidence that Edward Fuller and his brother Samuel were actually the Edward and Samuel Fuller baptized in Redenhall is, as Robert Charles Anderson put it, "not so strong as might be desired." For more on this see our entry on Robert Fuller, butcher of Redenhall.

Edward Fuller (1575-1621) =
Samuel Fuller (~1608-1683) = Jane Lathrop (1614-~1683)
John Fuller (~1655-1726) = Mehitable Rowley (1661-1732)
Shubael Fuller (1684-1748) = Hannah Crocker (1688-1751)
Lydia Fuller (1709-1778) = Daniel Gates (1706-1776)
Lydia Gates (1732-1817) = Solomon Mack (1732-1820)
Lucy Mack (1775-1856) = Joseph Smith (1771-1840)
Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844)

Edward married (Unknown wife of Edward Fuller) before 1605. (Unknown died after 11 Jan 1621 in Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Emigrated 1620 to Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Mayflower. Died in the first winter. Savage calls her Ann, but there appears to be no actual evidence of her given name.

Notes:

Arrived 18 Sep 1634 on the Griffin; among his fellow passengers were the Rev. Zachariah Symmes; William Hutchinson and his wife, the future religious rebel Anne Marbury Hutchinson; their ten children; William's aged mother Susanna; William's brother Samuel; and William's sister Mary, wife of the Rev. John Wheelwright. First at Scituate, then to Barnstable 1639.

From Wikipedia:

"Rev. John Lothropp (1584-1653) -- sometimes spelled Lothrop or Lathrop -- was an English Anglican clergyman, who became a Congregationalist minister and emigrant to New England. He was the founder of Barnstable, Massachusetts.[*] Perhaps Lothropp's principal claim to fame is that he was a strong proponent of the idea of the Separation of Church and State (also called 'Freedom of Religion'), keeping the government out of religion and religion out of the government. This idea was considered heretical in England during his time, but eventually became the mainstream view of people in the United States of America, because of the efforts of John Lothropp and others. Lothropp left an indelible mark on the culture of New England, and through that, upon the rest of the country. He has had many notable descendents, including at least 6 US presidents, as well as many other prominent Governors, and government and business people."

[* He was a founder of Barnstable, perhaps; certainly a prominent early citizen. Wikipedia's article about Barnstable says that "the founder" was the Rev. Joseph Hull (1595-1665), also an ancestor of Teresa's. --PNH]

From soc.genealogy.medieval:

From: "John Steele Gordon"
Subject: Re: Hannah Howse (b. 1594)
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 21:49:23 GMT

The Rev. John Lothrop and Hannah House are the 5th great grandparents of President Ulysses S. Grant, 8th great grandparents of President Franklin Roosevelt, the 10th great grandparents of President George Bush and the 11th great grandparents of President George W. Bush. In addition, the Rev. Lothrop and his wife, who had a total of nine children, have a vast progeny, including several hundred thousand, at the least, alive today. Among the more famous of their descendants are John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.; George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon, Viceroy of India; John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Pres. Ronald Reagan; Sir Robert Borden, Prime Minister of Canada; Sarah Caldwell, the conductor; Brooke Shields, the actress; Georgia O'Keefe, the artist; William Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning; Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet; Alfred Fuller, founder of the Fuller Brush Company; Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States; Hart Crane, the author; Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape designer; Charles Post, founder of Post Cereals; Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York; George Kennon, the diplomat; Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield; Henry Wallace, Vice President of the United States; Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet, and his son, the Supreme Court Justice; Louis Auchincloss, the author; Robert Bacon, United States Secretary of State; Sir Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak; Kingman Brewster, President of Yale; Louis Comfort Tiffany, the glassmaker; and George Gilder, the economist.

John Lothropp (1584-1653) = Hannah Howse (1594-1634)
Thomas Lathrop (1613-1707) = Sarah Learned (~1607->1649)
Mary Lathrop (1640->1735) = William French (~1604-1681)
Hannah French (b. 1676) = John Child (1669-~1745)
Hannah Child (b. ~1701) = John Fay (1700-1732)
Jonathan Fay (1724-1800) = Joanna Phillips (1729-1788)
Jonathan Fay (1754-1811) = Lucy Prescott (1757-1792)
Samuel Prescott Phillips Fay (1778-1856) = Harriet Howard (1782-1847)
Samuel Howard Fay (1804-1847) = Susan Montfort Shellman (1808-1887)
Harriet Eleanor Fay (1829-1924) = James Smith Bush (1825-1889)
Samuel Prescott Bush (1883-1894) = Flora Sheldon (1872-1920)
Sen. Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895-1972) = Dorothy Wear Walker (1901-1992)
George Herbert Walker Bush (1924-2018) = Barbara Pierce (1925-2018)
George Walker Bush (1946- )

John married Hannah Howse on 16 Oct 1610 in Eastwell, Kent, England. Hannah (daughter of Rev. John Howse and Alice) was born before 5 May 1594 in Egerton, Kent, England; was christened on 5 May 1594 in Egerton, Kent, England; died about 1633 in London, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Bef 24 Apr 1634, England

Notes:

Hannah Howse may have been a daughter of an unknown first wife of her father, the Rev. John Howse.

From GEN-MEDIEVAL-L (soc.genealogy.medieval):

From: "John Steele Gordon"
Subject: Re: Hannah Howse (b. 1594)
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 21:49:23 GMT

The Rev. John Lothrop and Hannah House are the 5th great grandparents of President Ulysses S. Grant, 8th great grandparents of President Franklin Roosevelt, the 10th great grandparents of President George Bush and the 11th great grandparents of President George W. Bush. In addition, the Rev. Lothrop and his wife, who had a total of nine children, have a vast progeny, including several hundred thousand, at the least, alive today. Among the more famous of their descendants are John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.; George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon, Viceroy of India; John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Pres. Ronald Reagan; Sir Robert Borden, Prime Minister of Canada; Sarah Caldwell, the conductor; Brooke Shields, the actress; Georgia O'Keefe, the artist; William Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning; Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet; Alfred Fuller, founder of the Fuller Brush Company; Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States; Hart Crane, the author; Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape designer; Charles Post, founder of Post Cereals; Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York; George Kennon, the diplomat; Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield; Henry Wallace, Vice President of the United States; Oliver Wendall Holmes, the poet, and his son, the Supreme Court Justice; Louis Auchincloss, the author; Robert Bacon, United States Secretary of State; Sir Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak; Kingman Brewster, President of Yale; Louis Comfort Tiffany, the glassmaker; and George Gilder, the economist.

Notes:

Emigrated 1632; first at Scituate, then Barnstable 1640. Deputy for Barnstable to the Plymouth General Court, 29 Aug 1643.

Henry married (Unknown) Palmer before 1630. (Unknown) (daughter of William Palmer and Frances) was born about 1610. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"[P]robably daughter of William Palmer of Plymouth." [The Pilgrim Migration]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Bef 1610, England

Notes:

Arrived in Plymouth before 26 Oct 1640, when he sold to Andrew Ringe land in Plymouth "lately bought of John Gregory." Removed to Barnstable at an unknown date, but he was lieutenant of the Barnstable militia in October 1652.

"He was one of the first regular physicians to settle at Barnstable. He lived in the northwest corner of Barnstable at Scorton Neck, and owned land in Falmouth and Middleboro which had been granted to him by the Colony for distinguished service. He died a wealthy man, for the times." [MacGunnigle et al., citation details below.]

"In the Quaker controversy, he was in favor of religious toleration; in 1658 he was presented for saying; 'The law enacted about ministers' maintenance was a wicked and devilish law, and that the devil sat at the stone when it was enacted'; which he admitted that he uttered, and for which he was fined 50 shillings." [Ancestors and Descendants of Andrew Lee and Clarinda Knapp Allen by Gerald R. Fuller. Esther Fuller Dial, ed. The Andrew Lee Allen Family Organization, 1952.]

There have been many doubts over the years that Matthew Fuller was a son of Mayflower passenger Edward Fuller. Following research by Francis H. Fuller published in 1901-02 in the NEHGR, the emigrant Matthew was generally agreed to have been the Matthew Fuller baptised 16 Oct 1603 to John and Margaret Fuller at Redenhall, Norfolk, this John Fuller presumed (without positive evidence) to have been a younger brother to the brothers Edward Fuller baptized 4 Sep 1575 at Redenhall and Samuel Fuller baptized in 1580 at the same place, both of them sons of Robert Fuller of Redenhall, a butcher, and both of whom are widely accepted (on not entirely convincing evidence; see our entry for Robert Fuller the butcher) to be the same individuals as the brothers Edward and Samuel Fuller who travelled in 1620 on the Mayflower. For the next 83 years, Matthew Fuller was dropped from lists of Mayflower descendants, and descent from him was no longer accepted as qualification for membership in various lineage societies.

Then in 1985, Bruce Campbell MacGunnigle and Robert S. Wakefield published a paper co-authored with the late Robert M. Sherman, "Was Matthew Fuller of Plymouth Colony a Son of Pilgrim Edward Fuller?", in The American Genealogist [61:194]. They highlighted two early records linking Dr. Matthew to Edward. The first record shows that in 1652, Matthew and Edward's proven son Samuel jointly purchased land in Barnstable from Thomas Allyn. The second record shows that on 3 Jun 1662, Samuel² Fuller and "Lt. Fuller" (i.e., Dr. Matthew Fuller, who was approved as lieutenant in 1652) both received a share of a grant made to 33 Plymouth Colony men "as being the first borne children of this government." This was in keeping with a 1636 law, still in effect in 1662, that stated "It is enacted by the Court that such children as are heer borne and next unto them such as are heer brought up under their parents, and are come to the age of descretion allowed and want [i.e., lack] lands for their accommodations, bee provided for in place convenient before any that either come from England or elsewhere".

MacGunnigle et al. continue:

"It is apparent that the children of those who came to Plymouth before 1627 qualified for this grant, yet William Pontus, who seems to have come from Leiden, Holland, in 1629 or 1630, and Samuel Eddy, who came in 1630, apparently from England, also received shares. Two entries give some clue as to who did not qualify: 'Anthony Anible, for his daughter, Hannah Burman' and 'William Nelson, by right of his wife'. Thomas Burman (or Boardman) was from London and was in Plymouth by 1635; William Nelson was in Plymouth by 1636. Yet both had to receive shares by their wives' rights. William Hoskins who was in Plymouth by 1634 (he married first Sarah Cushman) and George Partrich who was in Plymouth by 1635 (he married Sarah Tracy) also received shares, which might be because of their marriages, or perhaps they were in Plymouth earlier than their first appearance in the records. Why would Matthew Fuller, who apparently came to Plymouth about 1640, probably from England, be included in this grant? The only apparent reason would be that he was a son of Edward Fuller."

A final piece of evidence concerns the settlement of a property dispute between, on the one hand, our Matthew Fuller and Samuel² Fuller — yes, them again — and Steven Skiff and John Blacke, alias Blackwell, of Sandwich. MacGunnigle et al.: "On 30 June 1680 'Samuel Fuller, Senir of Barnstable [son of Edward]' quitclaimed to 'Steuen Skiffe of Sandwich...and the towne of Sandwich' his rights to certain lands at Scorton in Sandwich, over which there had been 'much contest heertofore,' with Skiff agreeing that Fuller have certain rights in land at Scorton. Following this agreement is the statement by John Fuller (son of Dr. Matthew Fuller) that he 'doth aquiessey in this agreement of his vnkells and Steuen Skiffes….' and that he had received 'full satisfaction respecting the lands… [of] the Fullers and Sandwich mens.' The clear implication of this statement is that John was the nephew of Samuel, son of Edward; hence that Dr. Matthew is Samuel's brother, and so also Edward's son."

This last seems to us like powerful evidence. It is true that many terms of genealogical relationship were used in the 17th century in slippery and variable ways, leading later researchers to tear their hair trying to parse exactly what was meant by "kinsman" or "cozzin". But John Fuller, son of Matthew, is here clearly calling Samuel² Fuller, son of Mayflower passenger Edward¹ Fuller, his "vnkell". There does not seem to be a lot of room for ambiguity here.

Robert Charles Anderson certainly seems to accept it in the Fuller chapters of The Great Migration Begins and The Pilgrim Migration. On the other hand, recently Don Blauvelt, in the course of what appears to be a carefully-researched article ("Edward Fuller of the Mayflower and His Unnamed Wife: Corrections and Observations," The Mayflower Quarterly Magazine vol. 86, no. 1, p. 32) correcting a number of persistent errors about Edward Fuller, is dismissive, describing the 1985 article by MacGunnigle et. al. as "purporting" to prove that Matthew was a son of Edward. Blauvelt does not offer any argument against theirs; his purpose in this portion of his article is to show that the Mayflower passenger never lived in Leiden (a case he argues very convincingly) and that, to the contrary, in the second decade of the 1600s he probably lived in England, in supporting evidence of which he quotes a large portion of the 1614 will of Robert Fuller the Redenhall butcher, which Blauvelt complains that MacGunnigle et al. summarized imperfectly.

Like MacGunnigle et. al, Blauvelt makes well-researched and hard-to-refute claims backed with strong primary documentation. Aside from his aforementioned original work on the question of whether Edward Fuller ever lived in Leiden, Blauvelt also presents a strong case for how James Savage, in his 1860-64 Genealogical Dictionary of New England, managed to accidently assign the known name of Edward Tilley's wife, Ann, to the wife of Edward Fuller, leading to decades of copycat errors. But Blauvelt is clearly committed to the idea that the Mayflower Fuller brothers were sons of the Redenhall butcher; indeed, he has gone to the trouble of obtaining, with the permission of modern Redenhall parish authorities, his own copy of the microfilmed parish records, records which have yet to be filmed by the LDS. Using this he has been able to show that the date given for over a century for the Redenhall baptism of Samuel Fuller, son of Robert, 20 Jan 1580/1, is wrong, and that the records actually say 20 Feb 1580/1. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Blauvelt is anything but correct on this point, but it speaks not at all to the question of whether Samuel (and Edward) of Redenhall were in fact the Mayflower brothers. And this level of investment in the Redenhall model of their origins can, one supposes, account for Blauvelt's irritability over MacGunnigle et. al's 1985 article, which, in passing on its way to its primary argument, was the first modern piece to point out the weakness of the overall case for that model.

Update, 2 Oct 2022:

It would appear that Blauvelt, along with all the other genealogists who doubted that Dr. Matthew Fuller was a son of the Mayflower passenger Edward Fuller, was correct. The lead article in the Summer 2022 issue of Mayflower Descendant (Pamela Paschke and Raymond T. Wing, "The Fuller Family of Redenhall, Norfolk, England: Initial Report on the Fuller Big Y DNA Project", MD 70:101) summarizes and explains the results of DNA tests done on documented direct-male-line descendants of Dr. Matthew Fuller; of Samuel² Fuller, the proven son of Edward Fuller the Mayflower passenger; of Robert Fuller of Salem and Rehoboth, who arrived in 1638 or 1639 and died in 1706; of John Fuller, likely son of Samuel², and of Dr. Samuel¹ Fuller, brother of Edward and also a Mayflower passenger himself. To quote the article directly, "The NGSY-DNA results demonstrate that Matthew cannot be Edward's son or descendant, and, that the immigrant Robert Fuller is more closely related to Matthew than Matthew is to Edward. In sum, all three men are kinsmen, but no father-son relationship occurs among them."

In the same issue of Mayflower Descendant, Blauvelt himself contributes an article, "Matthew Fuller of Barnstable in the Plymouth Colony: Was He a Mayflower Descendant?" (citation details below). In it he proposes a resolution to the twin facts that (1) John Fuller, son of Dr. Matthew, called Samuel² Fuller, son of Mayflower passenger Edward¹ Fuller, his "vnkell", and yet (2) DNA results strongly indicate that Dr. Matthew cannot have been a son of Mayflower passenger Edward. The proposition, for which Blauvelt says he will provide further proof in an article to come, is that Dr. Matthew Fuller was a son of the unknown wife of Mayflower passenger Edward¹ Fuller and thus a stepson of Edward¹. This would make Dr. Matthew Fuller and Samuel² Fuller maternal step-brothers and make Samuel² Fuller indeed "vnkell", specifically a half-uncle, to Dr. Matthew Fuller's son John. In anticipation of further proof to this effect, we have revised our database to reflect this model while keeping in mind that it is, so far, a provisional solution. Obviously, if true, it would mean that the descendants of Dr. Matthew Fuller could continue to claim Mayflower ancestry, a desiderata of vast worth to some.

Matthew married Frances Hunsden on 22 Jul 1633 in St. Magdalene, Pulham Market, Norfolk, England. Frances died after 30 Oct 1678 in Barnstable, Barnstable, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 26 Oct 1678

Notes:

Donald G. Blauvelt (citation details below) notes that the parish of Pulham Market, where this marriage took place, is a mere three parishes distant from Redenhall, thus implicitly lending support to the Redenhall model of the origins of the Edward¹ and Samuel¹ Fuller.