| Notes |
- He and his wife were in Leiden by 27 Oct 1609, when a student at the University of Leiden stated that he lived with Thomas Blossom. They attempted to go to the New World in 1620, but they were passengers on the Speedwell, found to be unsafe, and they returned to Leiden. In the winter of 1628/29 (or possibly early in March 1629), they sailed from the Netherlands to England and took passage to New England on the Mayflower, not the original but the second ship of that name, landing at Salem on 15 May 1629. He subsequently became deacon of the church at Plymouth.
A number of letters survive between the Separatists who remained at Leiden after 1620 and their brethren in the Plymouth colony, including one in mid-December 1625, from Thomas Blossom to William Bradford, expressing Blossom's sadness over the death of their pastor John Robinson, which had taken place in Leiden on March 1 of that year. From this and other evidence it seems clear that Thomas Blossom was an educated man. The fact that he and his wife married at Cambridge suggests that he was a student there, although no records of him at Cambridge survive.
He died in Plymouth of the "infectious fever" that swept through the colony in 1633.
He is not proven as a son of Peter and Annabel Blossom of Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire, but John Insley Coddington (citation details below) made a good case for this relationship in 1988:
"The reasons for believing that Thomas Blossom was a son of Peter and Annabel Blossom are the following: (1) Peter Blossom's will, dated 12 June 1597, gave the residue of his estate to his wife Annabel 'towards the bringing up of my children,' implying that he had minor children at the time of his death. (2) Although these minor children were not baptized at Great Shelford or Stapleford, they may have been baptized at Little Shelford, a parish which adjoins the others. (3) Annabel, widow of Peter Blossom, remarried on 6 Feb. 1597/8, Richard Bracher, who later moved to the town of Cambridge and died there. It would have been natural for the younger children to accompany their mother and stepfather to Cambridge. (4) The first [i.e., earliest] record of Thomas Blossom that has so far been found is his marriage at St. Clement's Church, Cambridge, on 10 Nov. 1605. (5) Thomas Blossom was very much a Puritan, yet he gave to one of his sons the name Peter, despite the fact that this name was rarely used by Puritans because it smacked too much of St. Peter and the Papacy. The bestowal of the name would be perfectly natural is Thomas were honoring his own father in naming his son."
An alternate argument, referred to by Robert Charles Anderson as "less likely", was made by Carlton L. Palmer in Mayflower Descendant 39:181, 1989, pointing to the parish records of Wisbech St. Peter in Cambridgeshire, which include the baptism of "Thomas Blossham son of John" on 26 Feb 1567. The will of John Blossham of Wisbech St. Peter, dated 27 Dec 1578, says that "Thomas Blosshame my son at the end of 12 years may have my nowe house, halfe the barne, and the rest of the 18 Akers." As Palmer notes, if this baptismal record refers to the man who came to Plymouth in 1629, he would have been 38 years old when he married Anne Elsdon, more plausible if she was a second or third wife. He also observes that if the John Blossom/Blosham of Wisbech was the John Blosham named in the 1565 will of William Blosham of Great Shelford, then Thomas Blossom would have been a nephew of Peter Blossom of Great Shelford.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Bef 1580 - Bef 1633 (< 53 years)
[3]