Thomas Gray

Bef 1572 - Bef 1607  (< 34 years)

• Name	Thomas Gray
  Birth	Bef 18 Aug 1572  [1, 2, 3]
  Baptism	18 Aug 1572	Harwich, Essex, England   [1, 4, 5]
  Gender	Male
  Alternate birth	of Harwich, Essex, England   [6]
  Death	Bef 7 May 1607  [1, 2]
  Burial	7 May 1607  [7]
  Person ID	I37997	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	14 Sep 2025

  
  

  Father	Richard Gray   d. Between 28 Jun 1602 and 5 Jan 1603
  Mother	Susan
  Family ID	F22869	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Katherine Myles,   b. Bef 17 Mar 1576   d. 29 Nov 1659, Charlestown, Suffolk, Massachusetts (Age > 83 years)
  Marriage	30 Apr 1593	Sutton, Suffolk, England   [1]
  Children	+ 1. Katherine Gray,   b. Bef 30 Jun 1605   d. 21 Feb 1683, Charlestown, Suffolk, Massachusetts (Age > 77 years)
  Family ID	F22328	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	29 Mar 2023

  
  

• Notes

  We are showing that the father of this Thomas Gray was Richard Gray who died in 1602 and was a well-connected sea captain, and whose widow Josian went on to marry Christopher Jones, later the captain of the Mayflower on its 1620-1621 voyage to the New World. This seems at the very least plausible, given that Thomas Gray's widow Katherine Myles went on to marry, as her second husband, Rowland Coytmore, also a sea-captain with strong connections to the burgeoning industry of global colonization. Set against this, we feel obliged to note that our only documentation for Richard Gray as the father of this Thomas Gray is the 1880 article "Gray and Coytmore" by William S. Appleton (citation details below), the opening sentence of which gives us pause: "Long and careful researches have been made by myself, and for me by the late Horatio G. Somerby..." To the best of our knowledge, William S. Appleton was a respectable contributor to 19th-century genealogical periodicals, but Horatio G. Somerby, after his death, was found to have been an industrious and indefatigable genealogical fraudster. An image of the will of Richard Gray who d. 1602 is on the web site of the Essex Record Office (essexarchivesonline.co.uk, reference number D/ABW 17/43), but the publicly-visible thumbnail is not legible, and given our still-imperfect skills with 16th-century handwriting, it seems unlikely that we could reliably read it even if we paid the fee to view the full-sized image. An abstract of Richard Gray's will of 28 Jun 1602 is on page 174 of Eben Putnam's 1894 "Notes on the Ancestry and Connections of 'Rear Admiral' Thomas Graves of Charlestown, Mass." (Essex Institute Historical Collections, volume 31), but the abstract mentions only wife "Josnam", brother John Gray, and father Thomas Gray, which does nothing to establish Thomas Gray who d. 1607 as a son of this Richard Gray. The same page of Putnam's article also contains an abstract of this Thomas Gray's will of 16 Aug 1606, which "mentions wife Katherine to whom land in Sutton; late Robert Miles her father; brother-in-law Thomas Wyseman; son Thomas; daughters Susan, Parnell and Katherine Graye." The presence of a daughter named Susan does, at least, provide some slight onomastic evidence for Thomas as a son of Richard by Richard's first wife Susan, as stated in Appleton's 1880 article.

  
  

• Sources

  [S6863] Elaine C. Nichols, "Myles of Sutton, Suffolk." In "Genealogical Notes." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 138:39, Jan 1984. [S6864] William B. Saxbe, Jr., "Adams, Cary & Quincy: Cousins on the Frontier and in the White House." Mayflower Descendant 71:68, Winter 2023., year only. [S6871] William S. Appleton, "Gray and Coytmore." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 34:253, July 1880., year only. [S6426] John Insley Coddington, "A Royal Descent from King Edward III of England to Thomas1 Coytmore of Charlestown, Mass., Elizabeth Wife of William1 Tyng of Boston, Sarah Wife of Ralph1 Eddowes of Philadelphia Co., Pa., John Quincy Adams, Neville Chamberlain and Other." The American Genealogist 32:9, 1956., place only. [S2280] The Granberry Family and Allied Families, Including the Ancestry of Helen (Woodward) Granberry based on data compiled by and for Edgar Francis Waterman and compiled by Donald Lines Jacobus. Hartford, Connecticut: Edgar F. Waterman, 1945., place only. [S6426] John Insley Coddington, "A Royal Descent from King Edward III of England to Thomas1 Coytmore of Charlestown, Mass., Elizabeth Wife of William1 Tyng of Boston, Sarah Wife of Ralph1 Eddowes of Philadelphia Co., Pa., John Quincy Adams, Neville Chamberlain and Other." The American Genealogist 32:9, 1956. [S142] Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families by Douglas Richardson. Salt Lake City, 2013.