Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

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back upon fair possessions in the old country", and selling "about ^8000.
worth of estate in England," as Trumbull the historian of Connecticut
says, with wife and three sons, sought a new home, for conscience sake,
as one of the Dorchester Company, in the infant colony of Massa-
chusetts. He was a member of the first General Court of that colony.
When the Dorchester people had begun to move to the valley of the
Connecticut, he too, as one of " the principal gentlemen " (to use the
words of the historian Trumbull) interested in this new enterprise of colo-
nization, wandered through the wilderness; and in 1636 was settled at
Windsor, on the Connecticut River. In 1637 he was a member of the
Lower House of Assembly; "in 1640 his name stands first in the Hst of
inhabitants in Windsor. In 1643 he was elected a member of the House
of -Magistrates . . . and was annually re-elected during life. ' He was
probably, after the pastor, the most distinguished man in Windsor.' " He
died in 1655. By the death of his brother Christopher in 1639 he had
inherited Galdon Manor ;
and in his own Will he bequeathed all his land
in England to his eldest surviving son Henry.' But his whole estate, at
his death, exclusive of English property, amounted only to ^764. 8. 10.
—showing how much he had sacrificed for his principles.
Henry Wolcott married, January 19, 1606, Elizabeth daughter of
Thomas Saunders of Lydiard St. Lawrence, co. Somerset, and had children
by her as follows :
JO I. John,'^ baptized October i, 1607; who "was living in England in
1 63 1, and apparently never emigrated." He had died, without issue,
before 1655.
' Beside his lands in Tolland he had an estate in Wellington, in the same countj'. Prof. F. B.
Dexter has recently pointed out that both these Somersetshire villages arc commemorated in the town-
names of Tolland and Willington (originally Wellington) in Connecticut, of which Gov. Roger Wolcott
was the chief patentee. See Proceedings of the Am. Antiq. Society. . . . April 29, 1885. Wor-
cester, 1885, p. 432.
A fac-simile of the royal licence by which Christopher Wolcott held Galdon Manor—issued under
the chancellorship of Lord Bacon, and having the Great Seal of England appended to it—is one of the
many valuable and beautiful illustrations by which the Memorial we draw from is enriched.
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