HOLMES FAMILY HISTORY
OBADIAH HOLMES
From "Baptist Piety: The Last Will and Testament of Obadiah
Holmes", Edwin S. Gaustad Arno Press 1980.
D. Testimony to his Children
VERY PROBABLY OBADIAH HOLMES' POSTERITY WAS HIS GREATEST LEGACY.
His nine children presented him with some forty-one grandchildren.
If that rate of productivity continued to the end of the colonial
period, Obadiah and Catherine Holmes would have been responsible
by that time for a progeny of more than twenty thousand persons!
It is, of course, impossible to follow more than a couple of lines.
Of the immediate children, four migrated south, either to Gravesend
on Long Island or across Lower New York Bay into New Jersey, forming
there a settlement named Middletown in honor of the Rhode Island
home. Among the twelve original patentees of Monmouth County,
New Jersey were Obadiah Holmes, Jr. and John Bowne, the husband
of Lydia Holmes. Obadiah, Jr. later settled in Cohansey (West
Jersey), which became a major Baptist center; he served as a lay
preacher as well as "at the time of his death in 1723 a judge
of common pleas for Salem County."[*] Jonathan Holmes
also settled in Middletown, where he was elected deputy to the New Jersey assembly
in 1668. A decade later he and
John Bowne served on the Middletown-Shrewsbury court. Bowne, in
fact, later became "a great figure in East Jersey"[1] And it is through
Lydia and John Bowne that the senior Obadiah Holmes stands as
an ancestor of Abraham Lincoln."**"
Mary Holmes, the eldest daughter, married John Browne, son of
Chad Brown, the Baptist minister in Providence, Rhode Island.
From this union emerged the remarkable "Browns of Providence
Plantations," that family so central to the economic, cultural,
and educational life of the colony-state from that day to this.[***] The second daughter, Martha, married a
man named Odlin, a fact known only through the reference to her
in her father's will. The same minimal information is available
for the youngest daughter, Hopestill, who married a Taylor and
died sometime before her father made out last final will in 1681.
Samuel Holmes, who also died before his father did (in 1679),
was, along with his wife, among those migrating to Gravesend.
John Holmes apparently remained in the Rhode Island region, for
he witnessed a land sale by John and Mary Browne in 1669;[2] he was twice married
and the father of nine children. Jonathan Holmes, also the father
of nine children, purchased the family farm (see Section G, below),
returned to Newport and joined his father"s church. He was
not the eldest son, but was probably chosen because he could make
the desired financial settlement. Jonathan in turn left the farm
to his son, Joseph, who expanded the holdings considerably, leaving
an estate valued at nearly £8000 (compared with the estate
of his grandfather, valued at about £130).[3] In Rhode Island, New York, and
New Jersey, and ultimately in the nation that Obadiah Holmes never
knew, his children"and their children's children "came
to constitute an imposing monument.
In colonial New England, among Puritans and Baptists alike, a
parent was expected to offer counsel and wisdom to his children
before his death. Richard Mather, for example, wrote of his "be
loved sons" near the end of his life:
. . . I think it not amiss, for the furtherance
of their spiritual good, to lay
upon them this serious and solemn charge of a dying Father, that
none
of them presume, after my decease, to walk in any other way of
sin or
wickedness, in one kind or in another, or in a careless neglect
of God or
of the things of God and of their own salvation by Christ....[4]
Roger Clap began his memoirs in this fashion: "I thought
good, my dear children, to leave with you some account of God's
remarkable providences to me.... The Scripture requires us to
tell God's wondrous works to our children that they may tell them
to their children, that God may have glory throughout all ages."[5] And it was far
better for a father to speak the words too early "in Holmes"
case, seven years before his death"than to wait until it
was too late. John Barnard's father delayed too long, and his
son noted in his diary: "He spake but a few words which is
a very great aggravation of my sorrow; had it pleased God to have
given him the use of his tongue, he might have spoken something
that might have had a great and lasting impression upon my heart...."[6]
Obadiah Holmes thus followed a respected and pervasive tradition
as he faithfully discharged this serious paternal duty. In writing
to his children, some of whom were "in Christ" and some
of whom (judging from external appearances) were not, Holmes reminds
them of the biblical models for whom they are named. Biblical
names were bestowed not just because they were familiar or conveniently
"at hand," but because they held forth a standard anda
goal by which one's growth in "wisdom and in stature"
might be measured. The family enjoyed a closeness which Holmes
hoped would not be shattered by his death; he enjoined that their
love, one to another," continue and increase...visit one
another...take counsel one of another...advise...reprove...and
take it well."
As was the case in the Puritan tradition generally, Holmes does
not counsel a withdrawal from the world or a monastic sort of
asceticism. What God has given, enjoy--and "be you content
with your present condition." Meat is good, gluttony is not;
drink is good, drunkenness is not; living in and with the world
is good, yet attachment to and reliance upon the world is a costly
and eternally damning sin. But the pervading mood of Holmes' letter
to his children is that it is now up to them--and to God. "Although
my care and counsel has been extended to you," now it is
beyond my ken and control. Let your life be "squared"
with the Scriptures; and be prepared, as courageous sons and daughters,
to part with all else "for truth's sake."
*John
E. Pomfret, The Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702 (Princeton,
1962), pp. 42-44; Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey, 1609-1702
(Princeton, 1956), p. 274; Norman H. Maring, Baptists in New Jersey
(Valley Forge, Pa.,1964), pp.14f.,23,38, 41,74.
The following listing is drawn
largely"though not exclusively
" from J. O. Austin, Geneological Dictionary, pp. 103-104.
(John?, "infant of Obadiah Hulmes of Redish" buried
at Stockport June 27, 1633)
1. Mary (?-1690+); married John Browne; 7 children
2. Martha (1640-1682+); married ____ Odlin
3. Samuel (1642-1679); married Alice Stillwell; 6 children
4. Obadiah (1644-1723); married ____Cole; 5 children
5. Lydia (?-1682 +); married John Bowne; 5 children
6. Jonathan (?-1713); married Sarah Borden; 9 children
7. John (1649-1712);married, Frances Holden; M. Greene; 9 children
8. Hopestill (?-between 1675 and 1681), married Taylor
9. Joseph (?- 1682 + ); mentioned in will; no other record
**The discovery of the direct line from Holmes to Abraham Lincoln
was made by Wilbur Nelson, who published a small booklet on the
subject: Obadiah Holmes,Ancestor and Prototype of Abraham Lincoln
(Newport, 1932). The chart below is found on page 156.
Obadiah Holmes
Catherine Hyde
|
Samuel Lincoln Lydia Holmes
Martha John Bowne
|I|
Mordecai Lincoln Sarah Bowne
Sarah Jones Richard Salter
| |
Mordecai Lincoln & Hannah Salter
|
John Lincoln
Rebecca Morris
|
Abraham Lincoln
Bathsheba Herring
|
Thomas Lincoln
Nancy Hanks
|
Abraham Lincoln
***James B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantations: Colonial
Years (Cambridge, Mass.,1952). A portion of the chart found on
p.21 is given below:
John Browne (b.1630) - Mary Holmes
|
James Browne (b 1666)-Mary E Harris
|
Obadiah (b.1712) James (b 1698)-Hope Bowen Elisha(b. 1717)
|
James (b. 1724) Nicholas (b. 1729) Joseph (b. 1733)
John (b. 1736) Moses (b. 1738)
By the end of the nineteenth century,
at least one dozen "Obadiah
Brown's" occur in this lineage; see [A. I. Bulkley], Chad
Browne Memorial . . . I638-1888 (Brooklyn, 1888).
From "The Lincoln Kinsman",
Nbr 23 published by
Lincolniana Publishers, F.t Wayne, IN:
The article starts with information on Richard Saltar and continues
to the Bowne family and then to John Bowne's wife's family, the
Holmeses.
Not only were the Bownes important in colonial political history
but Captain bowne married into a family equally influential in
the field of religion. Captain Bowne's wife was Lydia Holmes,
youngest daughter of the Reverend Obadiah and Katherine Hyde Holmes.
Reverend Obadiah Holmes, the pioneer, landed at Salem Massachusetts,
about four years after Captian Bowne, so...can be traced back
to Salem, where Samuel Lincoln landed in 1637.
Obadiah was born at Preston, Lancaster, England in 1606, the son
of Robert Holmes (spelled Hulme). Upon arriving in America in
1639 he worked at glass making in Salem for seven years....
Obadiah Holmes united with the baptists shortly after 1646 and,
because of the persecutions he was obliged to undergo, moved to
Newport in 1650. The following summer he was arrested for preaching
doctrines contrary to the belief of the established church. He
was taken to Boston and imprisoned for several weeks. Finally
he was taken to the whipping-post on Boston Common and given thirty
strokes with a three-corded whip which left him for weeks in a
frightful physical condition. As soon as he was able he returned
to the pastorate at the First Baptist Church at Newport. He preached
here about thirty years, serving until the time of his death of
October 15, 1682. He was buried at Middletown, five miles from
Newport.
Several of the eight children migrated to New Jersey, among them
his son Obadiah and his youngest daughter,Lydia Holmes Bowne,
the wife of Captain John Bowne....
The holems were among the first land purchasers in New Jersey,
Obadiah and Jonathon Holmes acquiring land as early as 1668. In
1675 a list, containing the names of those with Rights of Land
due according to the concessions, contained the name of "Obadiah
Holmes for self and wife 240 acres."
The Holmes family took a vital interst in political activities
of New Jersey, and whena provincial Congress was called to take
action on "tyrannical acts" of Great Britain in 1774,
two of the delegates from Monmouth County were members of the
Holmes family."
This articles gives the foollowing information on Obadiah and
Katherine Hyde Holmes and their eight children:
Obadiah 1607-1682 m. Katherine Hyde:
Mary (1639-1690) m. John Brown
Martha (1640-1682)
Samuel (1642-1679) m. Alice Stilwell
Obadiah (1644-1723) m. Hannah Cole
John (1649-1712) m. 1) Frances Holden (2) Mary (Sayles) Green
Jonathon ( -1713) m. Sarah Borden
Hopestill (no dates) m. _______ Taylor
Lydia (1669-1714) m. Captain John Bowne
1Pomfret, East New
Jersey, pp.44, 56, 96
2 Early Records of
the Town of Providence, 21 vols. (Providence: 1892-1915), I, 17.
3 Newport Historical
Society, Vault A, Box 50, Folder 9. Jonathan Holmes received one
of the largest land grants in Monmouth County-761 acres. He also
served as captain of the Middletown (N.J.) militia in 1673. See
Edwin P. Tanner, The Province of New Jersey, 1664-1738 (New York,
reprint 1967); and Documents Relative to the Colonial History
of New York (Albany, 1858), II, 608.
4
Quoted in Gordon
E. Geddes, "Welcome Joy! Death in Puritan New England,1630-
1730" (Ph. D. diss., University of California Riverside,1976),
p.136.
5 Ibid., pp. 135-136.
6 Ibid., p. 135.
A great link to a Bowne family descendant: http://www.ptsi.net/user/umschab/des/de2G3711.htm
Click here for another Holmes line
Interesting Oxford
University Information
