One of the objectives of the Welles Family Association in compiling this genealogy of the Descendants of Governor Thomas Welles has been to investigate conflicting claims about the family, determine the truth insofar as possible, and make these findings widely and easily available to the public. Although Lemuel Aiken Welles went to considerable effort and expense over sixty years ago to determine the English origins of the family, errors about the ancestry of Thomas Welles still persist in later publications and on the application forms of new members. This study has followed the work of reputable genealogists such as Col. Charles Edward Banks, Ernest Flagg, Donald Lines Jacobus, Frederick Lewis Weis, Walter Lee Sheppard, and Brainerd T. Peck in reaching these conclusions.

The largest collection of errors on a single page that the compiler has seen occurs in a handsomely-bound and gilt-edged volume entitled Wells and Allied Families, privately printed for Catherine J. Welles and Frances S. Welles by the American Historical Society in New York in 1927, which is available at the Connecticut State Library. Page 6 states the following, all of which are incorrect:

Thomas Welles was born

1. in London
2. about 1598
3. son of Thomas Welles
4. of an Essex family
5. which resided on the manor of Welles Hall or Rayne Hall.

Thomas Welles came to America

6. as the private secretary of Lord Say & Sele and was in Saybrook
7. and later went up the Connecticut River to Hartford
8. with his company.

Thomas Welles' first wife was

9. called Elizabeth Hunt
10. married to him in 1618
11. is descended from Sir Thomas de Hunt
12. died of being unable to endure the New England climate.

Elizabeth Hunt is entirely fictitious, and these statements do not apply to Alice Tomes.

Phrased another way, what was intended by the above facts may be stated as follows:

Thomas Welles was born

1. in or near Whichford, Warwickshire
2. around 1590

Descendants of Gov. Thomas Welles and Alice Tomes

3. son of Robert Welles
4. of a Warwickshire family for at least four generations
5. a family which owned property but was not listed as gentlemen.

Thomas Welles came to America

6. with his wife and six children in the late summer 1636 and settled first in the Boston area, probably Cambridge
7. and probably came to Hartford with Thomas Hooker's party in June 1636
8. with his wife and six children.

Thomas Welles' first wife was

9. named Alice Tomes
10. married him about 1615
11. was descended from a Gloucestershire family
12. died of unknown causes between 1637 and 1646.

The "facts" in that genealogy by no means exhaust the misinformation around the Welles and Tomes families. Errors are made in six areas about Thomas Welles and Alice Tomes and in the identity of the spouses of their children Ann and John. A discussion of each error and the most current information on the state of knowledge of each topic is given here.

1. Thomas Welles has no known connection to an Essex family of Norman descent or to the family of Sir Lionel de Welles, Baron Welles, Governor of Ireland. He has no known connection to any of the Magna Charta sureties. Thomas Welles' ancestry in Warwickshire for four generations is documented by the court proceedings concerning the Burmington land which he inherited, and from the presence of a Robert Wellys, possibly his grandfather's father, on the tax rolls of Whichford in 1527. Though the family owned property and was able to educate Thomas in Latin, they are not known to be of noble or even gentle birth. In Through the Lich Gate, a history of the neighboring parish of Long Compton by Rev. Edward Rainsberry, the presence of people named Wells/Welles in the villages of that area as far back at the twelfth century is documented. Nor is there any basis in fact for Robert Wellys of Whichford, who was taxed in 1523, being descended in six generations from Simon de Welles, a Crusader in 1191, and Eustace de Vesce, a Magna Charta surety, as has been circulated on papers in the family. Further study of the ancestry of Thomas Welles must begin where Lemuel Welles left off in 1926 in "The English Ancestry of Gov. Thomas Welles of Connecticut, " New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 80 (1926), pp. 279-447.

2. Thomas Welles was not born in 1598 which would make him seventeen at the time of his marriage. The marriage of Thomas Welles and Alice Tomes has been established by the court proceedings to have taken place shortly after he received his land in 5 Jul 1615. Moreover, his wife is shown to have been born before 1593, making his birth in 1598 unlikely. Therefore he could not have been born in 1598, but was more likely born around 1590, the date the family is using for this event pending further investigation.

3. The name of the wife of Thomas Welles is given in the court proceedings as Alice Tomes of Long Marston, then across the county line in Gloucestershire. The origin of the notion that she was named Elizabeth Hunt may come from a misreading of the court records. Welles's sister's father-in-law, Nicholas Hunt, gave testimony.

Errors in Earlier Literature

Perhaps some have interpreted this to mean that he was the brother of Welles' wife, whereas, he is the husband of Thomas Welles's sister, whose name is now lost. A death date of 1640 is given for Thomas' first wife, but no documentation for this has yet been seen. The vital records of early Hartford are now lost. Tradition states that Thomas and Alice had a son Joseph in 1637. If Alice did die around 1640, the death may have been related to a late pregnancy, although this idea is purely speculation. Alice's birth date is now known with greater certainty, as a result of the production of the Pedigree of Tomes in 1987. The Tomes family papers note that Ellen Gunne died circa 1593. This date, though undocumented, places the birth of Alice, her youngest child, about five years earlier than previously assumed, and definitely moves the birthdate of Thomas back from 1598 closer to 1590.

4. Alice Tomes does not have a royal line according to the most recent scholarship on the question. A royal line has been proposed and published in earlier editions of Ancestral Roots of Sixty Colonists. However, further investigation by Daniel Lines Jacobus published in The American Genealogist, vol. 28, pp. 164-167, shows that this line fails in two places. Walter Lee Sheppard re-studied the problem and dropped this connection from the sixth edition of Ancestral Roots of Sixty Colonists (1988) where Line 98, Alice Tomes, is published, but with breaks at both points. Margaret Mytton may not be the daughter of John Mytton of Weston who has not been found to have had a daughter by that name (see Hale House, p. 780). Moreover, examination of early records by Jacqueline Beers in The American Genealogist, vol. 56, p. 228, reveals the strong possibility that Ellen Gunne is not the daughter of Anne Fulwood, but of an earlier, and unknown, wife of Richard Gunne. Although the editor's note to the Beers article is careful not to remove Anne Fulwood absolutely, and Sheppard stops short of this also, the link between Anne Fulwood and Ellen Gunne remains to be strengthened. The newly discovered Tomes pedigree is inconclusive on this issue. Any attempt to establish a royal line for Alice Tomes must address the issues raised by Jacobus, Beers, and Sheppard.

5. Thomas Welles did not come to America as the personal representative of Lord Say and Sele and help establish Saybrook Colony in 1635, then come upriver to Hartford by 1637. Some have claimed that Welles was a secretary to Lord Say and Sele. However, primary evidence for this fact has not been found, although circumstantial evidence would allow for a such a conclusion. Welles did have a good education, as evidenced by books in English and Latin in his estate. He did have dealings with the Fiennes family... James Fiennes and a partner bought his land in Burmington. Welles would have been acquainted with the family as they were the most prominent lords in the area, seated nearby at Broughton Castle. As a neighboring fellow-Puritan, Welles must have been aware of the Warwick Patent and the plans to develop Saybrook Colony and Saltonstall Park in Windsor as places of refuge for Puritan lords in case flight from England was necessary. Some have suggested that Say and Sele developed the story of Welles being his secretary in order to mask Welles' removal for religious reasons as a business venture. In any case, Welles did have close associations with Say and Sele and did have the talents of a secretary. However, he had little, if anything, to do with Saybrook Colony. A review of the known facts and literature with Elaine Staplins and Joyce Heckman of the Saybrook Colony Association affirms the belief that no primary evide nce links this Thomas Welles with Saybrook at any time. He was most unlikely to have been at a fort in 1635-1636 with a family of six children. The one family who resided there, that of Governor George Fenwick, is noted for being the only such family. The scenario that Welles and his family came to Boston, sailed to Saybrook Colony and lived there for awhile, then sailed upriver to Hartford must be rejected. No primary evidence for his ever having been at Saybrook Colony exists, and his whereabouts can be accounted for between Boston, Cambridge, and Hartford for the time period involved.

Descendants of Gov. Thomas Welles and Alice Tomes

His arrival in Boston in before 9 Jun 1636 when his deed was witnessed by Winthrop and Dudley, his listing as a head of household in the Feb 1635/6 Newtown (now Cambridge), MA, town records and his appointment to the General Court in March 1637 indicate that he was part of the group of about 100 people who came to Hartford from Cambridge with Rev. Thomas Hooker in June 1636. This sequence allows only the winter of 1636/7 for residence in Saybrook Fort, not a likely prospect for a young family. Welles association with his former neighbor, Lord Say and Sele, and resulting associations with the Warwick Patentees who operated Saybrook Colony place him in the critical juncture between that group and the governing group of the Connecticut Colony headed by Hooker and Haynes. When Saybrook Colony merged with Connecticut Colony in 1644, Welles was appointed as one of the negotiators, presumably because he was known to and respected by both colonies.

6. Thomas Welles and his family did not come to America on the "Susan and Ellen" in 1635, as stated in Virkus' Compendium of American Genealogy and elsewhere. 'The passenger listings of the "Susan and Ellen" include the passengers ages at embarkation. The Thomas Welles listed on the "Susan and Ellen" is too young and lacks Gov. Thomas Welles' large family which we know sailed together because the court witnesses so testified. This Thomas Welles is probably Thomas of Ipswich, born circa 1598, who is apparently travelling on the "Susan and Ellen" as a servant in the household of Sir Richard Saltonstall. The young age and dependent status rule out Thomas of Ipswich as the Thomas Welles who was a head of household in Cambridge in Feb 1636, leaving that identification to the future governor of Connecticut, who was later associated with other residents of Cambridge, the most prominent of whom was the Rev. Thomas Hooker.

7. The husband of Anne Welles, Thomas Thompson is not the Thomas Thompson, son of John Thompson and Alice Freeman, of royal lineage, born on 23 Dec 1616 in the Little Preston Parish, Preston Capes, Northamptonshire. His place in the Thompson family of Shropshire is proven by the will of his brother, Samuel Thompson citizen and stationer of London, written 25 Aug 1668, proven 9 Nov 1668. In it he mentions his nephew Thomas Thompson, now apprenticed to him whose mother went to New England, and his niece, Beatrice, who was named for her grandmother Beatrice Detton who married and returned to England. (New England Historic and Genealogical Register 49:395/6--Jul 1895). Full references for his ancestry are found in Flagg's Genealogical Notes on the Founding of New England, which is completely accepted by Jacobus in Hale House. The Thomas Thompson of Northampton (son of John Thompson and Alice Freeman) had an entirely different family in New England. The Thompson and Detton families in Burford, Doddington and Neen Savage and can be followed for generations in the parish registers and the Visitations of Shropshire, details of which will be given in Volume II.
8. The wife of John Welles was Elizabeth Bourne, not Elizabeth Curtis; her origins are presently unknown. The designation of Curtis in earlier works comes from a misreading of the term sister-in-law in estate papers. Stiles corrected Goodwin's error in 1904. She is not the daughter of Elisha Bourne and Patience Skiff and therefore the granddaughter of Rev. Richard Bourne of Cape Cod. This Elizabeth Bourne was born circa 1675, not a possibility for the wife of a man who died in 1659. She is said to be related to the Tomlinson family. Further research on the Tomlinson family background in England may yield more clues on her origin. The name Bourne is prevalent in the Warwickshire area.

In this genealogy, other errors have been discovered and corrected as noted in the text. However, these errors cited above on the ancestry, life, and children of Thomas

Welles and Alice Tomes should be noted by all serious students of the family and laid to rest. The correct information has been discovered and made widely available in all cases for decades and is accepted in every case by serious scholars. The definitive articles on the family, summarized by Jacobus in Hale House, are the Welles/Banks study on the Warwickshire origins published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1926, and the articles on the alleged Tomes royal ancestry in New England Historic and Genealogical Register in 1930, and in Weis and Sheppards' Ancestral Roots of Sixty Colonists (sixth Edition). Jacobus also discussed the related families of Thompson, Tuttle, Hollister, Treat, and Chester in Hale House and gives the citations for all those lines in England. The line of the Baldwins does not have a contemporary study done, although the Baldwin genealogy by C.C. Baldwin contains generations of material from Buckinghamshire taken from parish records. The ancestry of Anthony Hawkins is currently unknown. More full discussions of the origins of these families will be undertaken in Volume Il.