Welcome to installment 239 of Bidwell Lore! This week we begin a two part essay about a home in England named Bidwell Barton, that may have been inhabited by16th century ancestors of Adonijah Bidwell.
In March of this year the Museum was contacted by a woman in England who lives in Newton St. Cyres, a small town in the region of Devon in the southwestern part of the country. She reached out to the Bidwell House because in doing some research on her home, Bidwell Barton, she discovered it had originally been occupied by a man named Richard Bidwell, a possible ancestor to Reverend Adonijah Bidwell. Her research led her to the Museum and she was surprised to see that the houses were similar, though built 200 years apart. In the course of our conversation, she shared some documents related to the history of her property and I hope over two installments of Bidwell Lore to provide you with a bit of early Bidwell history, along with a look at a home once inhabited by English Bidwell’s in the 16th century.
Back in the spring of 2020, when we first began sharing Bidwell Lore, we posted an essay about Adonijah Bidwell’s ancestors and include information about his great-great grandfather John Bidwell, who moved to the colonies with his father Richard (not the same Richard as above) when he was only 10 years old. John Bidwell eventually settled in Hartford and his Bidwell descendants can be found all over the United States. (Click here for more details) According to the Bidwell Family Association, the narrative within the family for many years was that John Bidwell traveled to the colonies with his father Richard on the ship Mary and John, which departed Plymouth, England in March of 1630. However, according to the Bidwell Family Association [1] there is no documented proof that that Richard was John’s father or that they definitely traveled on the Mary and John. The earliest date that Richard and John appeared in colonial records is 1635, so it is possible they arrived in 1630. But until actual documentation is found, the Bidwell Family Association maintains that Richard Bidwell may not be Reverend Bidwell’s ancestor, though we do know that John Bidwell of Hartford was his great-great grandfather.
Plymouth, England is located about 50 miles from Newton St. Cyres, where Bidwell Barton can be found, so it is certainly possible that the Bidwell’s who lived there in the 16th century could have been ancestors to the Richard Bidwell who allegedly crossed the ocean in the 17th century. Almost all of the passengers on the 1630 sea voyage, the third voyage for this ship between England and the colonies, were from the western counties in England including Devon. Captained by Thomas Chubb, the ship carried 140 passengers, most of whom went on the found Dorchester, Massachusetts. The journey from Plymouth to the Massachusetts Bay Colony took just over two months and life was not easy after they arrived. Richard and John, if they were on this ship, presumably spent the next five years in the new settlement of Dorchester before setting out for Connecticut where, after an arduous journey in the fall and winter, they were part of the group who founded the town of Hartford..
Now that the tenuous connections have been explained, in 2 weeks we will step back a little further in time to take a look at Bidwell Barton itself
1. Page 441, The Bidwell Family, Volume 1, The Lineages of the Sons of John Bidwell Early Connecticut Settler, Published in 2011 by the Bidwell Family Association.