REFN: 7847
RICHARD SEARS: The Ancestry of Thomas Brainerd by Dwight Brainerd
Richard Sears born in England, about 1612; died at Yarmouth, MA, buried
26 Aug 1676; married Dorothy Jones. A strange pedigree, in part at least
concote d by that able genealogist but (alas!) occasional fabricator of
illustrious p edigrees, the late Horatio G Somerby, was given circulation
in 1857 when Rev. E H Sears included it in all innocence in Pictures of
the Olden Time. This p edigree was gently but effectively castigated by
Samuel Pearce May in 1886 in an article, "Some Doubts concerning the
Sears Pedigree" published in The new England Historical and Genealogical
Register (Vol 40, pp.261-268) Four years later, Mr May brought out an
authoritative genealogy of the Sears family. He was taxed at Plymouth, 25
Mar 1633, but seems to have moved soon to Marblehe ad, then part of Salem,
MA, where his brother-in-law, Rev Anthony Thacher, se ttled in 1635. Early
in 1639 he was among those who accompanied Thacher in th e settlement of
Yarmouth. Freeman, 1652; Constable, 1660; Deputy to the Plymo uth General
COurt, 1662. His will makes his "brother Thacher" a trustee of hi s
estate, and Thacher's son John calls Richard Sears "uncle." These terms
l ed formerly to an assumption that his wife Dorothy was a Thacher, but
that ha s been disproved, and it is now accepted that she was a sister of
Thacher's s econd wife, Elizabeth Jones. Their brother, Richard Jones of
Dorchester, MA, died intestate, and his widow in the inventory referred
to her brother Thatch er, and also made Anthony Thacher of Yarmouth a
trustee of the estate. Samuel Jones, son of Richard, in his will in 1661,
made bequests to his six cousins in Yarmouth. Thacher had three children
by his second (Jones) wife, and Rich ard Sears
had three children, and that accounts for the six. (Savage, Genealog ical
Dictionary (1862), Vol 4, p.46, was misled by the pedigree and "family
tradition" to the extent of giving Richard a mythical son, Knyvett.) Also
Ne w York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol 42, pp.77-79.
!CHILDREN-DEATH -BIOGRAPHY: GENEALOGICAL AND FAMILY HISTORY of SOUTHERN
NEW YORK and the HUDS ON RIVER VALLEY, Vol
II;1640-1913; Lewis Historical Publishing Co, 1913; pp 50 7-510; Brewster,
NY Public Library; The several attempts of genealogists to t race the
pre-American ancestry of the Sears immigrant have met with many
di scouraging obstacles and few satisfactory results; while it seems to be
prett y well established that the family is one of great antiquity there
has always existed a doubt regarding its origin, and there are those who
are disposed t o place it among the old Holland families and bring forth
Dutch intermarriage s in support of their reasoning. In these annals no
attempt is made to invest igate the subject of the origin of the family of
the Sears immigrant, for it is not known when or where he was born, and
nothing of his parentage, althoug h there are various traditions and vague
conclusions regarding his forbears. The
family in America is fully strong enough in every material respect to
st and forever without the warrant of distinguished pre-American lineage.
But in regard to the apparent lack of earlier data the Sears family is
only one in the long list of our best colonial families whose history
back of the immigra nt is unkown, and the absence of definite knowledge of
his ancestors is not t o be taken as evidence of doubtful or obscure
origin, for the simple truth is that it has been found impossible to
trace his lineage in the mother country . (I) Richard Sears appears in our
New England colonial history with the ment ion of his name in the records
of the Plymouth colony tax list in 1633, when he was one of fourty-four
persons there assessed nine shillings in corn at si x shillings per
bushel. From Plymouth he soon crossed over to
Marblehead, MA , and was taxed there, as shown by the Salem list
was a churchwarden for several years