John Thayer (abt. 1535 - 1584)

Born about 1535 in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England

Husband of Mary (Unknown) Cooke — married 1557 in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England

Descendants

Died 12 Oct 1584 at about age 49 in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England

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PROFILE UNDER REVISION TO MATCH PUBLISHED AND PROVEN FACTS

Biography

See Unknown Thayer for a detailed analysis of the family and the methods for reconstructing the family.

Name

Name: John T(h)ayer:

of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England.

Orthographic variations: Thayer, Tayer, Tawier, Tawyer, Tawer, Taire, Tayre. The most common spelling in this early period was Tayer.

Research notes: The origins of this family were first discovered in the late 18th century as being from Thornbury. In 1906, the relevant entries from the Thornbury parish registers were published in the NEHGR. ^{[1] [2]} Unfortunately, the authors made a number of transcriptional errors, and misinterpreted the dates.

The next year, Tomas Thayer Ojeda published his Thayer Family of Thornbury which was an attempt to reconstruct the family from the parish registers. ^[3] In 1938, the noted genealogist Mary Lovering Holman also made an attempt to reconstruct the family. ^[4] Unfortunately, in both cases the authors were mislead by the errors in NEHGR articles. These sources have led to widespread errors across the internet and must be used with caution.

Clifford Stott reprinted all of the Thornbury records (correctly) and the will of John Thayer in an effort to correct the extensive errors made in the 1906 Register articles. These articles appeared in The American Genealogist, in 1998. ^{[5] [6]} All information regarding the English origins of the Thayer family must be compared to Stott's articles.

Birth

Born: About 1535.

Rough estimate based on his first child being born in January 1558. Stott uses 'born say 1530' and Holman uses 'about 1532' - both are rough guesses. ^{[6] [4]}

Marriage and Children

Married: His wife's name was Mary. Her LNAB is unknown. It can be found on the internet that her name was Mary Roberts. However, there is no evidence to support this name. When her son made his will on 31 December 1600, he called her "Mary Cooke my mother," so by this date she had remarried to an Unknown Cooke. ^[5] She was buried on 30 April 1611. ^[5]

Children of John and Mary Thayer:

"Because the Thornbury parish records do not name the parents, reconstituting family groupings is difficult. Please see the section Reconstruction of the Thayer Family in his father's profile to see which children are assigned to him and why they are assigned to him.

The following, except where noted, was concluded by Mary Lovering Holman in 1938. Stott (1998) was hesitant to list all of them:

Children of John and Mary Thayer:

1. John Thayer. Baptized on 4 January 1557/8, and buried 21 August 1558 at Thornbury.
2. Thomas Thayer. Baptized 7 Nov 1559 in Thornbury. Married about 1587 Ann Unknown. His will names wife Ann, and children Francis, Eleanor and Ferdinando. Buried 3 March 1622/3 at Thornbury.
3. John Thayer. Baptized on 6 May 1561 in Thornbury. He married Joan Lawrence on 3 Aug 1589 in Thornbury. He died 1 January 1601 at Thornbury,
4. Richard Thayer. Baptized on 2 Aug 1562 in Thornbury. Married abt 1587 Ann ____ who died in childbirth 10 Nov 1590; m2 abt 1593 ________; father of the PGM immigrants Thomas and Richard.
5. William Thayer Baptized on 1 November 1564 in Thornbury. Buried on 4 January 1601 at Thornbury.
6. Alice Thayer. Baptized on 16 Dec 1565 in Thornbury.
7. Lucy Thayer Probable but less certain child. Baptized on 23 September 1568 in Thornbury.

Uncertain children:

1. Nicholas Thayer bpt 25 Jan 1574; note: MLH does not include him on John's list of children.

Disputed Children:

• Margery Thayer b abt 1562 in Thornbury (no such record); m abt 1582 in London Thomas Knight IV; d apparently in Braintree, but that likely refers to her supposed daughter.

1. Edward Thayer (1577-1627); baptism and burials on these dates-- how do we know it's the same person? Supposedly married Katherine Eddy (no marriage recorded in Thornbury); note: MLH does not include him on John's list of children.

• Ursula Thayer, bpt 1579; note: MLH does not include her on John's list of children.

Death

Burial: 12 October 1584 at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England.

"John Tawier was buried the xij of October [1584]" ^[7]

He was certainly dead by 1600 when his son made his will, and was almost certainly the John Thayer buried on this date. No will has been found for him.

Research Notes

Thornbury parish records: The Thornbury parish registers begin in September 1550 and relatively complete except for gaps in baptisms from April 1554-May 1557, burials from April 1554-April-1557, and marriages from April 1554-April 1557 and February 1576-April 1583.

An unusual feature of these records is that they begin the new year on January 1 from 1550 to 1610, an then switch to starting the new year on March 25 from 1611 to 1752. Early transcriptions of the parish registers published in the NEHGR did not understand this quirk. ^[1]

Wife's burial record: When John Thayer (Jr.) made his will in 1600 he referred to "Mary Cooke my mother." Later, when Mary died in 1611 her burial record included the note: "buried Mrs. Mary Cooke whose sister enlaw [sic] wast the Thomas Tawyer who died in Ano 1573". This statement is very important for it proves a number of facts:

1. This Mary Cooke was the wife of John Cooke, and the mother of John Cooke who made his will in 1600.
2. The two earliest known Thayers in Thornbury who were having children circa 1555-1575 were John and Thomas - this shows they were brothers.
3. Of the two candidates to be the father of John Thayer Jr., this disqualifies Thomas as a possible father.
4. This John Thayer was almost certainly the father John Thayer Jr.

Need to review and incorporate: According to Stott:

"John Tayer was born about 1530 (Mary Lovering Holman in 1938 says about 1532^[8]) and died before 1600; he was probably buried at Thornbury, Gloucestershire 12 Oct 1584. His wife was Mary ____, who married secondly, before 1600, to ____ Cooke. She was buried at Thornbury on 20 Apr 1611. John was the brother of Thomas Tayer, buried there on 17 March 1573."^[5]

Ojeda has a slightly different chronology: Johanes Tawier, aka John Thayer, Married Mary (Unknown) Oct 12 1584. There is no such marriage recorded in the Thornbury parish records as published correctly in 1998.^[9] His widow Mary Roberts married again to (Unknown) Cooke and died April 20 1611. In other words, John had one spouse, Mary. Fifteen children are listed - John, Thomas, John, Richard, John, William, Alice, Ussly, Lucy, Anna, William, Nicholas, Edward, Ursula and Anthony.^[3] Unfortunately, Ojeda relied on the inaccurate transcriptions of the Thornbury records published in 1906 in the NEHGR. ^[1]

Common Errors to Avoid

• Name and ancestry confusion: An number of transcription and date interpretation errors of the Thornbury parish records were published in the NEHGR. ^[1] This resulted in severe errors being made the names of parents, assignments of children, and the probable ancestry of the Thayers of Thornbury made by Ojeda in 1907 and Holman in 1938. ^{[3] [4]} These works cannot be relied on.

• Incorrect parents: This John Thayer is the earliest recognized ancestor of the Thayer family of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England. There is no direct evidence in the form of wills, baptisms, land ownership, etc. to indicate the names of his parents.

• Incorrect wife LNAB: His wife Mary can often be found on the internet with the name of Mary Roberts. There is no evidence to support this in the form wills of marriage records. She is called Mary Unknown by all published sources including Ojeda, Holman and Stott. ^{[3] [4] [5]}

• Incorrect wife: John Thayer is often given on the internet a second wife Nusi Cooke. This appears to be an internet invention which does appear on published sources. There are no parish records or wills which suggest Nusi Cooke ever existed. John Thayer's wife Mary survived him, remarried and lived for many years after John Thayer's death. She has been disconnected.

• Extra son John: Holman assigns an extra son John with the dates as baptized 6 May 1561 and buried 11 February 1561/2. ^[4] This is an error caused by dating errors in the NEHGR article, and is actually an amalgamation of two different individuals. The correct burial date was 11 February 1561, so obviously he could not be the person born in May of 1561. From the known information, the John Thayer buried in February 1561 could only be the John son of Thomas Thayer baptized 15 October 1558. ^[5]

Sources

Footnotes and citations:

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} NEHGR (1906): 281-88. Thayer Family: Parish Register Entries.
2. ↑ NEHGR (1906): 289-91. Thayer Family: Abstracts of Wills
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3} Ojeda, Thomas Thayer,The Thayer Family of Thornbury: a Study Trying ... (Page 13) [Santiago? Chile] : Imprenta Moderna 1907, Archive.org accessed 15 January 2016 Caution: Contains Errors.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4} Holman, Mary Lovering. Ancestry of Charles Stinson Pillsbury, vol. 1. (1938):443-449.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5} The American Genealogist (April 1998):81-90.
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} The American Genealogist (July 1998):209-219.
7. ↑ The American Genealogist (April 1998):86.
8. ↑ Mary Lovering Holman, Ancestry of Charles Stinson Pillsbury..., 1938, p 444
9. ↑ Thornbury Parish Records as published in Clifford Stott, "The Gloucestershire T(h)ayer Family," NEHGS Register, 73(April 1998):83-87

Source list:

• Holman, Mary Lovering. Ancestry of Charles Stinson Pillsbury and John Sargent Pillsbury, vol. 1. (1938):443-449. HathiTrust.org LINK

• New England Historical and Genealogical Register [NEHGR] vol. 60 no. 4 (October 1906):281-88. Tayer (Thayer) Family Entries in the Parish Register of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England, by Walter Faxon, Edward Henry Whorf, and Henry Ernest Woods. Caution: contains errors, compare to TAG (1998):81-90. Books.Google.com LINK

• NEHGR vol. 60 no. 4 (October 1906): 289-91. Abstracts of Wills Relating to the Tayer (Thayer) Family of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England, by Walter Faxon, Edward Henry Whorf, and Henry Ernest Woods. Books.Google.com LINK

• The American Genealogist, vol. 73 no. 2, (April 1998):81-90. The Gloucestershire T(h)ayer Ancestry, by Clifford L. Scott. AmericanAncestors.org LINK (paid)

• The American Genealogist, vol. 73 no. 3 (July 1998):209-219. The Gloucestershire T(h)ayer Ancestry, by Clifford L. Scott. AmericanAncestors.org LINK (paid)

• Tomas Thayer Ojeda, The Thayer Family of Thornbury: A Study Trying its Reconstitution. (Santiago, Chili, 1907):16-17. Archive.org LINK