Did Henry Lawrence, MP (1600-1664) have a son John who emigrated to Jamaica?

Question

I have just created a profile [[Lawrence-9681]] for John Lawrence (whose will was dated 10 May 1690), who settled in Jamaica (possibly after first emigrating to Barbados) in about 1675. 
It has been suspected that he was a younger son of the MP Henry Lawrence (1600-1664) -- [[Lawrence-678]]. However, all that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography's entry for Henry Lawrence says is: "A son, John, may have emigrated to Barbados".
The Jamaican family website contains a pedigree (dated 1913) which is similarly circumspect: http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/b/bcarib78.htm
How might I set about finding out the parentage of this John Lawrence -- and in particular, whether he was the son of Henry Lawrence MP?

Comments

I'm a bit intimidated using Wiki-Tree, so I'm not here very often. However, I'm at a brick wall with "my" Henry Lawrence, so I was interested to read your question.

This may be very obvious, but what do the suffix initials "MP" mean?

Asking for a friend. (Ha!)

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MP = Member of Parliament -- i.e. the UK National Parliament which is  based in Westminster, in London.

There are other abbreviations like this, e.g.

MSP = Member of the Scottish Parliament,

MEP = Member of the European Parliament,

Etc.

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Looks as if proof may be very hard to establish.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article (2008) for Henry says a son John, may have emigrated to Barbados but nothing more.

 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16178 (subscription needed but free with  many UK library cards)

There are several mid 19th C references to him being the founder of the large Lawrence plantation in Jamaica i.e. This is the earliest I found from 1820 google books.

But as you say, this definitely says there is no evidence to support the claim http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/bcarib78.htm

Answer 1

check this link:

https://archive.org/stream/genealogicalmemo00lawr/genealogicalmemo00lawr_djvu.txt

Comments

Thanks, Doug Lockwood!

This work, A genealogical memoir of the family of John Lawrence, of Watertown, 1636; with brief notices of others of the name in England and America​ (published in 1837), claims that the John Lawrence who settled in Jamaica in 1675 was the son of Henry Lawrence MP. I will try to figure out what to make of that...

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There seem to be no sources cited at all on that page, which makes any information suspect.

Answer 2

Yes, John Lawrence arrived in Jamaica in 1676, the Son of Henry Lawrence, and Amy Peyton Lawrence, according to this author.

https://archive.org/details/genealogicalmemo00lawr/page/10

Comments

Thanks, Keith!

The page that you link to seems to be from the same 1837 book, "A genealogical memoir of the family of John Lawrence, of Watertown". Is that right? My problem is that it is not clear how reliable that book is. 1837 was a long time after 1676, and so the 1837 book might well have been relying on unreliable sources...

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Ralph,

So very true about wondering if Bios written 161 years after the supposed truth is really true, or fiction. We as Genealogist Historians use all the sources given to us, and then sort through all of the documentation,(hopefully original recorded documents), Lawrence Family Bios, and common sense. Most Biographies written many years later about a particular person, is hopefully based on actual events, and not the author just puffing their book to make a Family line appear more notable. My Lawrence Family lines are so confusing, because I have Lawrence on both my Paternal, and Maternal side, and they both immigrated to New York Long Island, with the same first name, and connected to one of my Smith lines. I am Amy Peyton's profile manager, and I added her children with Husband Henry Lawrence, partly based on the Bio that said John Lawrence left England, and Immigrated to Jamaica. I do know that they left England for awhile, and lived in Holland, because of religious persecution. The author added, and missed a lot of important data, about this Lawrence Family, so now that job falls to us to fill in the blanks with other sources, and hopefully bring these people to life, or remove them for a lack of credible information.

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Those sort of books are a menace, because they will always take any possibility and state it as a fact.  They were pretty shameless.  Sometimes they'll say stuff like "there can be no doubt that".  Sometimes they claim family tradition - which nobody knew before they read the book, but they all assume the tradition must have come down in a different branch.  Sometimes they claim family papers or a family Bible, which nobody has ever set eyes on.

The puzzle is that people don't seem to get what's going on.