Thank you all for your contributions of time, research, donations, support and feedback.

Many thanks to the good folks at Bassett Historical Center for their input and assistance.

Thank you for visiting our heritage and history.
Please consider making a contribution (any amount is appreciated) to help offset the expense, and help us continually improve the quality and quantity of information.

We Gratefully Accept Yout Old/Odd Bitcoin, and Bit Cents at:
14Q2Cm1pRmUrSGTfn1a66Qe9YbAmdD8Dez

  First Name:  Last Name:
Log In
Surnames
What's New
Statistics

Terms of Use & Privacy
Contact Us
Join Our Community

Family: IMMIGRANT John of Watertown [A101] Reynolds / Sarah Chesterfield/Cheserton (F6485)  [1, 2



Family Information    |    Notes    |    Sources    |    All    |    PDF

  • Father | Male
    IMMIGRANT John of Watertown [A101] Reynolds

    Born  1612  England Find all individuals with events at this location
    Died  1664  Watertown, Massachusetts Colony Find all individuals with events at this location
    Buried     
    Married     
    Father   
    Mother   

    Mother | Female
    Sarah Chesterfield/Cheserton

    Born  1614  Ipswich, Suffolk, England Find all individuals with events at this location
    Died  13 Jan 1657  Greenwich, Fairfield, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location
    Buried     
    Father   
    Mother   

    Child 1 | Male
    + Jonathan of John [A101] Reynolds

    Born  1636  Weathersfield, Stamford, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location
    Died  1673  Greenwich, Fairfield County, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location
    Buried     
    Spouse  Rebecca Heusted/Husted | F6526 
    Married  Apr 1706  Greenwich, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location

    Child 2 | Male
    + John [Chesterfield] Reynolds

    Born  1638  Greenwich Fairfield Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location
    Died  1702  Greenwich, Fairfield, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location
    Buried     
    Spouse  Judith 'Judah' Palmer | F6527 
    Married  1668  Greenwich Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location

    Child 3 | Female
    + Elizabeth Reynolds

    Born  Abt 1634  Watertown, Massachusetts Colony Find all individuals with events at this location
    Died  Abt 1700  Greenwich, Fairfield, Connecticut Find all individuals with events at this location
    Buried     
    Spouse  Peter Ferris/Farris | F6972 
    Married  15 Sep 1706  Prob. Massachusetts Find all individuals with events at this location

  • Notes 
    • Alan Reynolds
      June 6 2020
      John Reynolds was first of my family to arrive in America from England. His name is noted on a monument to 60 original settlers of Watertown Massachusetts (5 miles west of Cambridge) who arrived there in 1630 with Puritan leader Governor Saltonstall. He is also on another monument as a founder of Greenwich Connecticut.
      John Reynolds was reportedly born May 1, 1612 in Boxford, Suffolk, England, and died after 1651 (possibly July 18, 1660) in Greenwich or Stamford Connecticut. He was admitted as a Freeman of Watertown on May 6, 1635, which was necessary to vote and hold office. It required being a landholder and a member of Watertown church.
      John?s wife Sarah Chesterfield arrived on the ship Elizabeth from Ipswich in 1634 at age 20, already married (she is Sarah Reynolds on the ship records). In 1636, John and Sarah moved with several other settlers, including John?s brother Robert, to Weathersfield, Connecticut. Sarah died August 21, 1657.
      John?s father, George, was born about 1563 in county Kent, England, married in 1584 to Thomasyn Church, and died 1634 in London. George?s father Christopher Reynolds, the first known of the family, was born between 1527 and 1530 in Kent. He married about 1554 and settled in London where he and his brother Nathaniel and his seven sons engaged in trade and commerce. Robert, who also emigrated to New England, was born about 1587-1590 and married Mary Pulleyne. He died in Boston on April 27, 1658 and his son Nathaniel moved to Bristol, Rhode Island, where a statue of his son Joseph bears the Reynolds coat of arms with the shield of a squire (suggesting the family?s high standing in England).
      In the summer of 1641 John Reynolds was one of 28 men who volunteered as pioneer settlers of Stamford, using corn to buy 11 acres from the Dutch New Haven Colony (which did not join Connecticut until 1664) on the extreme west section of town, near Old Greenwich, (now Sound Beach).
      John and Sarah had three children: Elizabeth born about 1635, John Jr. born about 1636 in Wethersfield, and Jonathan born about 1638.

  • Sources 
    1. [S243] THE REYNOLDS FAMILY, J. Montgomery Seaver, (American Historical Genealogical Society).
      Lineage of Christopher Reynolds who married Clarissa Huntington
      He is s/o Samuel and Amey Weaver. Samuel is the s/o Thomas who m. Elizabeth Hopkins. Thomas is s/o Samuel and Ann Gardiner. Samuel is s/o Joseph Jr.: d. 1722 m. Susanna Babcock. and Joseph b. 1652 is the second son of James Reynolds who d. in Kingstown, Rhode Island 1700/02; First son of James, his namesake (James, Jr.) b. 1650 m. Norah LNU; m. 2nd Joanna LNU m. third, Mary Greene.

    2. [S10] R.W. Ryan.
      Reynolds
      Select Reynolds Surname Genealogy

      The name Reynolds was a Norman import to England, from Reginald or in Old French Reinold. The earlier root is the Old Norse Rognvaldr, comprised of the elements ragin meaning "counsel" and wald meaning "rule." Reynold was a Viking leader who harried the English and Irish shores in the 10th century.
      Name variants have included Reynold and Reynell. The Irish MacRaghnaill derives from the Gaelic of Randal or Reginald. This name became anglicized to Reynolds.
      Select Reynolds Resources on The Internet
      Reynolds Family History in Essex Reynolds Essex genealogy.
      Reynolds Family Association. Reynolds arrivals in America.
      Reynolds Family Circle. Reynolds family genealogy.
      Reynolds Irish Reynolds history.
      R.J. Reynolds. R.J. Reynolds family tree.
      Reynolds Family Beginnings. John Reynolds in New Brunswick.
      Select Reynolds Ancestry
      England. The Reynolds name first appeared in Somerset where they were granted lands after the Norman Conquest in 1066. William filius Raunaldi is recorded in the Domesday Book.
      SW England. A Reynell family originally from Cambridgeshire transplanted themselves to Devon in the 14th century where they were substantial landowners. They were described as "men of great credit, fidelity, and service to their kings, country and state in peace and in war." Both the Reynell and Reynolds names were to be found in Devon. A Reynolds family in Plympton produced the great 18th century portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds.
      The naval Reynolds came from Cornwall. They made their home in the late 18th century at Penair near Truro. And the Reynolds name was also prominent in tin mining at St. Agnes, starting possibly with William Reynolds who was born there in the 1680?s.
      Owen Reynolds, a yeoman farmer from Melcombe in Dorset, was five times its mayor in the 1550?s. His nephew Edward benefited from the patronage of the Earl of Essex and died in 1623 in London a rich man.
      Kent. A Reynolds line dating back to the 16th century in East Bergholt in Kent included descendants who were among the early immigrants to America. From a later naval family came George Reynolds who got himself involved in the Chartist movement in the 1840's. He founded a radical newspaper, Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, which became popular. The paper continued in a different guise as Reynolds News until 1967.
      East Anglia. The birth of Thomas Reynolds was recorded at Great Chesterford in northern Essex in 1569. He appeared in court in 1598 after a brawl with a neighbor. One family history dates back to the marriage of James Reynolds and Susannah Wood at Little Bardfield in 1711. In the churchyard of the nearby village of Great Sampford there are a number of Reynolds gravestones of the late 18th and 19th centuries.
      Just across the border into Cambridgeshire were the Reynolds of Castle Camps and the Reynolds of Leverington:
      Sir James Reynolds, a Cromwellian general, had taken a lease on the Castle Camps estate as a safe retreat for his family during the Civil War. His grandson Sir James was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1727.
      While Richard Reynolds was rector of Leverington near Wisbech in the 1670?s. His son Richard, born there, became the Bishop of Lincoln. He acquired Paxton Hall in Huntingdonshire in 1730 where the family remained for several generations.
      Lancashire. There was a Reynolds family in Lancashire which inherited the Strangeways estate near Manchester in 1711. Francis Reynolds from this family distinguished himself in naval actions in the West Indies and later took over the family estates at Tortworth in Gloucestershire (his home there is now a country house hotel).
      Lancashire received an influx of Irish Reynolds in the 19th century. Mary Reynolds from Mohill in county Leitrim settled her young family in Manchester after the death of her husband during the famine years. Her letters recently published, The Reynolds Letters: An Irish Emigrant Family in Late Victorian Manchester, present a story of Irish immigrants making good in industrial England at that time.
      Ireland. The Reynolds name came to Ireland at the time of Strongbow in the 1200's. These English invaders took the titles of Earls of Cavan, Lisburne and Mountmorris. A later English invasion in the 17th century gave rise to the Reynells from Devon of Reynell castle. However, the largest numbers of Reynolds have been home-grown. From early times the lands around Lough Rynn in county Leitrim were owned and settled by the MacRaghnaill clan. Sean na gCeann or John of the Heads, so called for beheading his rebellious clansmen, was their chief in the late 1500's.
      The next century saw the English taking over Leitrim and the Irish, including the McRaghnaills, being gradually pushed out. A second exodus occurred at the time of the potato famine. Even so, nearly half of the Reynolds in Ireland today come from Leitrim. The Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds was born in nearby Roscommon.
      Portugal. A Reynolds family from Kent has been in Portugal since 1820, first as cork importers and then as wine producers.
      America. The English Reynolds in America came first. Early Reynolds settlers in New England were Robert and Mary Reynolds and their four children who got there in 1630. Christopher Reynolds from Gravesend in Kent arrived in Virginia in 1622 on the Francis and John. Their family line is documented in Stephen Tilman's 1959 book, The Rennolds-Reynolds of Virginia and England. [Beware of this reference-mfe]
      Members of this family were subsequently involved in the freighting business in upstate New York. They later moved west:
      P.G. Reynolds became a mail contractor and stage operator in Dodge City for the trails heading south to the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. His brother Milton, who adopted the writing name of Kicking Bird, covered Indian council meetings as a roving reporter and became an advocate for Western settlement.
      another Milton Reynolds, but of German origin, introduced the first ballpoint pen to an unsuspecting public in 1945.

      Abraham Reynolds was a poor tobacco farmer in Virginia in the early 1800's. His son Hardin started a plantation at Rock Spring in Patrick county. Hardin's son RJ, the second of sixteen children born there, embarked on a plan to build his own tobacco factory at Winston Salem. It was he who developed the huge tobacco empire that is RJ Reynolds.

      Irish. Irish Reynolds also came to America. John Reynolds arrived in Virginia in the 1770's. His descendants moved onto Kentucky and Missouri. Robert and Margaret Reynolds from Louth reached Tennessee in 1784 and then continued to Illinois. Their son John rose to be the fourth governor of that state. Nineteenth century arrivals were more numerous. And many Reynolds went to Canada at that time as well.

      Canada. Early arrivals had been Empire Loyalists, such as William Reynolds, leaving America after the Revolutionary War. William had been a coronet in the British army and led a group of Loyalists out of New York in 1796. He and his family ended up in Dorchester (near London), Ontario.

      Bernard and Mary Reynolds came in the late 1830's from county Leitrim and settled in Renfrew county, Ontario. Other Reynolds followed, from both England and Ireland, as the 19th century proceeded.

      South Africa. In 1850 two Devon farmers, Thomas and Lewis Reynolds, set off on the Justina for South Africa to seek their fortunes (their uncle Charles had previously emigrated to Australia). The brothers' business took them to sugar refining in Natal. But it was the next generation - Frank and Charles Reynolds - who are generally considered as the founders of South Africa's sugar industry. Frank built the family home of Lynton Hall at Pennington on the south coast. It now operates as a luxury hotel.

      Australia. Two brothers, Richard and Edward Reynolds, were convicted of petty theft in Chelmsford and were transported to Australia in 1791. They were educated and literate and Edward kept a diary of the hardships of the journey. The brothers later surfaced in Hawkesbury, NSW. Richard petitioned for a land grant:

      "The petitioner arrived in this colony on the Atlantic in 1791, has been free about 28 years, has endured all the hardships to which and infant colony could subject him, and has reared a family of ten children to the habits of industry."
      His petition was successful. He died in Wilberforce in 1837 and left a large number of descendants.
      John Reynell from Devon was an early settler in South Australia. He came in 1838 and started the first commercial vineyard in the colony. Meanwhile Thomas and Mary Reynolds arrived in Western Australia from Oxfordshire in 1842. Their descendants are still to be found there. Charles Reynolds from Devon came to Tocal in the Hunter valley in 1844 and worked there until his death in 1871. In his time he was recognized an an expert on horse and cattle breeding in New South Wales.
      Select Reynolds Names

      Walter Reynolds was the son of a Windsor baker who became a favorite of King Edward II. The king made him Archbishop of Canterbury.
      Sir Joshua Reynolds from Devon was a leading English portrait painter of the 18th century.
      R.J Reynolds, a Virginia tobacco farmer, founded the R.J Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1890.
      Richard S. Reynolds, nephew of RJ, founded the American Metals Company in 1919 and developed it as one of the world's leading aluminium companies.
      Paul Revere Reynolds, a descendant of the American patriot Paul Revere, was the first literary agent in New York, in 1893.
      Milton Reynolds, a Chicago businessman, introduced the first ballpoint pen on the market in 1945.
      Albert Reynolds was the Irish Prime Minister in the 1990's.