John Isham of Barnstable

John Isham, who usually appears in the records of Barnstable, Massachusetts, as John Issum and signed his name John Isum, was the founder of the Barnstable family of Ishams from whom most American Ishams of New England descend.^1,2 Older genealogies give his birth as 31 March 1654, but this date was supplied to Homer Brainard by George H. Loveland of New Haven, who never revealed his source, and no record supporting it has been found.¹ Nor is there any record of his birth in Massachusetts, Virginia or England.¹ Three traditions about his origin have been handed down: that he was one of several Isham brothers who passed through Massachusetts on the way to Connecticut and Virginia; that he was a Captain John Isham who settled at Barnstable and wrote letters home to England; and that he was a cabin boy who escaped to Cape Cod from a ship bound to or from Virginia, perhaps with James Percival, who ran away from Virginia to Barnstable by boat in 1670.¹ Brainard, who investigated each of them, found no evidence for any, and could only rule out the claims that John belonged directly to the landed Ishams of Northamptonshire.¹

John first appears on 26 May 1686, when John Issum was recorded as living in a house within the bounds of Barnstable.³ In December 1687 he married Jane Parker,^4,5 who was born in 1664 and was the sister of Daniel Parker of Barnstable.⁶ The surviving Barnstable town records give the marriage as December 1677 and the births of the first children from 1679,^4,5,7 but these records survive only in copies made in 1736 and 1895, the originals having been lost, and a note in the margin states that the dates are "10 years too old."^4,1 The corrected dates fit everything else known about the family: Jane would otherwise have married at about thirteen, and John's will of 1713 shows that his youngest son was then under fourteen.^6,1 With the dates corrected, John and Jane's children were Jane, born 7 October 1689;^4,8,7 John, born 25 August 1691;^9,10 Isaac, born February 1692/3;^11,12 Sarah, born December 1694;¹³ Mary, born June 1697;¹⁴ and Hannah, Patience, Joseph and Thankful, whose dates were not recorded but who were probably born about 1699, 1701, 1703 and 1705.^4,1

John was admitted a townsman of Barnstable on 4 March 1691/2.¹⁵ On 11 May 1692 he signed, as John Isum, as a witness to the will of Ralph Joans, a Quaker.¹⁶ Brainard noted that this, together with the absence of any record of John in the Congregational church at West Barnstable, suggests that he stood outside the established church and may have had Quaker sympathies or connections.^1,16 He was a farmer of modest but growing means.^17,18 In January 1693/4 he was recorded as holding one acre, and he received another acre in the town division of January 1696/7.¹⁷ On 4 August 1697 the town laid out his right of two acres of marsh near Oyster Island on the south shore, one of his own and one that Deacon Crocker had bequeathed to him.^17,19 His land is mentioned as bounding other grants in the town records, and on 19 February 1702/3 John Issum held twenty and three-quarters of the town's six thousand shares in the undivided lands.¹⁷

John Isum made his will on 1 June 1713, being "weak in body but of sound and disposing mind."⁶ He left his wife Jane a third of his whole estate for life while she remained a widow, and only a third of his movables if she remarried.⁶ His sons John and Isaac were to share two thirds of his housing and home lot, marsh, wood lot and undivided land.⁶ His youngest son Joseph received six acres on the northwest side of the home lot, the remaining third of the marsh and wood lot, his other lands, and his other gun, and was to live at home with his mother and brothers until he was fourteen and then be put to a trade.⁶ His six daughters, Jane, Sarah, Mary, Hannah, Patience and Thankful, were to share two thirds of his personal estate as they came of age or married.⁶ He named his wife and son John as executors, and his brother-in-law Daniel Parker and Thomas Crocker as overseers.⁶ John Issum, Senior, died at Barnstable on 3 September 1713.²⁰ The inventory taken on 29 September by John Jenkins and Thomas Crocker valued his personal estate at £159 16s 6d, including four oxen, nine cows, young cattle, horses, swine and sheep, Indian and English corn worth £23 10s, flax, spinning wheels and books.¹⁸ The will and inventory were entered in the probate records on 10 October 1713;^6,18 the originals were probably lost when the Barnstable county house burned in 1827.⁶

Family tradition, recorded by John Isham (1776–1856) from the memory of his father Timothy Isham (1725–1812) and later sent to Brainard by Mrs. Almeda (Isham) Potter, says that the immigrant "came over from England and settled in Barnstable" and had three sons: John, who settled at Ellington, Connecticut; Joseph, who settled at Colchester, Connecticut; and Isaac, who remained on the old place at Barnstable and had seven sons who all lived past seventy.^2,1

Y-DNA testing has confirmed part of the family's belief in an English origin.^? A test of an heir to the Isham baronetcy of Lamport, Northamptonshire, showed a genetic distance of one step at 111 markers from another Isham, a direct male-line descendant of John of Barnstable.^? John was therefore a male-line member of the ancient Isham family of Northamptonshire, though the test cannot show from which branch he came or how he reached New England.^?

A possible English baptism has recently been found. The parish register of Kimcote and Walton, Leicestershire, on a page headed Anno Domini 1666, records: "John ye sonn of John Isum & Theophila his wiffe bapt[ised] Aprill the 28."^21,22 (The FamilySearch index gives the year as 1667 in error.)^21,22 Several lines of evidence point to this child being John of Barnstable.^? The spelling Isum, used by the Walton clerk, is the same spelling recorded for John's signature at Barnstable, while elsewhere the family almost always wrote Isham.^? On the corrected Barnstable dates, the Walton child would have been twenty when first recorded at Barnstable in 1686, twenty-one at his marriage, twenty-five when admitted a townsman, and about forty-seven at his death, leaving young children.^? After his baptism the Walton John vanishes from Leicestershire records, with no marriage, children or burial, although his family remained: his sister Hannah, christened in 1663, was buried at Kimcote in 1714 as the daughter of John, and other households of the name, written Isam, Esom and Esum, continued at Walton into the 1690s.^? John of Barnstable named a daughter Hannah, and both families used the name Mary.^? Walton lies in the south of Leicestershire, close to the Northamptonshire border and about a dozen miles from Barby, seat of a branch of the Isham family, so a Walton family of the name fits the Y-DNA evidence.^? Walton is also a few miles from Watling Street, the old road to London and its ships.^? And it lay in the country where George Fox, the Leicestershire-born founder of the Quakers, preached, which fits John's later association with a Barnstable Quaker.^? The Walton family themselves conformed to the Church of England and stayed in the parish, so if John Jr emigrated, he probably went alone as a young man.^?

The identification has not been proved. No record names John of Barnstable's parents or birthplace, and the case rests on the combined weight of the name, the dates, the family names, the place and the DNA.^? It would be tested by emigration or servant records of the early 1680s, by a Y-DNA test of a documented male-line descendant of the Walton Isums, or by any later Leicestershire record of the Walton John, which would argue against it.^? If the identification is right, John's father, John Isum of Walton, was born about 1630, perhaps at nearby Gilmorton, where Ishams lived in the mid-seventeenth century.^? Family trees have connected him to Richard Isham, christened in 1595, a son of Gregory Isham of Barby.^? Through Gregory's father Henry, a London mercer and Controller of the Port of London, that line runs back to Euseby Isham of Ringstead and Pytchley, from whom the Lamport baronets also descend.^? From Richard back to Euseby the line is well documented, but no record yet connects John of Walton to Richard, and that step remains conjecture.^?