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Descendants of William Wilcoxson

Generation No. 1

       1. William¹ Wilcoxson was born 1602 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England ¹, and died 1652 in Hartford County, Connecticut ². He married Margaret Birdsey 1629 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England ³.

Notes for William Wilcoxson:
William Wilcox also known as Wilcoxson. Came from England to Concord, Massachusetts on the "Planter" in 1635. A freeman at Cambridge in 1636. Removed to Stratford, Connecticut, he later lived in Hartford and Windsor.

Ref: Planters of the Commonwealth, page 143.
Nutmegger, volume 13, #2, page 248.
Savage, volume 4, page 548.
Bogue Family, page 393.
Stratford Genealogy, page 1346.
Cutter's Northern New York, volume 2, page 654.
Cutter's New England Family, volume 1, page 159.
Descendents of William Wilcoxson, page XIV, XVIII, XIX.
Immigrant Ancestor-Virkus (seven volumes).

The below information was furnished to Gordon C. Nagle Sr, in May 1998, by Jane Trotman of Hidden Hills, CA 91302. It is titled "Descendants of William Wilcoxson of Derbyshire, England and Stratford, Connecticut", reproduced by the mimeograph process in the Spring of 1963, from data accumulated by intermittent research and correspondence over a period of thirty years, written by Thomas Wilcox, P.O. 462, Pasadena, CA 91102.

              WILLIAM WILCOXSON's IMMEDIATE FAMILY

In Stratford, six more children were born to William and Margaet. Their entire family comprised of nine children, all of whom lived to adulthood, married and had families of their own. We compute that by the year 1725 the strain of William Willcoxson, through his daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters, must have already passed into the bloodstream of at least seventy Connecticut families. By the time of the Revolution there were several thousand of his descendants in Connecticut. At that time it was impossible for a Wilcox to travel far in his native state without meeting some kind of kinsman. Obtaining so great a distribution at so early a date we would imagine that there is today scarcely anyone with pre-revolutionary lines who cannot trace distaff descent from William Wilcoxson. In our Preliminary Report we referred to him as Father of Connecticut. By sheer paternity we believe he deserves such a title.
Of course, the great majority of William Wilcoxson's descendants are through females. Daughters and daughters-daughters to the nth generation. As a genealogist it has seemed to me sometimes that the main social function of our family in America has been to supply other families with ancestresses.

Let us pause to think of our first American household as it existed in its happiest days, about 1630, before the spectre of death and separation had appeared and while all the children remained under the Stratford rooftree. At mealtime what a picture the whole group must have made, seated about the rough hewn trencher board--the parents at either end; the children in order of their strature; John and Joseph on either side of their father; Timothy, Elizabeth, Samuel, Hannah and Sarah filling up the mid-table and little Obadiah and baby Phoebe sitting down next to mother Margaret.
And the parents, what were their thoughts as they beamed at each other through this gamut of carefree, youthful eyes? Did they imagine a time when the descendants of these devoted children would be almost "as the sands of the sea for multitude"? Did they envision the infinitely varied adventures and destinies in store for this brood and their many descendants? Could they conceive that out of these loins would come men and women who would pioneer states, cities and communities then undreamed of; that from them would descend soldiers, captains and generals to take part in struggles for the establishment and preservation of a great nation; that from them would come judges, senators, ministers, missionaries, scientists and any number of undistinguished but honorable citizens, each taking some part in a highly complex civilization?

The ultra-individualistic William Wilcoxson descendant of today who thinks that he has nothing in common with a tenth cousin in far away Oregon, Alaska, Florida or California, should think sometimes of this first family and reflect that when we go far enough back on the tribal stem all Wilcoxsons coalesce and join at the Stratford hearth.

Lamentably William Wilcoxson did not live to be an old man. He died early in the year 1652. This we know from the fact that there is record of the inventory of his will of June 16, 1652. Hence, all of the nine children were under age when he passed away. John, the oldest, was but 19, while Phoebe, the youngest, was but a babe in arms. Thus came the first tragedy to a family that was to suffer more than its due share of untimely deaths, orphaned children and scattered kinsmen.

For the years immediately subsequent to 1652 there is no record to indicate how the widow Wilcoxson and her brood managed to exist in that wild, raw country. However, neighbors were generous in those days. They were few in numbers, but those few were all of kindred race and similar religion. All were bound to each other by a feeling of loneliness in those vast solitudes, so far removed from pleasant-memoried England. Quite likely the family were aided after the father's death by their pioneer neighbors and the friendly counsel of the good minister, Rev Adam Blakeman, pastor of the first Statford church.

Just when or where it was that the widow Wilcoxson met William Hayden (an immigrant of 1630) of Windsor we do not know. It may be that the two families had known each other in Derbyshire or that they had become acquainted at Concord.
However, the legend, as given in "Records of the Connecticut Line of the Hayden Family", is to the effect that Margaret married William Hayden sometime in the year 1663. The latter had then removed from Windsor to Hamonoscett (later Kenilworth, Killingworth and finally Clinton) with his three motherless children and there he was joined by Margaret and the youner Wilcoxson children. By that time, John, Joseph, Timothy remained at Stratford with their families. Elizabeth removed with her husband, Sergeant Henry Stiles to Windsor while Joseph, already the father of three children, followed his mother and father-in-law to Killingworth. There he settled permanently. Samuel, who married the following year at Windsor, probably did not live long at Killingworth, if at all. The unmarried children who accompanied their mother to Killingworth and three in their lot with the Haydens were, therefor, Hannah (who the following year became the bride of her step-brother Daniel Hayden) Sarah, Obadiah, and Phoebe. Margaret Wilcox Hayden, our first anscestress in America, died at Killingworth in 1675.


Children of William Wilcoxson and Margaret Birdsey are: