Lt. Samuel Loomis Notes

Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America
Author: Elias Loomis
Call Number: CS71.L863

This book contains the history and genealogy of the Joseph Loomis,
who landed in Boston in 1638.
Bibliographic Information: Loomis, Elias. Descendants of Joseph Loomis
in America. Published by the author. 1909.

DESCENDANTS
of
JOSEPH LOOMIS
In America
And his Antecedents
In the Old World

The Original Published By
Elias Loomis LL.D.
1875

Revised By
Elisha S. Loomis Ph.D.
1908
Copyright, 1909,
By
ELISHA SCOTT LOOMIS,
Published November, 1909.
This edition is limited to 700 numbered copies, of which this book is No. 633

IN the spring of 1870 I published the first edition of the Loomis Genealogy. That volume contained the names of 4,340 persons whose descent was traced from Joseph Loomis of Windsor, Connecticut In the preparation of that volume I expended a large amount of time and money, and yet it fell very much short of my idea of a complete genealogy, such as I was desirous of making it. Notwithstanding its imperfect condition, there were many reasons which inclined me to publish it. The most urgent reason was, that my manuscript had become so large as to be unwieldy, and in order to prosecute my researches further, it was important to have a fair copy of all the names which I had collected, that they should be arranged in systematic order, and provided with copious indices for convenient reference. Another consideration which influenced me was that I hoped the publication of the book would excite greater interest in the history of the family, and that a large number of contributors would volunteer to furnish me information for correcting errors and supplying omissions in the first edition.

The book excited a less general interest than I had expected. Although only 250 copies were printed, and the book was offered at a price barely sufficient to pay the expense of printing and binding, if all the copies could have been sold, the demand for the book nearly ceased when only about half the edition had been disposed of. Upon reducing the price, some additional copies were sold, and the remainder were distributed gratuitously, as I hoped by this means to secure more abundant materials for a second and improved edition.

Since the publication of the first edition of the Genealogy, I have spent nearly all of my college vacations in collecting additional names and information. I soon discovered that the objects which I desired could not be secured by correspondence except to a very limited extent. I therefore undertook to canvass the whole country in a systematic manner by personal visits. My first object was to obtain the places of residence of all persons of the Loomis name, that is, to take a census of all persons of that name. In prosecuting this object I encountered very great difficulties. I examined every Directory of City, County or State I could find, and of these there is a very large collection in the State Library at Albany. I also examined Business Directories, Catalogues of the Clergymen of the various religious denominations, Catalogues of Lawyers and Physicians, and Catalogues of names of every description for any part of the United States. I also spent considerable time in examining County Maps. For most of the older States, large County Maps have been published, giving the names of the occupants of every farm in the county. I studied many of these maps with great care and copied all the Loomis names which they contained. By these different means I obtained very extensive lists of names of persons to be visited.

But after the most diligent use of all the means of information which I have indicated, I found there were still extensive districts almost entirely unexplored. This deficiency for all the States except New England, I supplied in the following manner: in New York, Pennsylvania, and generally throughout the Western States, there is kept at the county seat of each county the tax list for each of the towns of that county. These lists show the name of every person in the county who pays any State or County tax, however small. They therefore show (with but few exceptions) the names of all the male residents of the county who are over 21 years of age. This then has been my ultimate reliance for information in all the States except New England, and the other means of information which I have indicated have generally been simply auxiliary. Having obtained a list of all the Loomis names in a county I commence the canvass. As the majority of the persons to be visited reside at a distance from any railroad, (often 10, 15 or 20 miles,) I take a private conveyance, and after an early breakfast, start upon my explorations. I mark out a circuit as extensive as I think I can complete during the day and return to my hotel at evening. In these tramps, generally over hills, sometimes through sand-beds, and at other times through mud-holes, I occasionally visit half a dozen families in a day; more frequently, however, only two or three, and sometimes only one; and it has repeatedly happened to me to spend a long summer day, riding in an open buggy under a broiling July sun, and find but one family of the Loomis name, and even that sometimes proves not to be descended from Joseph Loomis of Windsor. Sometimes, after encountering almost insurmountable difficulties in searching out some obscure family, I have found only an empty house and no one to be seen who could give me any such information respecting the owner as I desired. Notwithstanding every kind of discouragement I have steadily persevered, until I have made a pretty thorough canvass of every part of New England, of every part of the State of New York, of nearly every part of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and of the northern part of Ohio. I have also explored a number of cities further west, such as Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis. For the other Western States I have accomplished what I could by correspondence. This is, however, generally a very slow and uncertain process, for a correspondence can only be commenced after a certain amount of preliminary information, and many persons will not answer a letter addressed to them, while many others, even with the best intentions, have but a poor faculty of communicating information in writing.

The result of all my labors is a Catalogue of 8,686 persons bearing the Loomis name, and believed to be descended from Joseph Loomis of Windsor, besides the names of 4,682 persons who have intermarried with them. This is double the number of names contained in the first edition, and respecting many of the names in the first edition I have obtained much fuller information. I have made, therefore, considerable advance towards a complete list of the descendants of Joseph Loomis. There are not many additional names to be looked for except in the new States at the West.

Many persons wonder at my devoting so much time and labor to this research, and think I have some profound plan of making money. Some imagine there is a great fortune to be gained in England,--others think I am going to make a fortune by selling a vast number of copies of a book at an exorbitant price. I cannot think it strange that others should be surprised at my devoting so much time to this subject, for I am surprised myself. Nevertheless, I can see many important objects to be gained by this publication, for the benefit of the public if not of myself. In the first place, it enables many thousand persons to trace their genealogy back for about three centuries, and to many persons this is a source of rational satisfaction. In the second place, it enables many persons from the older States to recover information respecting relatives who long since wandered off to the far West, and had been often sought for in vain. In the third place, it is probable that cases may hereafter arise in which this book may prove to be worth a thousand times more than its cost, from the assistance it will render in tracing relationships which may secure the inheritance of estates. But beyond all such personal considerations, a complete family genealogy, such as it is hoped the Loomis Genealogy may one day become, has a value with reference to questions of General History and Political Philosophy. This Genealogy shows how from a single man, established in Connecticut in 1639, has descended an army of sturdy men who contributed no mean share towards making good our Declaration of Independence in 1776, and in saving our country from disruption in 1861; who have been respectably represented in the ranks of educated men and in each of the three learned professions; who have been creditably represented in Congress as well as in numerous State Legislatures and on the bench of Justice. These men have contributed an important share in levelling the forests of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and in subduing the prairies of the more Western States. Wherever they have gone they have organized churches and schools, and with few exceptions their characters have been blameless. Although most of the names recorded in this book are obscure, very few have done discredit to their ancestry by an immoral life.

Those persons who wish to compare the present with a former age will find ample materials in this volume. They will see that for six generations the average number of children to a family was in no generation less than six; and that the average age of all the persons of the first five generations was considerably over fifty years. They will find a list of thirty-five of the descendants who attained to an age of 90 years, and one exceeding a hundred years. In these particulars, the comparison with the present generation is not encouraging.

With regard to the history of the Loomis family in Europe, I have not obtained much new information since the publication of the first edition. I have sought information from every source within my reach, but without much success. Mature reflection has, however, led me to adopt a more decided opinion respecting the origin of the Loomis name, the reasons for which will be found in the following pages. Among the new facts stated in this edition will be noticed the burning of John Lomas for heresy in 1556. Similar cases in England were not very numerous, but at the time of the planting of the New England colonies, dissenters from the Established Church of England were made very uncomfortable, and we can easily understand why Joseph Loomis, (although a man of respectable pecuniary means,) should be willing to abandon the comforts of his native country, and seek a new home among the savages of America.

Before commencing the printing of this volume I issued a very large number of circulars announcing my plan of publication, and soliciting additional information for the new edition. Many of the answers to these circulars did not arrive until the printing was far advanced. Whenever it was practicable, the information thus obtained has been incorporated in this volume in its appropriate place, but many of the letters arrived too late. The result is that in some cases the latter part of the book contains statements which differ from what had been given on a preceding page. In one or two cases it is stated that a man had no children, while under the next generation the names of his children are recorded.(*)

When two persons of the Loomis name have been married to each other, I have generally indicated in brackets each person's number in this catalogue. It thus sometimes became necessary to refer to a subsequent page not yet in type, and in consequence of the additions to my manuscript during the progress of printing, these numbers were necessarily changed. It has thus happened in a few cases that in referring to a person on a subsequent page, the number is quoted erroneously. In all cases, however, it will be easy, by means of one of the Indices, to find the name intended.

I wish it to be distinctly understood that I do not regard this book as containing a complete Genealogy of the Loomis family, and I have no doubt that (*)These and many other errors have been corrected in the 1908 edition. it contains serious errors. It is my sincere desire that these imperfections may be removed. I therefore request that if any person who examines this book detects any error, however trivial, or notices any omission which he can supply, he would communicate the information to me without delay. I say, without delay, because that which is deferred is apt to be neglected until it is forgotten. If my life is spared a few years longer, any information thus communicated to me will not be lost. The public shall have the benefit of all new materials obtained, and I contemplate publishing a Supplement to this volume before many months.

NOTE--Dr. Elias Loomis died before the Supplement was published. But this third (1908) edition contains all new materials which he had collected, along with all new data collected and obtainable since his death.

Believing that many of the Loomis Family desired the preservation of the preceding preface, we have retained it as also we have retained the historical account of Joseph Loomis and his name found hereinafter. In the foregoing preface Dr. Elias Loomis has said so well so many things which every genealogist has to contend with that we are relieved of enumerating them.

On page 17 he says: "I wish it to be distinctly understood that I do not regard this book as containing a complete Genealogy of the Loomis family." Neither do we regard this edition a complete Genealogy of the family. While his edition of 1875 contained a catalogue of 8,686 persons bearing the name of Loomis, this edition catalogues over 13,000 names, and yet it is no more complete than his, and probably its percentage of errors and omissions is just as great as found in his edition. And because of this we crave the indulgences of the Loomis family for such errors and omissions, and request that all such, even if trivial, may be sent to us for correction hereafter.

While we have retained unbroken Dr. Elias Loomis's historical account of Joseph Loomis, his origin and his name, as set forth under the heading, Historical Data, p. 21, yet we deem it best to add such supplementary facts as have come to light since 1875, especially as touching the name Loomis.

Indeed it is very doubtful if our ancestral name originated in the way Dr. Loomis surmised, as the investigations of Prof. C. A. Hoppin, Jr., hereinafter given, seem to show. That Joseph's great-grandfather died at Thaxted, Eng., in the year 1551, is now proved as evidenced by Thaxted church records. But whence came his ancestors, what was the origin of the name, and what is our right to a coat-of-arms? These queries are raised and discussed in Prof. Hoppin's scholarly report to which the reader is referred. Evidently our antecedents are not Royal, but something far better, viz., clean, God-fearing, industrious men of respect and influence--men of character and back-bone.

This volume is enriched by a map of Connecticut, showing the location of Windsor, and the Loomis Institute so generously provided for, and which is fully explained in the body of this work, and of which the Loomis Family may indeed be proud.

Some have insisted that we should also record herein all obtainable descendants of Loomis daughters, saying "The work of Pater-lineist is too narrow in its scope to merit the name of a family history." To prove that it is utterly impossible to do this, I have, under the caption, "Who Are We?" made some calculations and prepared tables by which it is seen that the possible descendants of the daughters, in 10 generations, become millions. All blanks received containing data for family records of descendants of Loomis daughters have been carefully preserved and so numbered that the same may be finally reduced to printed volumes, the names now in hand numbering about 30,000. And now will not some one establish a fund for putting this data into print? It would be worth while. Who will do it?

While we have adhered to the system of numbering used in the 1875 edition, yet in one particular this edition differs radically from that, as those fortunate enough to have a copy of that edition will observe. It is in this: We have regarded the family as a unit, and hence have given at the head of each family all the data relative to the father and mother of that family and in the list of children born to them only the name and date of birth of such sons as themselves become the head of a new family, following all such with a + which means that his history will be found in the next generation under his respective number. By so doing the reader will find unified such data as he is seeking without referring to a preceding page.

This edition contains data sufficient to show that the descendants of pioneer Joseph Loomis fill many important and prominent positions in the various vocations of life. They are found not only among the tillers of the soil and the mechanics at the bench, but also among the teachers of our public schools and the ministers of the gospel; among those who are enrolled in the medical and legal professions; among editors and publishers of religious and secular papers and magazines; among authors and professors of our advanced institutions of learning; among college, bank and railroad presidents; among our statesmen and diplomats; and among our original thinkers and inventors.

And the reader will also discover, by consulting the indices of names and addresses, that these descendants are now found in every state and territory of the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, Europe, Asia, Japan and the Philippines.

By consulting our military annals, see tables I to IX, in which are recorded nearly 1,000 names of Loomis soldiers, the reader will note that from King Philip's War down to the Spanish-American War soldiers bearing the name of Loomis were ever ready to fight and die for home and country.

As I have sent out nearly 6,000 memoranda soliciting information for this book, the reader can judge somewhat as to the amount of time and labor this has entailed. Also our able corps of assistant annalists have helped in the search for Loomis descendants and their deeds; and among us we have searched hundreds of volumes of genealogical and vital records; census reports; local histories and catalogues; military records; and probate court records, all of which cost time and money.

Berea, O., September, 1908. Former and Present Residences of Mr. Burdett Loomis.

ORTHOGRAPHY of the name Loomis.--Nearly all of those persons in the United States who

are known by the name of Loomis are descended from Joseph Loomis, who settled in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1639. This name, in the lapse of time has undergone various changes of orthography. For somewhat more than a century it has, with few exceptions, been spelled Loomis. Previous to that time, the more common spelling was Lomis. On the oldest gravestones at Colchester the name is spelled Lomis. On the early town records at Windsor the name is generally Lomys, but on the oldest grave-stone of any member of this family now known to exist anywhere in America, the name is spelled Lomas. This is the grave-stone of Deac. John Lomas, who died at Windsor, Sept. 1, 1688.

In England, for more than a century past, the name has uniformly been spelled Lomas, but two or three centuries ago the name was sometimes spelled Lummas, Lommas, or Lomes. All these names are considered to be variations in the spelling of one original name, and the spelling now well established in England is Lomas, while the spelling adopted in the United States is Loomis.

Proof that Joseph Loomis came from Braintree, England.--Joseph Loomis, one of the first settlers of Windsor, Connecticut, came from Braintree, Essex County, England, in the year 1638. This fact is established by the following document, being a deposition made July 30, 1639, by one of the passengers in the same ship with Joseph Loomis. The original, of which this is a copy, is in the possession of Mr. J. Hammond Trumbull of Hartford, Connecticut, President of the Connecticut Historical Society.

The following is a copy of the original draft (unsigned) of the deposition of Joseph

"Joseph Hills of Charlestowne, in New England, Woollen Draper,** aged about 36 yeares, sworne, saith upon his oath that he came to New England undertaker in the ship called the Susan & Ellen of London whereof was master Mr. Edward Payne, in the yeare of our Lord one thousand six hundred thirty and eight, the 14th yeare of the raigne of our Souraigne Lord the King that now is and this knowes that divers goods and chattells, victualls & commodities of Joseph Loomis late of Brayntree in the County of Essex, Woolen-draper, wch were put in three butts, two hogsheds, one halfe hogshed, one barrel, one tubb & three firkins, transported from Malden in the County of Essex to London in an Ipswch Hye, were shipped in the said ship upon the eleventh day of Aprill in the yeare abovesayd, and this deponent cleared the said goods wth divers other goods of the said Joseph Loomis and other mens, in the Custome-house at London, as may appeare by the Customers bookes, and this dept saith that the said goods were transported into New England in the said ship where she arrived on the seaventeenth day of July in the yeare aforesayd."

(*)The N. E. Hst. and Gen. Reg., Vol. VIII, p. 309, contains the Will of Joseph Hills, lawyer, late of Maldon, Massachusetts He d. Feb. 5, 1687-8.

**So designated by Savage, Vol. II, p. 417. Several of the facts stated in the preceding deposition are confirmed by other documents.

The following is a document contained in a volume of Land Records preserved in the office of the Secretary of State at Hartford, Connecticut It is a copy of a letter from an attorney of Braintree, Eng., dated 1651, and addressed to an acquaintance in Hartford, Connecticut, in which letter allusion is twice made to Loomis. The writer of this letter (W. Lyngwood) is mentioned in the history and antiquities of the county of Essex, by Phillip Morant, London, 1768, vol. 2, p. 391.

Since I have received your letter in March, 1650, with your letter to your brother Richard and the testimonial of your being alive, under the Governor's seal, I have proceeded against your brother and taken out a commission in chancery, to examine witnesses which I intended to have had executed about Michaelmas, etc.

And now I desire only to have a good warrant and order from you testified by such of my friends there with you whose hands I know, as my cousin Loomis, cousin Cullick, John Talcott, John Steele, or some of those to whom you would have me pay the money, that I may have a good discharge and you may be sure to have the money, for I should be very sorry, after so much time, pains and money spent that either you should fail of your money, or myself of a good discharge for the p29, and so desiring to hear from you as speedily as you can, with my love to you, my cousin Loomis, cousin Cullick, and the rest of my cousins and friends there with you, I rest,

In a manuscript by John Talcott the second (shown to me by Mr. Charles J. Hoadley of Hartford), he says: "My uncle Mr. Mott sold my bond father Talcott his house that he lived in in Braintree in Old England per order in the year 1644, my father Talcott then living in this house in Hartford."(*)

In the will of John Talcott (made between 1655 and 1660) he mentions his kinsman John Skinner. This John Skinner was the son of John Skinner and Mary, daughter of Joseph Loomis (4).

In Hotten's Lists of Emigrants from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600-1700, the ship Susan and Ellen, Edward Payne, Master, is said to have sailed with a load of emigrants from London to New England in May, 1635. This is the same ship, with the same master, that brought over Joseph Loomis in 1638.

Again in vol. 2, Records of Particular Court for the colony of Connecticut (preserved in the office of the Secretary of State, Hartford, Coun.), p. 116, is given an inventory of the estate of Mr. Joseph Loomis, deceased, Nov. 25, 1658, in which it is stated that there is a debt in England against Mr. Loomis's estate amounting to p12. 14s. 8d.

The preceding documents are regarded as sufficient authority for the statement that Joseph Loomis, who is mentioned in the records of Windsor as having bought a piece of land in that town, Feb. 2, 1640, came from Braintree, England, and landed in Boston in 1638.

Children of Joseph Loomis.--Joseph Loomis had five sons and three daughters, whose marriages are recorded in the town records at Windsor, as also the (*)John Talcott of Hartford had an uncle who was born in Braintree, Eng., and went to Spain and was a merchant in Madrid. He had a cousin who died in Seville, Spain. See Talcott's Gen., p. 8. births of their children, but as the date of the birth of Joseph's children is not recorded, it is difficult to determine the order of seniority.

In the Records of Particular Court for the colony of Connecticut, vol. 2, p. 115, is recorded the agreement of the children of Mr. Joseph Loomis respecting the division of the estate of said deceased, as approved by the court Dec. 2, 1658. This agreement is signed by the children in the following order:
Joseph Loomis.
Nicholas Olmsted.
Josias Hull.
John Loomis.
Thomas Loomis.
Nathaniel Loomis.
Mary Tudor.(*)
Samuel Loomis.

It is believed that the above order indicates the relative ages of the sons. This conclusion is founded upon the sentiments generally prevalent at that period with regard to the rights of seniority, and is confirmed by several circumstances.

1. Since the laws of England secured to the oldest son very important privileges over his younger brothers, the position of Joseph Loomis's name in the agreement above-mentioned is regarded as proving that he was the oldest son.

2. Joseph Loomis, the younger, and John Loomis had land granted to them from the Windsor Plantation in 1643. The other sons acquired no land until several years afterwards. The names of the five sons are repeatedly mentioned on the records at Windsor and Hartford, as jurors, freemen, troopers, etc., and these dates lead to the conclusion that Joseph and John were older than the other three sons.

3. The marriages of the sons, as recorded at Windsor, took place in the order of the names mentioned above.

Materials from which this genealogy has been derived.--The genealogy given in the following pages is for many years derived principally from the town records at Windsor, Connecticut About 1672, Samuel Loomis removed to Westfield, Massachusetts, and from him there descended a numerous family in that town. Soon after the year 1700, other descendants of Joseph Loomis settled in Colchester, Lebanon, Coventry and Bolton, from whom has sprung a numerous family; and soon afterwards they established themselves in Torrington, New Hartford, Suffield, and many other towns in Connecticut, as well as Springfield, Southwick, Sheffield, and other towns in Southwestern Massachusetts. I have consulted the records of all these towns with considerable care, and have visited nearly every Loomis family at present living in Connecticut or Massachusetts. Soon after the peace of 1783, several of the Loomis family emigrated to the States of Vermont and New York, and their descendants at the present time are found in nearly every county of the latter State. Early in the present century, and particularly after the war of 1812, several of the Loomis family removed to New Connecticut, and their descendants are now found in considerable numbers in all parts of Ohio, but particularly in the northern portion. Within the past forty years, the Loomis family has followed the grand tide of emigration westward, and representatives of Joseph Loomis are now to be found in all of the States formerly known as the "Free States," and a few are to be found in the States formerly known as the "Slave States."

In the following genealogy I have aimed to include all the descendants of Joseph Loomis of Braintree, England, who have retained the family name. No attempt has been made to enumerate the descendants of the daughters, who are known by other names than Loomis. It is not claimed that this list of descendants is complete. I have collected some additional names of persons who are (*)The ages assigned to the children of Mrs. Skinner indicate that she was older than John Loomis. See Fem. Branch, Loomis Gen., Vol. I, p. 108. presumed to be descendants of Joseph Loomis, but whose connection with him I have not yet been able satisfactorily to establish. It is hoped that future researches may enable us to recover most of the names which are now deficient in this record.

Unfounded traditions.--In my numerous visits with members of the Loomis family, I have met with a considerable number of traditions respecting the first settlement in this country which are either very inaccurate or entirely erroneous. One statement(*) which I have repeatedly seen is the following: "Joseph Loomis (then spelled Lomas), wife and children, left Plymouth, Eng., in the ship Mary and John, March 20, 1634, and landed at or near Boston, Massachusetts, May 30."

This statement is entirely untrue, and contains a jumble of facts and dates derived in part from the history of other settlers in Windsor. On the 20th of March, 1630, a company of 160 persons, including Rev. John Warham, afterwards the first minister of Windsor, embarked at Plymouth, Eng., in the ship Mary and John, a vessel of 400 tons burden, and landed at Nantasket, near Boston, May 30th. But it is established that Joseph Loomis and his family did not come over until 1638, and the first record which can be found of his name in Connecticut is dated Feb. 2, 1640, when he bought a piece of land at Windsor.

Another statement, furnished me by a gentleman who has given considerable attention to the genealogy of the Loomis family, is the following: "Some sixty years since, Dr. Wheelock, then president of Dartmouth College, N. H., received a letter from a gentleman in Leyden, Holland, stating that a Mr. Lomas had deceased at that place, leaving some property to the oldest Lomas in Windsor, Connecticut, and from concomitants it is believed that our family once resided in Leyden."

In July, 1857, I visited Leyden, mainly for the purpose of testing the truth of this rumor. I examined the Address-Buch of Leyden for the name of Lomas, but found no such name. I consulted the clerks at the post office and many other persons in the town, but no one knew any such person.

The deaths in Leyden are all recorded in large volumes preserved at the Stadthaus. From 1775 to 1795, and also since 1805, there has been prepared an alphabetical list of all the deaths; but the name of Lomas could not be found there. There was no alphabetical list of the deaths for other years, and it was a hopeless task to look for a particular name without some indication of the year in which it was to be found.

There is also an alphabetical list of all who have left unclaimed property since 1776. The name Lomas is not there to be found, nor any name which it is thought could be confounded with it. I also examined an alphabetical list of all whose property had been sold from 1770 to 1812, but did not find any name resembling Lomas. Hence it is inferred that no such person had property sold in Leyden during that period.

This evidence satisfies me that the rumor above referred to is erroneous, either in respect of the place (Leyden) or the person (Lomas). I have found no evidence which indicated that Joseph Loomis of Windsor ever resided upon the continent of Europe.

The name Lomas in Great Britain.--In some parts of Great Britain the names Lomas and Lomax are of very common occurrence, while in other portions these names are entirely unknown. Slater's Directory of Manchester for 1865 gives 102 persons of the name Lomas, 47 of the name Lomax, 2 of the name Lummis, and 2 of the name Lomnitz. The following table shows the result of a similar analysis of the directories of eight towns of England:

In order to determine in what part of Great Britain the Lomas family first appeared, or has been longest established, I have consulted with great care the Directories of Great Britain and Ireland.

I have searched through Slater's Directory of Ireland for 1856 without finding Lomas or Lomax in a single instance. I have also searched through Slater's Directory of Scotland for 1860 without finding either Lomas or Lomax in a single instance.

In Slater's Directory of Wales for 1850 the names Lomas and Lomax occur only once each, viz., Thomas Lomas, tinman, in Crickhowell, and John Lomax, bootmaker, in Bangor.

In order to discover, if possible, the home of this family in England at a remote antiquity, I have selected as the basis of comparison that class of persons which is presumed to be the least migratory. Merchants and bankers, from the very nature of their business, form a migratory class, and we find an occasional merchant of the name Lomas in nearly every one of the large cities of England. Mechanics are less migratory; but with the exception of the nobility, the persons who are thought to be most closely attached to the soil are the farmers.

With only one exception these places are all near Manchester, and are included within a circle of 30 miles radius, whose centre is 25 miles S. S. E. of Manchester. This point is near the boundary of the three counties of Chester, Derby, and Stafford, and this circle has without doubt been the home of the Lomas family for several centuries.(*)

23 The resemblance between the Christian names occurring in England and those found at Windsor, Connecticut, is quite remarkable. Thus in the small town of Stockport, Cheshire, the Post Office Directory gives eight persons (only) of the name Lomas, and their Christian names are John, Joseph, James, Isaac, Matthew, Jacob, Charles, and William. Each of these names is found in the first three generations of the Lomas family at Windsor, and the first four names occur in the aggregate 26 times.

From the preceding examination it is inferred that for a long period the principal home of the Lomas family in Great Britain has been in the vicinity of Derbyshire.

Early history of the name Lomas in England.--In order to trace the history of the name Lomas, I have consulted early English records as far as I have been able. In the "Calendar to Pleadings in the reigns of Henry VII. to Elizabeth," a work in two vols., folio, published in 1827, the names Lomas, Lomax, and Lommas occur in all seven times. In the "Proceedings in Chancery in the reign of Elizabeth," a work in three vols., folio, published by the British Government in 1827-32, the names Lomas and Lomax each occur once. In an English periodical entitled "Notes and Queries," 2d series, vol. 8th, is a communication containing some hints respecting the early history of the Lomas family. In "William Berry's Pedigrees of Hertfordshire families," is given the pedigree of Joshua Lomax, who died in 1685. In a few other ancient documents I have found occasional mention of the name Lomas. The following table embodies the substance of the information derived from the preceding sources, to which I have added the Lomas and Lomax graduates of the two oldest English Universities, down to 1850.

1435 Oliverus del Lumhalghes, Thomas del Lumhalghe, Radus del Lumhalghes, and Galfridus del Lumhalghes, held lands within the Manor of Bury, Lancaster Co., near Manchester.

1497 Lawrens Lomatz of Bolton, near Manchester, aged 70. Notes and Queries, 2d series, vol. 8, p. 478.

1556 Jan. 27, John Lomas, burned at Canterbury for heresy, that is, for being a Protestant. Zurich Letters on the English Reformation, vol. iii, p. 175.**

1561 Lawrent Lomax of Eye, Suffolk Co., born Lancaster Co., had a coat of arms recorded in the Visitation Book. British Museum Manuscripts.

1566 Lawrence Lomax, of Eye, Suffold Co., Proceedings in Chancery, vol. 2, p. 141.

1633 Lawrence Lomax, Bailiff of Eye, Suffolk Co., Calendar of State Papers, 1633 4. p. 577.

1649 Edward Lomas, of Pevensy, Sussex Co., Sussex Archeological Collections, vol. 24. p. 257. (*)See Chambers' Astronomy, p. 69. Monthly Notices, R. A. S. vol. 22, p. 232. W. Lummis of Manchester, Eng.
**In "the acts and monuments" of John Foxe, Vol. 7, p. 750, John Lomas is called a `young man' of the parish of Tenterden, Kent Co., and the nature of his heresy is described. In "select poetry" edited by Edward Fare, p. 165, the name is spelled Lo??. 1653 Anne Lomax, West Felton, Shropshire, Notes and Queries. 2d ser., vol. 8, p. 478.

1674 Joshua Lomax, Esq., of St. Albans, Sheriff of Hertfordshire, purchased the Manor of Childwickbury, Hertfordshire, about 1666. Died in 1675

1700 Joshua Lomax, Graduate Oxford Univ., Brasen Nose College. Mem. Parliament for St. Albans, 1708.

1727 Caleb Lomax of Childwickbury, Mem. Parl. for St. Albans 1727; died in 1729.

1784 Rev. Thomas Lomas, Graduate Oxford Univ., Brasen Nose College; died in 1843.

1848 James Lomax, Lieut.-General of British Army, 1841-48; died Nov. 14, 1848, ', 75.

The correspondent of "Notes and Queries," 2d ser., vol. 8, p. 478, says: "The ancient orthography of the name Lomax or Lomas appears in a MS. Rent-Roll of Sir John Pilkington of Bury, Knight, dated 13 Henry VI. (1435) wherein occur Radus del Lumhalghes, Oliverus del Lumhalghes, Thomas del Lumhalghe de Whetyll, and Galfridus del Lumhalghes, all holding lands within the manor of Bury, in the county of Lancaster."

At first view we might think that the name Lomax could not be derived from Lumhalghes, but a little reflection will render it less improbable. It is presumed that the name Lumhalghes was pronounced in two syllables. There are several English words ending in es in which the e is not sounded; such as besides, domes, fires, notes, etc., and in the early English the number of such cases was much greater than at present. Thus:
clerks was written clerkes.
fowls " fowles.
herbs " herbes.
hills " hilles.
months" monthes.
mountains was written mounteynes.
sins" synnes.
songs " songes.
towards " towardes.
wills " willes, etc.

The letter h simply denotes a strong breathing which is common in all parts of England, but more particularly in the northern counties. Canceling the letters h and e, the word is reduced to Lumalgs, and this would be pronounced very much like the word Lomax.

The same correspondent of "Notes and Queries," p. 478, states: "In a curious article contributed to the Chetham Society (Miscell., vol. 1855) being Examynatyons towcheynge Cokeye More, tpe. H. vii (1485-1509), one of the witnesses examined was Lawrens Lomatz of ye p'ish of Bolton, of the age of lxx years."

From the table on page 16 it appears that the name Lomas in England can be traced back a little more than four centuries, but I have been unable to trace it further. Surnames were first introduced into England about the time of the Conquest (A. D. 1066), but the custom came slowly into use during the eleventh and three following centuries. Hereditary surnames were not premanently settled among the lower and middle classes in England before the era of the Reformation (A. D. 1517). But Laurent Lomax, born about 1427, was a person of some distinction, and either he or his son (as will be shown hereafter) was authorized to have a coat of arms. The absence of any earlier mention in English annals of the name Lomax or Lomas is therefore thought to be somewhat remarkable, and may be explained if we suppose the family to have been natives of some other country, and that they had recently settled in England. The reasons for this last supposition will be stated hereafter.

The pronunciation of the name Lomas four centuries ago was probably well represented by the spelling Lomatz. Subsequently one branch of the family adopted the spelling Lomax and another the spelling Lomas, and these two modes of spelling have been pretty consistently adhered to in England down to the present time.

It is the common impression in England that the names Lomax and Lomas have the same origin. A surgeon of some eminence residing in Manchester, Eng., married a Miss Lomas. I visited the family in 1857, and was told that the lady's grandfather was named Lomax, but that her father (believing that the name was originally Lomas) adopted the spelling Lomas.

The change of the name Lomatz to Lomax and Lomas is no greater than the changes which have taken place in many other English names whose history can be traced back several centuries. We have an example of the facility with which the letter x is exchanged for the letter s or soft c, in the word index, whose plural is either indexes or indices.(*)

The Lomax coat of arms.--Lawrent Lomax of Lancaster Co. was authorized to bear a coat of arms sometime prior to the year 1561. In the reign of Philip and Mary (A. D. 1554), a commission of visitation was appointed to regulate the use and assumption of arms, and several similar commissions were subsequently issued under the reign of Elizabeth and her successors. At the Visitation of 1561, Lawrent Lomax of Eye, in Suffolk County, was recorded as having a coat of arms. This record is found in a manuscript volume contained in the British Museum, entitled "Pedigrees and Arms of Suffolk Families," Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, No. 1449. On page 110b of this manuscript is found a record of Laurent Lomax (born in Lancaster), with the names of his descendants (including children, grandchildren and great grandchildren), and his coat of arms is represented by a figure in the margin.

Lawrent Lomax, born in Lancaster.
Coat of Lawrent Lomax Mary dau. of Sir Edward
Arms of Eye in Suffolk Sulyard of Hawley in Suffolk. in the margin Lawrent Lomax=Ann dau. and heir of Ounger of Eye of Suffolk of Debenham in Suffolk.
Lawrent Lomax; John Lomax.
(*)Also note that Brussels was formerly Bruxelles; Mexico was Messico. The representation of the Lomax coat of arms on the frontispiece is taken from Berry's Pedigrees of Hertfordshire families, page 103, where is given the genealogy of Joshua Lomax of Childwickbury, Hertfordshire. This coat of arms is thus described: "Ermine a Greyhound, courant between three escallops, sable. Crest a demi greyhound Argent, collard Gules."

The last visitation of the heralds was made in 1683. Soon after this date the ordinances which had been made deciding who were entitled to bear arms were generally disregarded, and arms were assumed by any person who coveted this distinction.

Within a comparatively recent period, the Lomas family has assumed an independent coat of arms. In a book entitled "A complete body of Heraldry, by Joseph Edmondson, London, 1780," the name Lomax appears, but not the name Lomas. In the "British Herald, by Thomas Robson, Sunderland, 1830," and in numerous more recent works on heraldry, the Lomas coat of arms is described thus: "Argent between two palets, gules three fleurs de lis in pale sable, a chief azure. Crest, on a chapeau a pelican vulning herself proper."

The figure on the frontispiece representing the Lomas coat of arms, is copied from a drawing which I obtained in 1856 at an office of Heraldry in London. (See supplementary data on The Lomas Coat of Arms).

Can the Lomas family be traced to the continent of Europe?--In the hope of obtaining some further information as to the early history of the Lomas family, I have consulted the most extensive biographical dictionaries within my reach for the names Lomas and Lomax; also all the directories of cities and countries of Europe which I could find in the United States, or in those parts of Europe which I have visited; and I have also consulted all the large gazeteers that I could find in quest of places bearing either of the above names, or any name having a decided resemblance to either of them.

(A.) The following is a brief summary of the results obtained respecting the names of persons: 1. Cantoral (Hieron de) Lomas, a Spanish poet from Valladolid, lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and wrote various poems, which were published at Madrid in 1577. See Grosses Vollstandiges Universal Lexicon, 1738, v. 18, p. 330. Also Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, v. 3, p 513.

2. Giovanni Paul Lomazzo, an Italian painter and savant, born at Milan,(*) April 26, 1538, of a distinguished family from the village of Lomazzo, near Como. He was called to Florence by Cosmo de Medicis, who made him guardian of a gallery of 4,000 paintings. He died in 1598.-Biographie Universelle, Paris, 1819, t. 24, p. 637.

3. In the Directory of Spain (El Indicador de Espa¤a, Barcelona, 1864, 1865) appears the name of Nicolas Lomas at Santander. The name Loma occurs five times in the Provinces of Madrid, Toledo, Cordova and Burgos.

In 1864, Fidel Carcia Lomas was sub-director del Registro de la propiedad. --El Indicador, p. 23.

In 1874, General Loma commanded a division of the Spanish army operating against the Carlists.

4. In the Directory of Milan (Guida di Milano per l'anno, 1867) appear the names of Antoinetta Lomazzi and Ippolito Lomazzi.

5. In the Directory of France (Almanach des 500,000 adresses, 1867, de Paris et des Departments) no name is found resembling Lomas. The same is true of the Directories of Brussels, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. In the Directories (*)From 1535 to 1713 the duchy of Milan was a dependency of the Spanish crown. of Berlin, Dresden and Leipsic, the name Lommatsch frequently occurs. Also the Directory of Berlin for 1866 contains the name Lomax, but upon inquiry this was found to be an Englishman recently established in Germany.

(B.) The following is a summary of the places bearing the name Lomas, or a name somewhat resembling it. Lomas, a village in the Province of Palencia, Spain, with a population of 519.--Bescherelle Dictionaire de Geographie Universelle.

Lomiswyl (i. e., Lomis-ville), a village of Switzerland, four miles west of Soleure.

Lomas, a town in the Argentine Republic, South America. Lat. 31 deg. 30 min. S. Long. 62 deg. 18 min. W.

Lomas Bay, Straits of Magalhaens, S. A. Lat. 52 deg. 30 min. S. Long. 69 deg. 10 min. W.

Point Loma, San Diego, California. Lat. 32 deg. 42 min. N. Long. 117 deg. 15 min. W.

Loma Hill, a mountain in Western Africa. Lat. 9 deg. 25 min. N. Long. 9 deg. 51 min. W.

Do the preceding facts afford a basis for any conjecture respecting the early history of the Lomas family? It is generally contended by writers on onomatology that all proper names had originally a peculiar and appropriate meaning. (See Salverte's Essai historique sur les noms d'homme, t. 1, p. 7.) Is the name Lomas derived from any word or combination of words in the English language? No one has ever suggested any such derivation which could be considered as in any degree plausible. The conclusion seems to follow of necessity that the name Lomas is not of English origin.** The same considerations lead to the conclusion that it is not of French, or German, or Italian origin. The case is, however, different with Spain. Loma in Spanish signifies a little hill, and lomas is the plural of loma, signifying hills. It is probable, therefore, that the names Loma and Lomas were early introduced as surnames in Spain, and we can understand why these names were applied to places which were inhabited by Spaniards, or of which the Spaniards were the first explorers. The conclusion naturally follows that the Lomas family in England came from Spain about the year 1400, or perhaps earlier. The names Lomis and Lomisville, applied to villages in Switzerland, render it probable that persons of the same name from Spain, or perhaps from the Lomas family established in England, migrated to Switzerland.

The names Lomazzi and Lomazzo in Northern Italy are also thought to have originated from the same stock. These names differ from Lomax or Lomatz only in substituting an Italian termination.

This will appear from the following examples:
The English name Lawrence becomes Lorenzo in Italian.
" Morris " Maurizio "
" Boniface " Bonifazio "
" Florence " Fiorenze "
" Nice " Nizza "
" Venice " Venezia "
(*)See maps accompanying Murray's North Italy, Part I.

**See hereinafter, what Prof. C. A. Hoppin, Jr., says on this very interesting point. It is possible that the name Lommatsch in Saxony is simply the name Lomatz modified by a change of termination, so as better to express the peculiar German pronunciation.

It seems, therefore, probable that the Lomas family originated in Spain; that four or five centuries ago, and perhaps earlier, one or more members of this family became established in England, while others of the family found their way into Northern Italy.

It may appear strange that when the facilities for travel were so restricted, as they were in Europe during the middle ages, the Lomas family should have become so widely scattered. But we know that during the Crusades (from A. D. 1096 to 1270), adventurers from England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy, were united in a common cause; and those crusaders who returned from Palestine instead of returning to their native homes, were frequently dispersed into foreign countries. The result must have been a considerable mingling together of the people of the different nations of Europe.

It may be objected that the fact that Laurent Lomax had a coat of arms proves that he was not of foreign origin. Such an objection is not well founded. Many English families that have a coat of arms are of French origin, while others are of German, Italian, or Spanish origin. Among families of this description having a German origin occur the names Deycheler, Kramer, Lauginger, Mazzinghi, and Weber; among those families having an Italian origin occur the names Castillon, Corsellis, De Moline, and Sileto; while among the families admitted to be of Spanish origin occur the names Ayala, Florio, Gambow, and Ilbery.

Other families of the Loomis name.--Besides the descendants of Joseph Loomis of Windsor, there are in the United States other families known by the name of Loomis, Lummis, or Lomas. Edward Lomas, born about 1606, came from London in 1635, and settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, as early as 1648. He had six children: John resided in Salem, Massachusetts; Samuel settled in Hamilton, Massachusetts; Nathaniel settled in Dover, N. H.; Jonathan settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts; Edward settled in Cohanzy, N. J.; and there was a daughter, who married John Sherring. The descendants of Edward Lomas generally spell their name Lummis, and this circumstance is usually sufficient to distinguish them from the Windsor family; but some of them have adopted the spelling Loomis, and a few have adopted the anomalous spelling Lamos. I have undertaken to make out the genealogy of this family, and have made considerable progress, but my manuscript is not yet ready for publication.(*)

There was also a Joseph Lomas born in England about 1761, who was a soldier in Burgoyne's army, who remained in this country after the war, settled in Andover, Massachusetts, and died in Erie Co., N. Y., about 1830. He had ten children, among whom were six sons, who married and had children. They generally claim that the proper spelling of their name is Lomas, but it is sometimes spelled Loomis. I have also undertaken to make out a complete genealogy of this family.(*)

Besides the three families above referred to, in most of the larger cities we find persons of the name Lomas who were born in England, or whose parents came from England since the peace of 1783. Such persons uniformly claim that the proper spelling of their name is Lomas, but in the city directories it is frequently spelled Loomis. I have not yet found a person in the United States bearing the name Lomas, Loomis, or Lummis who does not probably belong to one of the preceding classes; in other words, there are believed to be in the United States but two Lomas families whose ancestors came to this country before the Revolution of 1776; the members of one (being descended from Joseph of (*)A copy of this and much additional data is now in the possession of Elisha S. Loomis, of Berca, O. Windsor) almost without exception spelling their name Loomis, and those of the other family (descended from Edward of Ipswich) generally spelling their name Lummis. If the work which I have commenced should be ever completed, it will show the genealogy of every person in the United States bearing the name Loomis, Lummis, or Lomas, and whose ancestors came to this country before the commencement of the present century.(*)

"Early history of the name Lomas in England," these additional facts are pertinent.

The name "del Lumhalghes" appears as "del Lumhalghe" in records of the time of Henry VI.

"Laurens Lomatz" appears in one author as "Laurent Lomax, b. 1427, of Bolton Parish, Eng. A witness at ae. 70."

Jossu Von Lom, b. 1500, in Buren, Holland, a physician, wrote a work and signed his name (Lottu) Lommius.

"1668. Rev. John Lomax" was the father of John Lomax, who was the ancestor of the Lomaxes of Va., and N. C., U. S. A.

In Notes and Queries, Dec. 10, 1859, the same name is written the following three ways,--Lummas, Lummis, and Lomax.

Also it appears that Anne and Sarah Lomax, of Shropshire, were daughters of Jervase Lummas, of Shropshire.

Also Bardsley's (Ed'n of 1901) Dictionary of British and Welsh Surnames, p. 492 and 500, for name Loomis has:

"Lomas, Lomax, Local, `of Lomax,' a small spot in the parish of Bury Co., Lanc. I do not know whether it can still be identified, but it has given birth to a family name that has ramified itself in a wonderful manner."

The double instances given in 5, 6, 7 and 8 prove, if proof were needed, that Lomax and Lomas are one and the same name. In Manchester Directory Lomas occurs 31 and Lomax 18 times; London, 7, 10; New York, 3, 4."

Page 500--"Lummis--Local, a variation of Lomas, q. v. 1702, Bapt. Eliz. d. Edw. Lumis; St. Jas. Clerkenwell, ii, 18.

1796, married,--Wm. Lummis and Margery Kneebone; St. Geo. Hun. Sq. ii, 148. Manchester, 1; East Rid. Court Div. 1; New York, 2."

(*)It is now (1885) established that one William Lomas, a forgeman (i. e. trained to forge iron) came from Wales and settled in East Nantmel, Chester Co., Pa. He bought land there in 1797 and died in 1803, leaving sons Wm., Thomas and John; from John are now known many descendants. It is said that Wm. Lomas came in the British army, but deserted to the Am. army while at Valley Forge. He helped to make the first gun ever made in Pa. The Name Lomas on the Continent of Europe

In British Family Names, 2nd edition, 1903, is found the following:-- "Lomax, Lomas. Fr. Lammas,Lamusse; Fl. Lammers; D'ch. Lommesse, p. n. (time of birth (?) famous). Lammasse in Rot. Hund.Lamisso, a Lomb. King 5th century."

The following historical note relative to the Scottish border revolution, 1095, makes reference to a name which seems closely related to the name Loomis.

In "The Border-History of England and Scotland" by the Rev. Geo. Ridpath of Stitchill, revised by his bro., the Rev. Philip Ridpath, of Hutton (edition of 1810, London), on p. 72, we find this:
"Soon after, (the last revolution in Scotland, 1095), the young king, (Edgar, King of Scotland, in 1098), in testimony of his gratitude, made a present of the above-mentioned convent (the convent of Durham), of the place and lands of Coldingham, together with several villages in its neighborhood. . .(*)

Is not Lumis (omitting the "den") nearer Loomis than Spanish Loma, Lancastrian Lumhalghes, or even Lomax? Was there a Lumis family sufficiently established in 1095 to stamp its name on this "border" place, or did the place (through the meaning of the term) give rise to a Lumis family? And was this family in any way connected with the early Lancastrian family? Who can tell?

In Savage's Gen. Dic'y, Vol. III, p. 111-115, the name is spelled eight ways. In England and the U. S., the name has been written or recorded each of the following 42 ways since the year 1600: Lamas, Lames, Lamus, Lammas, Lamos. Lamys, Lewmas, Lomack, Lomacks, Lomas, Lomatz, Lomax, Lomes, Lomies, Lomis, Lommas, Lommatz, Lommes, Lomnitz, Lomys, Loomas, Loomax, Loomes, Loomis, Loomiss, Lomes, Looms, Loomys, Lowmas, Lumas, Lumass, Lumax, Lumes, Lumis, Lummas, Lummis, Lummix, Lummox, Lummus, Lumus, Lumux, Lumys.

1. The descendants of Joseph Lomas, the soldier in Burgoyne's army, who settled at Andover, Massachusetts, and of Wm. Lomas, of Ashtabula Co., O., who settled there about 1870, coming from England, generally spell their name Lomas; a few spell it Loomis or Lumis.

2. The descendants of Wm. Lomas, said to have come to America during the Rev. War, and who settled in Chester Co., Pa., generally spell their name Loomis.

3. The descendants of Edward Lumas or Lumax, also written Lomas and Lummis, of Ispwich, Massachusetts, 1648, generally spell their name Lummis or Lummus; but many are now found who spell it Loomis.

4. The descendants of Joseph Loomis (Lomas) of Windsor, Conn, 1639, now nearly always spell their name Loomis.

(*)The Charter together with the mansion of Coldingham, mentions the following mansions, viz.: Aldcambus, Lumisden, Regintun (Renton), Riston, Swinewde (Swinewood), Farndun (Farnyside), the two Eituns (Aitons), Prenagest (Prendergest), and Cramesmuthe. All these, with small variations in spelling, are the names of villages to this day situated in the neighbourhood, except Cranesmutbe. At present, in England, the spelling Lomas is well established.(*) In the U. S. of America and Canada, the spelling Loomis is generally found.

The Lomas Coat of Arms
"He who
inherits arms is A gentleman, well bred and of good name."
--King Henry V.

The motto "Ne cede malis" is found in Verg. Ae., 6, 95, and the translation is, "Do not give way to misfortunes." The coat of arms by the rules of heraldry may be interpreted thus:

The pallet, signifying military strength and fortification, was given to those who impaled or otherwise defended cities, or supported the government of their sovereign, "by standing up uprightly for prince and country." The Fleur-delis was often granted to those who had taken part in the French wars. The Pelican is the device of the inner temple, London. And vulning itself signifies, that it will give its own blood for its young, hence a symbol of devoted and selfsacrificing charity. On p. 98, of Wescott's Hst. of the Eng. Bible (the Bishop's Bible which appeared in 1568), Wescott says: "At the end is an elegant couplet in the device of the pelican feeding her young." The couplet is:
"Matris ut haec proprio stirps est satiata cruore,
Pacis item proprio, Christe, cruore tuos."
Translated, it reads:
"As this young is fed by the actual blood of the mother
So, O Christ, you feed yours with your own blood."
The signification of the colors are,-- Argent, peace and sincerity; Gules, magnanimity and military fortitude; Sable,
constancy; and Azure, loyalty and truth.

Some Historical Facts Belatine to Arms Arms, so called because originally displayed upon defensive armor. Coat of arms, because embroidered upon the coat worn over the armor.

William the Conqueror did not use arms. Uncertain when introduced into England, but in the 13th century they came rapidly into use.

In the infancy of heraldry every knight assumed whatever arms he chose, but the Crusades, by bringing together soldiers of different nations, tended to produce a certain assimilation in their heraldry, all of which are now under the direction of the Heralds' College of London.

In America any one is free to adopt any device, or coat of arms, he may choose. For our pioneer forefathers left all such trappings in the mother country, and for now ten generations their descendants have been more than "gentlemen," they have been useful members of society and defenders of equality. Yet, is not the advice given in the report of the Committee on Heraldry, of the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Society, made in 1898 and adopted in 1899, the better rule to follow? See same at end of Prof. Hoppin, Jr.'s report, on Origin of the Name and Ancestry in England.

(*)In "Homes of Family Names in Great Britain," by Heary ?? Gappy, M. B., edition of 1890, p. 135, the author says: "Lomas is a name very numerous on the Cheshire border and in the viciaity of Stockport in that county," viz, Derbyshire. On p. 57 he says: "Lomas. Cheshire, 40 (meaning 40 per 10,000 of population); Derbyshire, 61; Lancashire, 11; Staffordahire, 14. In Lancashire it is occasionally spelt Lomax." (The reader will note that the spelling Loomis does not occur at all in Guppy's work).

"Our pioneer ancestors were `very respectable, well-to-do, religious, practical, temperale, industrions and honest' people." To whom are we kin? Who was my father's mother's great-grand-father? But few can tell. Shakespeare makes one say: "O call back yesterday, bid time return."

But we must call back a hundred years to find an answer. And every generation beyond increases the difficulty of finding our ancestors. How rapidly the number of our ancestors increase is easily seen through the following: Every human being has had two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. One's ancestors for 10 generations are 512; fifteen generations, over 16,000; twenty-five generations, over 16,000,000; at the beginning of the Christian era, more than all the people on the earth then. But what a paradox! How can it be? What does it teach? This--that some remote ancestor is common to several lines. The writer has traced his lineage through three sons and one daughter of pioneer Joseph Loomis. You, possibly, may trace your lines through more than four of his children. Because of this our actually different ancestors are reduced in number, and the paradox vanishes, even though we are kin to the preceding countless millions--to kings enthroned and the vilest beggar in the wake of a crusade, to some historic genius and some unnamed serf.

But from this long look into the past let us consider the future and enumerate, if possible, the untold descendants of Joseph and Mary (White) Loomis. And to be definite let us suppose that they had but two sons and two daughters, each marrying and each again having two sons and two daughters, and so on for ten generations. Granting this, how would the count stand, as to those who bear the name Loomis, and those whose names through the daughters are no longer Loomis, no marriage occurring in which both parties are descendants of Joseph Loomis. Joseph Loomis's sons and grandsons married into the leading families of Windsor and Hartford. This fact fixes his social position. If other evidence is desired that the Loomises of early Windsor belonged to the best and most prosperous classes, the following is submitted:

In 1675 the assessor or lister divided the families of Windsor for taxation for rivulet ferry purposes into five classes. (See Stiles's Anc. Windsor, Vol. I, p. 88). The first class included such men as have a family, a horse and 4 oxen; there were 29 in this class, two of whom were Joseph and Nathaniel Loomis, Nos. 1 and 7 of this catalogue. The second class included such men as have a family, a horse and 2 oxen; there were 42 in this class, two of whom were John and Thomas Loomis, Nos, 5 and 6 of this catalogue. Samuel Loomis, No. 8, had already removed to Westfield, Massachusetts, hence his name is not found in this tax list.

The Loomis Family in the Old World An Original and Exhaustive Inquiry into the Origin of the Name and Ancestry in England of Joseph Loomis the Emigrant to New England in 1638
BY CHARLES A. HOPPIN, JR.
FOR "The Loomis Family of America"
[This narration has naught to do with lords, dukes, earls, or gentlemen of leisure, nor with courts and castles; it is an account of a "plain practical people," such as of whom Lincoln said: "God must love them, for he made so many of them." Appropriate thereunto we shall not indulge in fancies, or appeal unduly to the imagination; this hereinafter is, therefore, a recital of facts, as to actual persons, places and events, interpreted reasonably, without prior bias.]

"WEARY with wandering in the desert world Gladly I turn to thee, old Lancaster." The name of Loomis (Lomas) and the blood it represented, when this surname originated, were both Saxon, neither being Norman, Celtic, Pictic or other. The blood was of Lancashire, and in that region the surname was first assumed. For eight hundred years, from Saxon times until the present hour, the Lomas family appears to have resided in the very parish in which it first became a family having a surname.

The surname of Lomas, or, as written in America, Loomis, is territorial; it was taken from a locality. The locality was what has been modernly known as the village of Haulgh, now a part of Tonge-with-Haulgh, which is a township in the civil and municipal parish of Bolton. Bolton is a parish of 150,000 population, --a market-town in the Wapentake of Salford, which is the southwestern division of the county Palatine of Lancaster, and within the Duchy of Lancaster, in the northwest of England.

e must first picture, somewhat briefly as best we may, the conditions of buman life and customs in this part of England where the blood of Lomas inhabited before it became finally designated by a surname.

What is now Lancashire seems to have been but little peopled by the Britons prior to the Roman conquest of Britain in the year A. D. 43; and the Romans did not, apparently, greatly develop the region, though various remains of their occupation have been found. The Roman influence, however, was progressive for four hundred years. Then, in 401, when the Roman Empire gave up its dominion over Britain, withdrawing its "legions," this wild and remote region of England once more, before 547, became reduced (when the Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon kingdom was set up) almost to a state of nature. History affirms that though not absolutely depopulated, the settlements must have been few and small, and feebly defended by the poor remnant of the aboriginal inhabitants, who were thus left subject to the raids of the savage Picts. The Saxons (Anglo-Saxons) or the English, as they are called, who came from the north of Europe, (the southern shores of the Baltic sea), beginning with the year 400 and forming the Kingdom of Northumbria in 547 (the whole north of England) and other kingdoms, are therefore to be looked upon as the prime creators of Lancashire. It is said that there, as elsewhere, they gave birth to a new era of manners, language and religion. They re-peopled this part of England, named the settlements and developed it in every way. Consequently, about all the place-names are pure Saxon, often chosen to convey some distinctive and natural circumstance in the situation of a village. They founded Haulgh and Bolton and Salfordshire and named them. The Saxon dominion was complete; everything about Lancashire was substantially Saxon, though the Saxon remains are not as numerous as in other parts. With the development of population, peace and prosperity continued without great hindrance, until the Norman conquest of England. The organization of society up to that time, or rather the home life, is interesting to note, especially as among the Saxons were the men who, known among each other only by Christian names, such as Egfrith, Cuthbert, Egbert, Siward, Osbert, Wiun, Utred, Ulf, Ranulph, Swaine, Hasebert, Penda, Ralph, Edwin, Hugh, were the ancestors of the man who first assumed the surname that we now know as Lomas and Loomis; it is well here to note that Mason, the historian of Norfolk, explains how these Saxons first found the greater part of England overgrown with woods, or marshy through the frequent floods of unembanked rivers. "Boars, deer and game in general abounded, and hunting, which was conducted uniformly on foot, was not only a pastime, but an important occupation of the settler. The unit of society was the head of the family. Every family lived by itself and safeguarded its own members. The quarrel of one of the family was as a rule the quarrel of all. Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren dwelt together, and these family guilds formed the first villages. When the English settled here their clearings or winnings of agricultural land were each of a family character. The population was sparse, and natural boundaries divided the ham of one family from the tun of another--woodland in many cases; in others, the moor; sometimes a fen constituted the frontier of the mark. Any one crossing this frontier had to blow a born as announcing his approach, otherwise he was to be regarded as an invader, and attacked accordingly. Within the mark each member of the family guild had his own home and byre, but the woods and wastes were in common, and there each man could pasture his cattle or feed his pigs. Horses were not used in agriculture, neither were they ridden to battle, except in later years but little before the Norman conquest. Each household had its slaves, whose lot, however, was not entirely hopeless, as in more than one way might the position of a freeman be obtained. These slaves were recruited from the conquered Britons, from members of rival families defeated in war, and from the children of freemen by slave mothers. As time went on the villages became manors. Natural superiority in some particular member of the family group asserted itself in war with neighboring families or with foreigners, and the ascendancy thus obtained tended to become hereditary. The lesser freemen found in war time that their chief safety lay in following some powerful local leader, and gradually an aristocracy was formed from men whose land was tilled for them, whose occupation was rule and the administration of rough justice in peace, and leadership and personal prowess in the field of war. The Damsh wars tended to foster aristocracy, and something not very dissimilar to the Norman feudal system prevailed in many places sometime before the landing of William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066. Each manor had, not only its own agriculture, but its own trade. The clothes, the shoes, the weapons of the village were all made at home by artisan members of the family guild or local group. The houses were all of wood, and were built by carpenters of the village. Each manor was in all essentials self-supporting. The monasteries were generally also self-supporting manors. They, too, had their farmers and their artisans, and both their husbandry and their handicraft set an example to the neighboring civil manors, and tended to raise the agricultural and industrial character of the whole district.

Lancashire was less turbulent than some states, but quite as aggressive as any of its neighbors. The early English were great eaters, and Lancashire men were not behind the rest of their countrymen. Many contrasts between the Saxons and their Norman oppressors are not usually drawn in favor of the former, who are claimed to have been great drinkers as well as eaters; but while they lacked the culture and refinement of the more polished Normans, they had, nevertheless, erected in England several substantial kingdoms, established some of the foundations of the great fundamental laws of modern England, produced Alfred the Great, "the purest, grandest, most heroic soul that ever sprang from our race," and done the broad, rough work of making the isle of Britain ready for the advancement and elevation to which the Norman influence subsequently lifted its people. An ancient chronicler complained that the Normans "combed their hair once a day, bathed themselves once a week, changed their clothes frequently, and by all these arts of effeminacy, as well as by their military character, rendered themselves so agreeable to the women that the wives and daughters of the English were by no means safe in the company of such desperadoes."

Of the Saxons it is claimed that they were of the German race, and before that, came from the Aryan peoples, who were largely agricultural, in the eastern part of Europe.

A modern writer, Jean Finot of France, claims that this Aryan race does not exist; that there is no "Caucasian" race, nor any such thing as race, any way; that the contrasts in the various groups of the human species are caused by differing environments, conditions of climate and life and of nutrition. "There is no French race, no German race, no Anglo-Saxon race. Every one of these supposed stocks is an intricate blend, a cross-breed, to the making of which have gone much the same elements in every case. We are all alike, and there is not a `pure blood' on the earth." We need not be concerned as to this, even if there is no racially pure blood, for the distinctions that nationality have made are quite sufficient to mark out our so-called Saxons as forming a great clan, (if not absolutely a pure and separate race), the mental and physical features of which are still plain to see and which still continue to stamp their characteristics and domination upon the world.

The Saxons had a love of liberty and a disposition to wander, and were great navigators, especially those who lived on the northern shores of the Baltic Sea and became known as the Northmen. They ventured upon the soil of every kingdom within their reach and generally conquered. "They were broad-shouldered, deep-chested, long-limbed, with slender waists and small hands and feet; their build told of strength, which was so prized by them that their puny infants were exposed and left to die. Their complexion was almost always fair, and the fair alone were considered beautiful or well-born." An early writer said of one of these northern Saxons: "His face was large; his forehead broad, with mickle eyebrows; his nose not long, but thick; his upper lip wide and long, while his chin and jaw bones were enormously broad. He was thicknecked and his shoulders of superhuman breadth. In shape well-built and taller than the most of men."

Our readers will find a deeper study of the Saxons an interesting pastime, since it is plain that the blood of the earliest Lomases was Saxon, as distinguished from the Celtic, and Pictic, and the Norman which entered largely into the people of the isle of Britain. We may properly look upon the Saxons residing in the Wapentake or Hundred of Salford (a section of Lancashire consisting of a hundred townships) prior to the year 1100, as divided into four classes--men of birth, men of property, freemen, and serviles; and also we may believe, from the evidences of the earliest recorded Lomases, that they were men of property, and freemen, neither men of title, nor serviles. The chief landholders were the thanes, (thengs), who held of the king, which term was the Saxon equivalent for northern baron. Some men of yeomen birth or station were called thanes, as also were some freeholders or franklins, because their holdings were hereditary and their tenure free. Some of the ancestors in Salfordshire of the American Loomises were doubtless of this rank. In 1066 there were 175 manors held by as many thanes in the southern part of Lancashire between the rivers Ribble and Mersey; and in 1086, after the Normans had claimed title thereto, there were no large estates, or fiefs. In 1086 the annual value of all the vast property in Lancashire south of the Ribble was p120, (equivalent to the present p13,200), while in 1814 the income of the same lands had increased to p2,569,761. In 1066 the Hundred of Salford yielded p37:4:0; in 1866 it yielded in revenues p4,082,799.

Salford Hundred (embracing the city of Manchester) is thus, to-day, the world's greatest textile-producing area of its size, and Lomas descendants are found to have been concerned in this development during the past century. The title to the land of Salford was held, nominally, in 1066, by Edward the Confessor, King of England, yielding the aforesaid p37:4:0, but with the death of his successor, Harold II at the battle of Hastings, in the same year, that right passed to William, Duke of Normandy, the "Conqueror" of England. While we are told in the introduction to the printed Pipe Rolls of Lancashire that it was not for "a long period of years after 1066" that the Norman power was effectively demonstrated in Lancashire, owing to this county's remoteness and to its not being considered as an inviting region, and liable to give armed resistance to the Normans at any time, the general effect of the conquest upon this particular part of England was ill. It is plainly shown in the Domesday Book that in 1066 Salford's revenue of p37:4:0 had, in 1086, fallen to 12 pence per annum, and only 63 families are therein accounted for in the whole Hundred of Salford. Many may have escaped observation, possibly by temporarily sequestering themselves in the mountains standing nearby to the eastward. And though the Domesday Book shows that William the Conqueror gave the Hundred of Salford to his follower, Roger of Poitou, as a share of the spoils of victory, who in turn parcelled it out to Nigel, Warin and Goifford (all Normans), these Normans seem to have had little to do with the property other than to claim a yearly revenue from those minor lords, the actual residents, long hitherto in possession --the thanes and drengs (free tenants, holding of the thanes by a tenure partly military, partly servile). We obtain the impression here that our Saxon ancestors with their neighbors presented a formidable front to the Normans, and like the people of the other northern parts of England, effectually prevented, for many years, the actual encroachment of the Norman power; thus the apparent barrenness and worthlessness of Salfordshire, as presented to view in the Domesday survey, wherein only 63 families are accounted for, probably does not portray the actual conditions throughout. From the same source we are informed that Count Roger de Poitou was "little pleased with his rugged northern fief and its inhabitants." A generation after the Conquest, a great portion of the landholding population, the thanes and drengs, or other various serjeants of the castles and wapentakes would appear from their names to have been of Anglo-Saxon blood, or descendants of the Danes who had overspread the country in the tenth century. The parsons of the thirty or more churches which existed in Lancashire, at the Conquest, probably differed little from their neighbors except in name. Bolton (Saxon Boltune or Bothel-tun, a town adjoining to a principal mansion or mansion-house) manor and town was acquired from Roger de Poitou by Randle, Earl of Chester. Later, with other surrounding towns it became a holding of the earls and dukes of Lancaster, and to-day remains within what is called the Duchy of Lancaster, which is crown property; but Bolton has been held of the crown by the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, for several hundred years, who acquired their rights after the treason of their predecessors, the Pilkingtons, whose rent-roll contains references to Lomases, as hereinafter.

With the foregoing brief statement of the conditions existing in the region where the blood abounded from which later came the man who then first took the earliest form of the present surname of Loomis, we enter upon a little study of the actual origin and meaning of what is now in America, the name of Loomis, prefacing this with some remarks which will tend to illustrate the general origin of family names.

Surnames are only about a thousand years old in Christendom. Christian names are evidently even pre-historic; and some sort of a name for each man or woman may well have been among the first formal vocal utterances of a human being. Christian names, therefore, are as old as any language or form of speech. (A certain writer upon surnames has begun his discourse with the declaration that "names commenced in Eden--the name of Adam denoting his origin from the earth." If this presumer refers to the Biblical Eden, there is evidence that would have modified his opinion, while if the declaration is recited as historical fact, he has been still further misled by some one's imagination. It is sufficiently established, by scientific scholars, that the name of Adam was taken from the earlier Babylonian "Adama" which meant "the race;" the name of Eve was also obtained from an earlier Babylonian word, viz., "Eva," meaning "woman.")

The Greeks had only one name; the Romans frequently used two Christian names. Celtic and Teutonic names were very significant personally, and continued down from father to son.

Surnames began to come into use in England with the eleventh century, through the Norman influence. "There is no village in Normandy that gave not its denomination to some family in England." "Every town, village, and hamlet in England and Scotland hath afforded names to families." Such surnames are "territorial," and generally accompanied by the prepositions "de," or "del," as in Piers de Gaveston, Henry del Halle. Other surnames sprang from every conceivable source, serious or trivial, "from the highest things celestial to the lowest things terrestrial," from "Qualities of the Minde" and "Habitudes of the Body,"--from ages and times, from costume, color of the complexion and clothing,--from animals, nicknames, old Christian names, nationality, etc., etc. "All names were significant," says a high authority, "in their first application to individuals." This is the great and important fact that has especial bearing upon the name of Loomis. The actual situation, with respect to personal nomenclature in Bolton, as elsewhere in the Hundred of Salford and in Lancashire, when the Loomis Saxon ancestors there dwelt, and when the Norman introduction of surnames was about to happen, (in the twelfth century and to become fairly adopted in the thirteenth century and quite generally established in the fourteenth) was simply this:--The Saxon place-names were thoroughly fixed long before the Norman conquest of 1066; the later Norman influence could scarcely affect them at all. But with personal names there was great need of a change; the Saxons used only one Christian name, and sometimes two, such as Edwin, son of Leofwine, which custom was clung to by the Welsh until quite modernly, with their "John ap Thomas," "Evan ap Williams," etc. This led to confusion because the Saxon language was not copious enough to designate individuals sufficiently specific and distinctive, with their increasing numbers. Hence, the owners or holders of lands relinquished the inconvenient habit of the single name, added to it the name of their place of residence with the "de" or "del" placed between the Christian name and the place-name. The latter was either the name of a house, farm, lot, corner, road, hamlet, or descriptive of a site or location, or of some natural characteristic with which such land-holder was associated. Yet these names were not unchangeable at first, and might be varied with a man's place of abode. If a son, for instance, left the place of his father's home, he would assume a new denomination from the estate to which he had removed. His brother could do the like; and thus all evidence of their relationship was wanting as far as their names would show. Their descendants became confirmed each to the different surname of his father, and so many families became lost for ever to later identity with each other of their kin.

The records of the thirteenth century contain thousands of instances of this truth, and our family was no exception to this early rule. In these same early times men who had no land did not attain to the dignity of a territorial surname. These men appear in the Pipe, Hundred and Subsidy Rolls and in charters, etc., as "Radulphus fil Richard," etc., or under surnames taken from their trade or other personal significancies. Men of landed property in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries generally distinguished themselves by territorial surnames as denoting their better station. It is, therefore, pleasing, in the fullest sense, to find that the name of Loomis is beyond the possibility of question, of exactly such origin.

There is no mention in the Domesday Book of 1086 of the surname of Loomis in any form whatever, in any county of England; this date is between one and two hundred years before the name became applied to any person. It was a place-name, however, before 1086, in the parish of Bolton, Lancashire; but its omission from the Domesday Book as a designation of locality is explained by the fact that it then had reference merely to a part or small section of Bolton within which it was early comprised. Neither is there any mention of the surname in the Pipe Rolls (Great Rolls of the Exchequer) of 1130-1216; this period was still too early for the surname to have become firmly formed and fixed in Lancashire. The Hundred Rolls of King Edward I would afford the earliest opportunity of finding the surname were they extant; these records were taken in 1224, upon the king's return from the Seventh and Last Crusade to the Holy Land, and they constitute the results of an official investigation of all the rights and revenues of the Crown, touching property, persons and privileges, etc., which rights had become abused and encroached upon by the people during the years of the king's absence. Lancaster is one of the six counties for which no Hundred Rolls have been yet discovered in the archives. All other records of Lancashire for the thirteenth century have been examined without the surname being found.

The surname of Loomis is, barring the exception hereinafter mentioned, an American modernization of Lomas, the original form of which was "Lumhalgh," or "Lumhaulgh," "del Lumhalgh," "Lumhales"--pronounced without sounding the letters "h" and "g."

The earliest record, now existing in England, of this surname (and it may be said, in this connection, that several months have been devoted to the accurate searching of every record of any possible bearing upon the subject) is found in a Lay Subsidy Roll, number 130-6, at the Record Office in Chancery Lane, London. This parchment is the original record (as made) of the assessment and collection of a tax upon the inhabitants of Lancashire granted to Edward III by the parliament, in the sixth year of his reign--1333--such subsidies generally having been assessed at a tenth or a fifteenth of the value of the lands or Map of County Lancaster, England.

Here, at Bolton, near Salford, long before the Norman Conquest, the Loomis Family originated.

Under the Hundred of Salford, for the then hamlet of what is now Pendleton, in the parish of Eccles, about two miles west from the city of Manchester and twelve miles southeast of Bolton, this roll gives, in ink still quite as clear as on the day it was written five hundred and seventy-five years ago:--"Penhilton Rico de Lmhales." "Lum" in the names Lumhales or Lumhalgh is abbreviated in this roll to "Lm" or "Lu" as is proven by the use of a short curved dash|(this|is not reproduced over the "m" or "u" in this volume as in the original rolls) over the first syllable, as is also found with other names and words, e. g., "Item" to "Itm" in the rolls of that period; and the spelling here employed is not necessarily after a fixed form used by Richard de Lumhales himself, but, while it does occur in an official document, it was merely so written by the scribe whose duty it was to make out the rolls for his superior officers, the official collectors of the subsidy. This roll affords the only instance of the Lumhales spelling until 1394.

The further significance of this item of the assessment of a subsidy of two shillings upon the land-holding of "Rico de Lmhales" of Pendleton is that, first, that either he, or his ancestor of a generation or two or three before him, had removed to Pendleton after the surname had become established elsewhere, so as to be passed from father to son, and so on; and second, that the tax of two shillings was a good average amount, which at present reckoning, would amount to over forty dollars, which, at a fifteenth, would make the value of his land about $600.

While we are in Pendleton, there best be noted some facts about the place, so that it will remain clearer in the mind before the etymology of the family name is entered upon minutely. Pendleton was anciently called Penhulton (i. e., the head hill town), and as late as 1780 was but a little hamlet with its Maypole Green, whereas to-day it is as large as a city (66,000 population), a suburb of Manchester, (the second city of England), abounding in mansions and devoted to calico-printing, dyeing, cotton-spinning and coal works. In the old days St. Mary's Church in Eccles was the parish church to which the inhabitants of Pendleton were attached. There can be no reasonable doubt but that Rico de Lumhales worshipped in this church; in fact, he would scarcely have been allowed not to; he had no choice in the matter. The religious beliefs that were instilled into him by the clergy of that day form too long and interesting a subject for this paper. In brief, he had but to obey, leaving all thinking and direction to the churchmen; and the substance of his belief and practice was that he must pay more or less, as able, to the church, for happiness while he lived and to provide further for masses to be said after his death, in order that he might go to Heaven.

(The duty of a parish priest before the Reformation was not to preach, but to attend to the offices of the church and to see that the inhabitants of his parish fulfilled what was required of them by the church, and to hear confessions, to absolve the penitent, to visit the sick and to bury the dead. Most of the duties were often left to curates.)

In his day he saw Edward III annex France to England, and must have heard with pride of the exploits of John o' Gaunt, the great noble of his own Lancashire. His life was principally covered by the years of the reigns of Edward II and Edward III--1307-1377, though he may have been as old as forty years in 1333, and so born before 1300. In all human probability we shall never hear of another Lomas antedating this Richard; and so he is now a man more marked than ever he was to his own knowledge. So, too, this church of St. Mary's is the oldest structure in the world with which we can ever identify the name of Lomas thus early.

There is no other record extant of this Richard or of his father or sons; the parish registers of baptism, marriage and burial do not commence in England until 1538; but there is no occasion to doubt but that more than one early Lomas was laid away in long last rest beneath a spot within reach of the shade of St. Mary's tower. Surely this church is a great mark to our family. Ever enduring, ever inviting, ever rewarding it continues. Age after age passes,--its peaceful bells are heard above the "crash of empires;" while fears of change alarm the world, "perplexing monarchs"-it discharges its mighty yet simple task, to--
"Invite to heaven and point the way."
A poet's lines suggest the ancient interior:--
"Not formed to nice proportions was the pile
But large and massy, for duration built;
With pillars crowded and the roof upheld
By naked rafters intricately crossed,
Like leafless under-boughs in some thick grove,
All withered by the depth of shade above.
* * * * * * * The floor
Of nave and aisle in unpretending guise
Was occupied by oaken benches ranged
seemly rows; the chancel showed
Some inoffensive marks of earthly state
And vain distinction. A capacious pew
Of sculptured oak stood here, with drapery lined;
And knightly monuments were here displayed
Within the walls; and on the floor beneath
Sepulchral stones appeared with emblems graven,
And foot-worn epitaphs, and some with small
And shining effigies of brass inlaid."

Let us look at it a little closer. The building is a venerable Gothic structure, forming a favorable specimen of rude architecture, with a massive tower, grey with age. It consists of a nave, chancel and side-aisles, the latter of which were in early times chapels attached to the old families of the parish. The building is of an irregular shape, supported by buttresses and adorned by arched windows. The roof is partially embattled and on the north and south sides rise two small circular columns terminating in crocketed ornaments. The original church was probably of a date as early as 1065, hence Saxon. The curfew-bell, a relic of that age, continues to be rung nightly. Traditions fix the date of the present church as IIII, though it has been several times restored and probably enlarged. There are now no tombstones dating before 1575.

An annual festival is held at Eccles, of great rustic celebrity and of high antiquity, as old probably as the first erection of the church, called Eccles Wakes, celebrated on the 1st Sunday in September. History recounts that, at times, these wakes have been exceedingly wakeful, if not altogether hilarious. The church was valued at p20 per annum in the valuation of Pope Nicholas in 1291. In 1864, 6,000 silver pennies of King Henry and Kings John and William I of Scotland were found in Eccles parish in an earthen pot, just below the surface. Their bullion value was $354.

Another remarkable feature in Eccles parish still remains quite as Richard de Lumhales knew it, and that is Chat Moss; it is a morass five miles long and three broad, containing 6,000 acres; originally an immense forest, but became reduced to a bog. It is peat soil, trees being found imbedded in the peat, principally birch, oak and fir, as black as jet and as hard as ebony. Most of the trees have been found to be charred on the exterior, showing that they fell by fire. In this peat were found not long ago, the horns of a breed of cattle now extinct, and a leather shoe, singular in shape--five inches broad at the toe and only 1 1/4 inches at the heel. It is supposed that this ancient forest-swamp was one in which the ancient Britons took refuge when the Romans conquered Britain, A. D. 43, and it is recorded that Agricola, in order to free himself from the hostile invasion of the native Brigantes, ordered their woods to be burnt down or felled by the Roman soldiers. It is clear that some of the forests of Salfordshire had disappeared before the Norman Conquest.

All of the Subsidy Rolls of Lancashire from the earliest preserved (1300 to 1500) have been examined; they are many in number; many are only fragmentary, being worn or rotted away in parts, hence illegible. The most of these records consist of only the names of the places with the sums collected therein; but from roll number 130-29, which is an assessment on the inhabitants in the Hundred of Salford by virtue of a subsidy granted by parliament to Richard II in his second year as king--1381--these items were deciphered on a much injured membrane (parchment):--
"Wig."
"Henr. lu(*) halghus iis."
"Ric. lu(*) halghus ii2."
"Thom. del luhalgh(*) xiid."

"Wig" is the town of Wigan abbreviated; the "lu" in luhalghus is also an abbreviation for the first syllable "lum," as is proven by the line drawn over the "lu" in the original, which in ancient manuscripts is usually so placed when a letter or two is omitted. This omission was simply the habit of the clerk who made out these rolls, and not an established or habitual abbreviation of this surname. These items form the second earliest data extant.

Now for the etymology of "Lumhalgh," and the proof that it is the earliest form of Lumhales, Lumhals, Lumals, Lomas, Lomax, Lummys, Loomis,--for this is the true order of the changes in spelling as they occurred.

The word "lum" anciently had various meanings in different parts; but the word "halgh" had only one general signification, however spelt; both are Saxon words mainly. Lumma, in Swedish, meant to resound. Lum in the Shetland Islands meant a rift, an opening in the sky; of the sky; to clear of fog; to disperse. In the county of Norfolk, England, a lum was the handle of an oar. Lum also meant to rain heavily. In Scotland, Ireland and the northern English counties of Durham and Yorkshire a lum meant a chimney, the vent by which the smoke issued, as in Grant's Chronicles of Keckleton--

Hence, very commonly used in those regions of Britain. From this came the term "lumhat," a chimney-pot hat. Further south and west in Yorkshire and in Derbyshire and in the West Riding of Yorkshire, close to the border of Salford Hundred in Lancaster County, lum meant (1) a small wood or grove, (2) a wood bottom grouing shrubs and trees, not fit for mowing. In Lancashire, also in counties Derby and Oxford, lum meant "a deep pool in the bed of a river." Halliwell sums the word up as "a woody valley, a deep pit." Thus these latter ancient usages were descriptive of locality, "territorial," and, be it now remembered, had direct reference to a certain definite place, or places, in the natural topography of Lancashire and adjoining parts. Now for halgh, (haulgh, haugh):

"Haugh" is a Scottish and northern England word and particularly written "halgh" and "haulgh" in Lancashire; other forms having been "halche," "hawch," "hawgh." It means low-lying, level ground by the side of a river; forming part of the floor of a river valley, and in the original sense particularly specified; perhaps a corner or nook of land at or within the bend or angle of the river. Streams in hilly regions of the north of England may properly be (*)See explanation of abbreviation of "Lum" on p. 59.said to cross and recross the floors of their valleys, striking the base of the slope on each side alternatively, forming a more or less triangular haulgh within the bend, on each side in turn.

In Northumberland and Durham haulgh or haugh denoted low-lying spreads of loam, sand, or gravel, forming the lowest ground of the river valleys which are still flooded from time to time, or which, although they may have for years kept above water, may yet conceivably still be flooded in unusual seasons.

"Haugh-ground" was this low-lying ground. That a "haugh" was by no means waste or useless land, but instead highly fertile is evidenced by the expression (1) In Richardson's Borderer's Tablebook (1846. vii-78)--"O'er the gay daisied haughs will I roam," and (2) In Row's History of Kirk (1842) which mentions that in 1633-50 "330 inundations of waters took away to the sea whole large haughs full of shorn corne."

The name as so applied and meaning is very old, occurring in a charter of Coenwulf in 814, as "healh" and the same in 967 in a Charter of Oswald. We may note also that in the old Anglo-Saxon 'lfric's Homilies "hall" meant a house in the valley.

Coming now to the matter of pronunciation, it is generally known that words and speech have always varied very much in the manner of their verbal use, even in so small a country as England, and that the letter "h" is often not sounded in words in which it appears and often sounded in words in which it does not appear. The dialects of the north, the southwest and the east are contrasting indeed. The broad, full mouthed speech of the Yorkshire man is distinct from the more precise, thinner and keener pronunciation of an East-Anglian, while a Cornishman's talk might prove a puzzle to a Lancastrian. In one city alone the "cockney dialect" of the "East End" of London only adds to the many other contrasts between life there with the different phases in the "West End." Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial words gives us vital evidence as to halgh; it states that in Lancashire pronunciation "al" is changed into "au." Therefore Lumhalgh was rendered as if written Lumau and sometimes Lumaul in the singular form, and Lumhalghes or Lumhalghus the plural or Latin form, as if written Lumaus and Lumauls or Lummals (Haulghton was the early form of the surname of Houghton). Hence, the softening into the later forms, of which we shall quote ample actual evidence from old records, viz:-- "Lumhales," "Lumhalx," "Lomas," "Lummas," "Lommance," "Lummys," "Loomys," "Loomis," "Lomax." "Lomax." has only been used since a little before 1600, but to-day it is the almost universal spelling in England. Lomas, however, often occurs, at present, in Lancashire and elsewhere in England; but Loomis has not been found anywhere in England at any time, except at Braintree, Co. Essex, as hereinafter related.

There is no question as to the exact locality in Lancashire that was called Lumhaulgh, or the Lumhalges, or that it was a place of habitation in the thirteenth century. This is certain because there has been only one locality that has had the singular distinction of being known, from sufficiently remote times, by such a form of this name. The locality is that before referred to as Haulgh (only of recent years united with Tonge and called Tonge-with-Haulgh) in the parish of Bolton, Lancashire. The small place of Haughton, in Manchester parish, should not be construed into connection with Lumhalgh, even though we have noted it in an inquisition post mortem as early as Edw. I (1272-1307). A study of this very ground in Bolton, even in this day of its modern development, reveals the ancient features essential to the haulgh in the river vale. Tonge is on one side of the river, with Haulgh opposite; the two are set in two angles between the three rivers, Croal, Touge and Bradshaw. As to Lum, it is still Eccles Cross--The Old Shrine.

Church of All Saints, Wigan. Eccles Parish Church, called St. Mary's Pendleton, was a hamlet in Eccles, and here the earliest known "Loomis" lived in 1333, and attended this church.

The name of a section in Bolton now to be identified in connection with "Lum Street." The removal of the woods, the alterations of grades and the many changes during six hundred and fifty years of material growth leave the investigator in doubt as to between just what bend of the rivers, the highway called Lum was identified with its etymological and topographical mate, the haulgh. The whole matter, nevertheless, is plain enough. There is no theory or assumption, consequently, in the conclusion that (1) only two, three, or at the utmost, four generations (1200 to 1270) before our "Rico de Lmhales" was of Pendleton, in 1333, his, and our first Lumhalgh ancestor was resident in the aforesaid part of the small town of Bolton; (2) that he took his surname appropriately therefrom and no more was known, or called, by the single Christian name of his father prefixed with his own Christian name, as, for (Latin) example Radulphus fil Galfridus or Edwin, son of John. Thus it was that the original adopter of the surname owned, leased, tilled, or was considerably identified, doubtless principally distinguished in connection with a certain piece, or pieces of land, which had the somewhat unique position of being fertile, flat ground in a small river valley, between rivers, and which was, perhaps, partly of wood and partly of meadow, suitable for cultivation, and large enough in area for at least a small farm; also near to a deep pool, or pools, or girt about with banks, or slopes, of rising ground, wooded and forming a vale or pit-like enclosure, or enclosures, with the flat bottom-land below and stretching out with the course of the stream; and also with an habitable structure set either on the slope or upon the haulgh beneath. This situation was distinctive enough in its natural characteristics to render the resident thereat distinguished as of the "lum" "halgh." The appearance of the man and of his immediate descendants in the official records of that time as de Lumhalge and del Lumhalge (in Latin, Lumhalghus--Latin was the "record" language of that time) and later as Lumhalgh and Lumhales is entirely in accord with the prime principles of both etymology and of ancient custom in connection with the origin of surnames. Thus, this conclusion is reached in a proper manner, and is supported by all authorities.(*)

Although originating in Bolton parish the earliest recorded individuals of the Lomas family appear in the Subsidy Rolls for Pendleton and Wigan, places near to Bolton, some members of the family must have continued in Bolton almost uninterruptedly, as their later development therein indicates. We shall never know the Christian names of the Bolton Lomases of the fourteenth century, because the rolls for that manor are not preserved in the Government Record Office. The reason that no one of the name then in Bolton is mentioned in the subsidy roll of 1333 is that no man would have been so taxed who was not then a landholder, or a merchant having a stock of goods of fair value. Men in the employ of others were not assessed in this subsidy. In the imperfect roll for 1381 the list of men taxed in Bolton is missing. The "Ric luhalghus" of Wigan, taxed two shillings in the subsidy of 1381 must not be considered as the same man as "Rico de Lumhales" of Pendleton in the roll of 1333, though both men bore the same name and held property of exactly the same value (*)Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words. L. O. Halliwell.
The Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. J. R. C. Hall.
Dictionary of English Etymology. H. Wedgwood.
The Etymological Dictionary. W. W. Skeat.
The English Dialect Grammar. Joseph Wright.
The Universal Pronouncing Dictionary. Thomas Wright.
Anglo-Saxon & Old English Vocabularies. Thomas Wright.
New English Dictionary. J. A. H. Murray.
English Surnames. M. A. Lower.
Patronymica Britannica. M. A. Lower.
Baines' History of Lancashire, etc. amenable to the subsidy. They may have been father and son, but as to that, it will never now be known. The inferences to be drawn from the mention in this roll of 1381 of --
"Henr. luhalghus iis."
"Ric. luhalghus iis."
"Thom. del luhalgh xiid."

are these:--(1) the amount of the tax of two shillings is higher than that collected of many of their neighbors; (2) the two first names being written one below the other, spelt alike, and taxed alike, indicate that the two men were closely identified with each other in the affairs of life; (3) that both may have dropped the "del" in the manner of writing their family name, but we cannot be at all positive as to that, for this is only one little item in their lives, and one not written down by either one of them. The use of the other form of the name in the third item may only have been done by the scribe, or have been the habit of "Thom. del luhalgh" for the special purpose of distinguishing him more clearly from the other two. Some relationship between all three men is indisputable; and their value in our present contemplation of the early days of the family is so vital that, we may take some note, at this moment, of the place in which they lived. Wigan is just as near and should be just as dear to the Loomis descendant of to-day, as Haulgh in Bolton, Pendleton or Bury, for the evidence that might connect us the more particularly with some one of these places is now,

All the Lomases and Loomises of the English-speaking world sprang from the original "del Lumhalgh" of Bolton; some, or all of these later men were of Pendleton or through Wigan, or Bury; and the descendants of Joseph Loomis in America all trace Return to at least one of them. Further than this we now can never know. Wigan is from "Wig," signifying a fight in the Saxon, and "en" constituting the plural of that noun. It was the site of a Saxon castle and the scene of a battle between King Arthur and the Saxons. Nine miles southwest of Bolton, and nineteen northeast from Liverpool, it was an incorporated township in 1245, and to-day has a population of about 60,000, including one Lomax family. Coal mining is the great industry, the formations beneath the surface being of great immensity. We are not concerned with that fact, nor with the very large cotton mills here; only that which was familiar to Henry, Richard and Thomas Lumhalgh in 1381 needs attention. The church of All Saints is probably of Saxon origin, long antedating 1381. It is mentioned in the Valor of Pope Nicholas, in 1291. Ten centuries have passed since its cornerstone was laid; the pile was venerable to our Lomases in 1381. Herein they knelt to prayer and "told their beads," while the priest chanted in monotone a mass in a foreign tongue and read from a Latin Bible which they were not permitted to examine, and his words they did not understand. In these ten centuries this church has seen the age of simple hardihood, the glorious age of valor and chivalry, the age of bronze when brave men cast aside their armor to don silk attire, the age of iron, when it was customary to chop off the beads of kings, bishops and dissenters, and finally the age of a truer understanding of Christianity. All Saints has been somewhat rebuilt; though the lower part of the tower and the chapel of the Gerard's or Walmesley's remains intact. In the restoration all the principal features of the old building have been prescrved, and it is still--
"Like romance in stone;
Still to the present does it preach the past
With the more than languagel There the moral sigh
O'er the gay splendours of heroic times
May well be heaved, when chivalry prevailed.
And knightly bosoms with beroie pulse
Were beating nobly as became the brave."

There is a monument in the church to Sir William Bradshaighe (Bradshaw) and his Lady Mabel, who were living in 1315; he in an antique coat-of-mail cross-legged with his sword partially drawn; she in a long robe, veiled, her hands elevated in the attitude of prayer. Henry, Richard or Thomas del Lumhalgh of 1381 could have told us a story of this couple, whom they must have known personally. The tale still lives in Wigan traditions. This knight is said to have been away ten years in the wars, during which time, his wife, thinking him dead, married a Welsh knight. The first husband returned. Mabel favored him, but was whipped therefore by the Welshman, whereupon Bradshaw slew the latter, and was outlawed for a year, Mab's Cross in Wigan is so-called because it is the cross to which Dame Mabel (the Bradshaw pedigree states) "was enjoined by her confessor to do penances by going onest every week barefoot and barelegged to a crosse ner Wigan from the Haghe wilest she lived, and is called Mab X to this day." The interest to us is not in the query, Did Tennyson find his theme for "Enoch Arden" in this Wigan tradition? but rather in the certainly that our Lomases oft knelt at this roadside cross in both fair days and foul, to supplicate and to render thanks to a heaven, that was nearer to them than perhaps they had been told.

With this we leave Wigan; those three Lumhalges doubtless ended their days, as they had lived, within the sight and sound of the thin-toned bell of All Saints, and too, their kin after them likewise. None of them writ their names so large upon the page of local history as to bequeath. us further information. The records of the manor, shire and the nation, took due note of them, in exactions, in their time, but nothing further than we have quoted now appears in the important class of remaining records. Everything has been searched; much has perished.

The next glimpse of a Lumhalgh comes ten years later, 1391, in Bury, 5 3/4 miles northeast of Bolton, viz:--

Patent Roll of King Richard II, in the fifteenth year of his reign (1391); part one, dated at Westminster, (London) July 8. This entry is of a pardon granted by the crown "at the supplication of William Par. Knight, to John, son of Adam del Damme of Midelton in Shalfordshire, for stealing at Bury, on Thursday before St. Wilfrid, 14 Richard II, two bullocks, value 105. of Richard de Lumhalghs."

The manor rolls, subsidies, etc., for Bury are not sufficiently preserved at the Record Office to afford further information of the family in Bury until forty-four years later, though the continuous residence of a branch of the family there is certain. Some rolls of the court leet of this manor are believed to be at Knowsley Hall, the seat of the Earl of Derby, but are not open to public inspection, nor accessible to a private view in the absence of the owner. In 1435, Sir John Pilkington was lord of the manor of Bury. He held the lands in capite (of the crown), as of the Duchy of Lancaster, and leased them with the messuages to the actual residents thereon,--farmers, yeomen or tradesmen. In this knight's rent-roll dated Thursday before the feast of St. Valentine, the Martyr, 13 Henry VI (1435) occur the names (in Latin) of these landholders, or tenants:
"Radus del Lumhalges"
"Oliverus del Lumhalges"
"Thomas del Lumhalge de Whetyle"
"Galfridus del Lumhalges."
The final "ges" is not a syllable apart from the "hal"--the "e" is always superfluous, another "Englishism."

All were descendants out of Haulgh in Bolton, and each man, respectively, a householder; to-day, their descendants in the same Bury number fourteen households or families, all present members of which write their surname "Lomax." The Pilkingtons had been lords here since 1351, having originated in Pilkington, a parish near to Bury on the south. They held until 1485 when in the Wars of the Roses, casting their favor and fate with the House of York, as against their own House of the Dukes of Lancaster their estates were forfeited, and for this treason, the then chief Pilkington was beheaded. From then till now the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, have held this and other Lancastrian manors.

In the same year of this rent-roll, 1435, the same Sir John Pilkington was chosen a collector of the subsidy granted by parliament to be levied on the inhabitants of the Hundred of Salford. The report of the collection was made out under his direction and he headed it the "Particule accompti de Johannes Pilkington, mil," but failed to give the names of the inhabitants of whom he had collected the tax; only the sums and the names of the places appear in the roll of parchments now in the Record Office. No estimate of the individual wealth of the Lumhalghs then living in Bolton, Bury, Pendleton, Wigan or else-where in the Hundred of Salford can thus be had, nor data as to their increase in numbers since 1333 and 1381.

The "de Whytell" added to the name of Thomas del Lumhalghe, in the 1435 rent-roll, merely shows that he lived three miles south of Bury in what is now Whittle, a hamlet in Unsworth parish which was modernly formed (partly) out of Pilsworth. From this fact it is seen that the Lomaxes of Pilsworth were likely descendants of the said Thomas of Whittle, as Whitaker's History of Whalley (ijp. 225) mentions the family in Pilsworth, particularly "Richard Lomax, gentleman, of Pilsworth * *--the owner of a freehold estate at Burn-shaw (Beaconshaw) Tower, in the Vale of Todmorden, which by deeds is proved to have been possessed by the family from a very early period." Burnshaw Tower was a fortified house, thirteen miles northeast of Bury, now barely traceable, and Richard Lomax, gentleman, acquired Clayton Hall, by marriage, about 1740, with Rebecca Heywood, the heiress to the estate. This line of Lomax attained to affluence and high social position. Clayton Hall continued in the Lomax possession for several generations; on July 4, 1815, Richard Grimshaw Lomax, the resident thereat, was granted a coat-of-arms, viz:--

"Perpale or and sable, on a bend engrailed with plain cotises ermine, three escallops gules. Crest-issuant out of a crown vallory or, a demi-lion argent, charged on the body with three escallops between the bendlets and holding between the paws an escallop gules."

(This bearing has no reference to any Lomas, or Loomis, before 1815, and to none other since then, save the direct descendants of the said grantee).

No Lomas of Bury or in Lancashire rose to knighthood, to manorial lord-ship, or to armorial honors up to 1560, hence none figure in the records illustrating such important families. The registers of baptism, marriage and burial at Bury are not now extant prior to 1590, and the manor records not accessible, so the only personal items obtainable of the family at Bury that warrant mention are those of the wills of:--
Christopher Lomax of Bury 1590
James " " Pilsworth 1588
James " " Bercle 1592
Jeffery " " Heap 1590 (in Bury parish)
John" " Pilsworth 1587
Oliver " " Walmsley 1593 (in Bury parish)
Owen" " Preston 1593
Richard " " Pilsworth 1587
Margaret " " Prestbury 1588
John" " Gloributts in Bury 1606
Isabella " " Heap 1592|in Bury parish
John" " 1576 |

With 24 more Lomas and Lomax wills of later date; all are original wills filed in the probate registry of Chester, Cheshire; and there are ten other wills dated 1587 to 1677 filed in the Archdeaconry Court of Richmond, Lancashire, and now deposited in Somerset House, London. None of these testaments afford any evidence leading towards our particular branch of the family which, before the date of any of these wills, had stretched itself across England to the county of Essex; the wills are all too late for further notice, and interesting only as indicating the considerable development of the general family that remained at home in Lancashire, and, as also, the general prosperity of the various members therein. The probate records of Lancashire do not now embrace the wills of any Lomases before that of John Lomas of Heap, in 1576; doubtless there were earlier testaments filed, which are now missing. The MS. collections of the Chetham Society of Manchester have been carefully searched; many Loomis references occur after 1600, but none before, save as hereinafter quoted. Under the forms of Lomas and Lomax the family in Bury gradually increased in numbers, sharing the steady growth and prosperity there for some generations, until now. None of the living descendants possess reliable information as to their ancestry before 1700. Bury must have always been a pleasant town, and the Presbyterian church had one of its great strongholds there as early as 1666. The name is Saxon, signifying either a castle or a market-town. Bury was a Saxon station, the seat of one of the twelve ancient baronial castles of Lancashire; only the foundations of it now remain, though the early Lomases were familiar with the sight of the whole castle. There appears to have been at least two separate Lomas households in Bury as early as 1400, and probably from these residents descend those of the family who have resided in Bury from that time to the present day. For five hundred years some Lomas undoubtedly has knelt within the parish church of Bury in every one of those years, if not even in every month, or actually on every Sabbath day. This remarkable fact cannot be said of any other church now standing, for the Bolton church was destroyed in 1866, and there have been no Lomases at Pendleton these many years, while at Wigan the old directories fail to name a Lomas resident in various modern periods. Nonconformity also has long since claimed its share of the family in Lancashire. The old parish church is St. Mary's, dating back into the tenth century; in the valor of Pope Nicholas, 1291, its income was valued at p13:6:8 per annum. The building has been "restored" several times, first in 1290, and lastly in 1871-76. The bells were recast in 1722; nearly all the windows are stained. All the ancient memorial inscriptions, tablets and monuments in the church were destroyed in 1558, which fact again robs us of visible Lomas evidence; the registers of baptism, however, are quite complete from 1590, and contain many Lomas entries,-- not so the marriage and burial records,--these are all lost before 1812,--an unusual circumstance. The manor house of the Pilkingtons was at Stand in Bury, and the town has been more modernly made notable by the several great inventions in weaving machinery of three of its inhabitants, and by the family of Sir Robert Peel, which founded the great print works here. Bury is situated in the fertile valley of the Irwell, and in common with all the places in the neigh-borhood of the lofty hills which separate Lancashire from Yorkshire, the climate is humid; more rain falls here than elsewhere in England; the average depth is about forty inches in a year. At the last census the population was above 60,000.

We must revisit Bolton (5 3/4 miles west of Bury) at this point, the birthplace of the family name. The damage that time has wrought to the subsidy records for Bolton for 1381, effacing that portion of the rolls relating to this parish, is the reason that we have but little light upon the family here. The reason that the family did not rapidly develop here and in the Wapentake of Salford, when the surname was first used, was partly because, as hereinbefore explained, some of the men,--brothers and sons of the first del Lumhalgh-- who went to reside in other places called themselves after the names of those other places, instead of Lumhalgh, thus leaving only the issue of one of their number, at first, to perpetuate the name of Lumhalgh in any form. Too, the Bolton line was weakened by the men who went away to Pendleton and Wigan. It is no surprise that the Lumhalghs developed very slowly prior to 1400, to all indications; the surprise is that the male lines did not become extinct, as in many other families of that time. There may have been periods during which the Lomases were absent from Bolton, but their considerable presence there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and their large increase in the seventeenth century, and since then, quite gives one the courage to say with the poet:--
"They have been here a thousand years,
And a thousand years they'll bide."

Now, let us hark back for four hundred years and on this printed page read some of the very words of a Bolton Lomas, who was born, according to his own statement, as early as 1420.

Shortly after 1500 a dispute arose between the lords of the manors of Middleton and Radclyffe, lying a few miles to the eastward of Bolton, over their respective rights to and upon a stretch of moorland called Cockey Moor. An official inquiry was held by the Attorney General, before a jury of influential men, and the original record thereof has been found in the Muniment Room at Middleton Hall, Lancashire. The inhabitants of Middleton and Radcliff had been accustomed, time out of mind, "to have common" promiscuously in both lordships. Two Lomases were summoned among the 13 witnesses, being adjudged competent because of their age, intelligence and ancient knowledge of the conditions and customs appertaining to the moor. Here then are the words, in part, of these two ancient worthies--all but the sound of their voices; their mode of speech was typical of the time and region. From these words one may imagine the speakers' portraits, so here are the earliest words-of-mouth of a Lomas that we shall probably ever learn of:--

Of the six witnesses for the Middleton manor, "Lawrens Lomal's of ye pch (parish) of Bolton of ye age of LXX zers" (70) was the sixth, who "sworne opon a boke afor (the lawyers) to leyde (lead) the meyrez (way) truly betweene aynswoth & Radcliff."

His testimony was in favor of Middleton, but being so much confounded in the record with that of other witnesses, we pass to the words of the other Lomas witness, one Richard "Lumals" evidently of Bolton; his testimony was, in part, in these words, and directly contrary to the evidence of Lawrence Lumals:--

"Ryc. Lumals of the eygh (age) of lxxxxiii (93)" says ** "the Lord Radclyff and hys tenands have occupyett en cokkey mor tyme owtte of mynd uentyll the tyme on Ryc. barton yt that was lord of Medylton mad a pyfold on Cokkey More and pynyd the besse of the tenands of Radclyff and Jamys Radclyff yt was att yt tyme lord of Radclyff sends his son and his heyr to breyke the fold and to take owte thayre bests. And theyn by the space of xxx yer and mor ytt was occupyett pleysable tyll the tyme that Sr Ryc. Assheton late lord of medylton & Ryc. Assheton now lord of medylton mad tytle vnto the offorsayd cokkey mor. yt (that) xxx zer (year) & past Sr Ryc. Assheton mad tytyll to Radcliff now cald the qwytle mosse and cokkey mor and theyn the afforsayd lord of medylton & Ryc. Radclyff lord of Radclyff were bounde by oblygacyon to abyde the dowe & the awarde of Sr John bothe knyth (knight) & lord of barton & Wyllya Radclyff lord of Ordsall as towchying the morys (moors) offorsayd. And so the afforsayd Awarders mett on the qwytle mosse in Radclyff and theyn ytt was meyrett and awardett that they shuld occupye cokkey mor as thay had donn affortyme.

Yt on (one) Ryc. opynscha heyr of the schal toke a encrochementt on cokkey mor wt ye lycens off John Radclyff lord of Radclyff and the sayd Ryc. Opynscha occupyett the sayd encrochmentt by the space of xxl zer and theyn John hys son occupyett hytt hys tyme and theyn on Jams Opynscha dwellying i eynysworth (Ainsworth) a brother of the afforsayd John occupyett ytt by the space off iii or iiii yers beyng nott heyr. And on John Opynscha beying heyr and cwtte off the contre at ye warres heyring tell yt hys uncule John and hys fether wer ded came home and claymett hys land and the afforesayd Jams wold not suffer hym to occupye ytt ne (nor) to have dedys (title deeds) hentyll the tyme he was agreet wt all (withal). And ye afforsayd John gaffe unto the afforsayde Jamys a pcell of money and gaff hym lycens to occupye ye afforsayd encrochmentt and to sett in hys hymes and now ye lord of medylton claymes ytt for hys owne. Cokkey mor hath beyn occupyett wt ye tenands of Radclyff wt turber to gyff and sell at thayr pleysur and to comyn pastur wt all thayr bests--the thezythes (tithes) that hath newytt (accrued) on the forsayd mor as fowle calfe lambe and wole wt all other thyngs thzyable (titheable) hath beyn gyffen unto the the pson of Radclyff and so zett (yet) ytt is occupyett."

The Lomases also lived under the manorial lordship of Sir Ralph Assheton, reputed a most tyrannical lord, and of whom one of his victims wrote:--
"Sweet Jesu, for mercy's sake
And for thy bitter passion,
Save us from the axe of the tower
And from Sir Ralph of Assheton."

A summary of events must conclude the references to Bolton:-- Bolton civic arms: gules--two bends or; crest on a wreath an elephant and castle.

1100 Bolton Manor passes into the hands of "Roger de Mersheya" who sells it in the same year to Ranulph de Mechines, third Earl of Chester, for 240 marks of silver and a pair of white gloves to be presented annually at Easter.

1337 Clothiers (weavers) from Flanders settle in Bolton, introducing also wooden shoes and jannock (oat meal bread). They came to make their fortunes, or as one of them is reported to have quaintly expressed it, with the expectation "that their beds would be good and their bed-fellows better, seeing that the richest yeomen in England would not disdain to marry their daughters to them."

1351 The manor of Bolton came to the Pilkingtons by a marriage, who retained it till 1485.

1412 Bolton parish church of St. Peter's supposed to have been erected, though 'tis said that on the demolition of the old church about 1866, evidences were discovered that a church of the Norman period, some 300 years earlier, must have existed on the same site.

1485 Sir Thos. Pilkington beheaded and Bolton Manor falls to the Earls of Derby, who still hold it, their "seat" being Knowsley Hall in Lancashire.

1486 The market-cross of stone erected at the church gate. Little Bolton manor-house built.

1509-47 Leland's Itinerary says: "Bolton upon Moore Market, standith most by cottons and cowrse yarne, divers villages in the Mores about Bolton do make cottons. Nother the site nor the ground aboute Bolton is so good as it is about Byri (Bury). They burne at Bolton some canale, but more se Cole, of wich the pittes be not far of. They burne Turfe also."

1651 The Earl of Derby beheaded in front of the "Man and Scythe Inn" for treason to the Puritan government. Baines, the Lancashire historian, says of Bolton:--

"The soil of Bolton parish is generally moory and requires generous tillage. Like in waste mining districts there is a lack of standing timber though some of the valleys are romantic and well wooded; some 2,000 acres of waste land altogether. There are thirty coal mines, and numerous stone quarries, producing flags and slates, lead and carbonate of barytes are also mined here. On the borders of the high surrounding moors winter is very rigorous, yet longevity is common."

In the Duchy Court of Lancaster in a plea dated 1543, Trinity term, by Robt. deAynsworth vers Laurence Bradshaw and others re right of way and watercourse through lands called the wood and Maplederth in Aynesworth Town-ship, Middleton and Brightmet, near Bolton, the complainant says:--

He is seized of his demesne "lynyally" descended from his ancestors of 26 acres in Middleton, -- ** always had a "broke and other lytil pyrles" of water running through sd. premises. But now, of late, one Laurence Bradsha, a man of great substance, Elys Lummas, and others have several times since the 1st day of December 34 Hen. viii (1542), of covetous minds, for their own lucre, turned the said course of water out of the right course and caused it to run through their own lands to plaintiff's great hindrance. He prays for remedy against the defendants, who are "gretly frynded and alyed." Defendants say: "The matters and surmises in the sd bill were ordered and agreed long before the sd. bill was exhibited, before arbitrators chosen with the assent of both parties, as more at large appears by their award which defendant was always ready to perform. "Ellyce Lummaxe" makes like answer.

It is ordered that as plaintiff has good title to the premises, the defendants shall, at their own costs, before the feast of the Annunciation next to come, turn the said water and pirles into the right course, and into the place where it ran over plaintiff's ground, until defendants can provide themselves with sufficient title to the said water.

In another place in the same court, dated 25 Oct., 1533, reference is made to the locality of Lumhalgh, viz: "John Hargrave of the Lomeshagh." In Lancashire topography no other locality has been known as Lumhalgh. There was "Greenhalgh" and "Fairhalgh" and naturally enough there arose a family of del Haulgh or Halgh, which took its name from its early identity with a haulgh. Probably it derived from the Haulgh in Lancashire with which the Loomis family is linked, or even the Haulgh family may have originally been of the same blood as Lumhalgh. The Haulgh family was long resident at Tonge in Bolton, as is proven by an inquisition post mortem, (Vol. xxii, No. 59), dated 17 James I and touching the demise and estates of one "John Halgh of Tonge," in Bolton; in Royalist Composition Papers for Lancashire--"Robert Haulgh of Mosden"; in inquisitions nonarum for 1341-2; "Henr del Halgh," of Whalley, and "Alexi del Halgh" of Blackburn, Lancs.; also in a poll-tax list for 1328-80 in the hundred of West Derby, Lancs.--"Rob del Halgh," "Adam del Halgh" of "Lydyate," is mentioned in the same subsidy roll of 1333 with our "Rico de Lmhales," of Pendleton; "Adam del Fairhalghes" of "Oldom," is also taxed in the same Latinized roll, while in the roll for 1381 "Henr del Grenhalgh" is taxed, in Wigan, with our Lumhalghs. Interesting, as well, is the fact that there was a Tonge family that took its name from Tonge in Bolton, while Bolton has become a common surname.

Haulgh, or Tonge-with-Haulgh, as distinct from Bolton center, deserves a word. From Testa de Nevill (folio 405) it is learned that in the reign of K. John, Gilbert de Tonge held one bovate of land of the King, in Tonge, for four shillings; that this place was in the parish of Bolton seems to be proved by a record in Birch's MS. Feodorium, in which, it is said that John, son of Elias Tonge, holds one bovate of land there by the service of four shillings per annum for sake-fee.

Haulgh is mentioned as in Bolton in a charter of Henry II (1154-1189) and in a Lancashire assize roll of 6 Edw. I (1278).

The two most interesting sights in Tonge-with-Haulgh now are Haulgh Hall, "a plain erection," and "Hall-i'-the-Wood." "Lawrens Lumals," who testified about Cokkey Moor, probably saw both of these houses. The former is owned by the Earl of Bradford, while Hall-i-the-Wood is famous as a relic, and once the residence of Samuel Crompton, the inventor therein of the mule, a cotton-spinning machine. Hall-i-the-Wood has been purchased by the corporation of Bolton as a museum for cotton from the raw to the finished article. This old house overlooks the vale containing the "lum" and the "haulgh" from which the Lomas name was taken. "Hall I'th' Wood, near Bolton."

In this valley, by the "Hall I'th' Wood," the name of Loomis, in its earliest form of "del Lumhalgh," had its origin; here the family, so-named, first lived. This is the stream they knew in its every bend-and stone--the River Tonge; herein is a good, though rather small specimen of a "haulgh"-- "the low-lying ground" encircled in the bend of the stream at the left; and here also is a small "lum"--the wooded pit-like banks with deep pools in the water beneath. The view is partly in the Tonge and Haulgh sections of Bolton. The beautiful and very old house is upon the Tonge side of the river; in it the mule (spinning machine) was invented.

That Tonge and Haulgh had residents in Saxon times is suggested by the finding of a barrow (grave) containing two kist-vaens (graves closed at the sides and top with stones, like a chest) in which were an urn of red earth, human bones, a bronze spear-head and armor. ("Kist" is a pure Lancashire Saxon word).

In England the great majority of all of the persons of the name of Lomas, of all times, have ever abided in "time-honoured Lancaster," but prior to 1500, as the reader has seen, the records are too broken from which to erect a consecutive pedigree of generation to generation. Therefore, this narrative is now about to lead the reader into other parts of the realm of England, whither the Lomases wandered. Ere quitting the great and valiant shire of their first three hundred years of domicile, we may observe some facts of history that applied to them in their day. They lived in the feudal days, "when knighthood was in flower," which have since proven so rich a source for the historian, the romanticist and the poet--days distinguished alike for regal pomp and chivalry and the sterner realities of war, particularly so as to their own Lancashire, which then played a greater part in the affairs of the crown than at any time before or since. The prime cause of this was the great strength and position of Lancaster Castle and the earls thereof. It may be noted that John o' Gaunt (named after Ghent in Flanders, the place of his birth), became the fifth earl and the second duke of Lancaster, in right of his wife, Blanche Plantagenet, heiress of Henry, the first Duke. They were the parents of the famous Henry of Bolingbroke, one of the greatest names to conjure with in all English history. To this family, the Lomases looked for all that was considered great in those times, and their imagination and blood were stirred, in loyal impulse by these, their great over-lords, who furnished Shakespeare with so many facts for his plays. It was this Henry of Bolingbroke who, when his cousin, King Richard II, seized the Lancashire estates of John o' Gaunt, wrested the crown of England from the feeble hand of this Richard, and placed himself upon the throne as Henry IV. Then, over a period of sixty years, raged the "Wars of the Roses" whereby the House of York sought to win the throne from the House of Lancaster, the latter reigned until the dethronement of Henry VI in 1461. Every man then was either a Yorkist or a Lancastrian. We imagine the Lomases of Bury and Bolton exulting over the beheading of their manorial lord, Pilkington, for his treason. It is no enlargement upon easy probabilities to believe but that some of them joined the Lancastrian army. The chances are altogether likely that some of them could hardly have escaped being called into that service. Courage of a different sort than that which fights with bullets and cannon was then required. The famous battles of Shrewsbury, Agincourt, Crevant, Verneuil, St. Albans, Bloreheath, Northampton, and the siege of Orleans (raised by Joan of Arc), are all to be thought of in this connection. The names of Lomases will not appear therein because only those of the knights participating have been preserved; but, be it not forgotten, that each knight had his own coterie of bowmen, axemen, and lancers raised from among his dependents or tenants, whom he summoned in war, as in peace.

As to Lancashire lands, the present Loomis descendants must consider that, after the Norman system of land-tenure came into force, the early Lomases were not actual and sole owners of land to any particular extent. Doubtless they so owned while the Saxon influence was maintained, but after the claims of the Normans to the lands became, as they finally did, actually enforced, the family simply held of some lord who in turn held of a man still higher up, till the Norman feudal system began to weaken, by 1400. Carthew's Hundred of Launditch (p. 325) explains this clearly:--

"We do not now realize the fact that the ultimate ownership of the soil of all the land in the kingdom is in the King, by whom it was, or was supposed to be, granted to his great barons to be held by military services, which they were bound to perform at stated times; and under them, by their knights, who were to provide the soldiers and perform the duties for which their superiors were liable; and again, under them, by others, upon the same terms, down to the actual resident occupier or lord of the manor. The latter retained in his own hands sufficient land to grow corn or feed cattle for the maintainence of his own household, while the rest was parcelled out amongst his dependents and vassals, who or whose forefathers had perhaps resided upon it from the Saxon times. Some of these were called villans, from their dwelling in the ville or township; others bordars whose office it was to provide for their lord's bord or table: and some instead of rent in money, were to cultivate the lord's private lands for him, by performing so many days' work-- ploughing, carting, sowing, mowing, harvesting, etc., at particular seasons of the year (see hereinafter p. 91 for a Lammase instance of this)--while a sufficient quantity of grass or meadow land was set apart for common pasture."

It is thought that the results of the Norman dominion prevented the family from regaining that freehold possession of the soil which it had before then, and has regained in the last three or four hundred years. The manorial customs to which practically all of the members of the family in Lancashire were subject, between 1300 and 1500, were exacting indeed. They were constantly subject to fines by the canorial lords, who preyed upon the people at every possible point. One example of this alone will suffice, i. e., the right (or better, the might) of heriot:--

"On the death of a tenant the heir male, or on the marriage of a female tenant, the husband should pay a fine of 8 years' rent, and in the former case the lord should be entitled to have for and in the name of heriot, the best beast, or other best moveable chattel of the late tenant."

This applied just the same, even if there was but one cow, horse, ox, hog or sheep. Many a poor widow suffered from the heartless heriot.

A tenant could not remove from one house to another without being fined therefor, nor inherit any property without the lord claiming and collecting a share of it. The records of the manorial courts of England consist largely of such fines and petty exactions upon the people. This is a blot upon the page of chivalry of the lords of the soil. It was far more difficult, before 1600, for a man or a family to rise to a position of affluence or independence than nowadays. Credit must be given to these early ancestors for their loyalty and long patience under conditions that would be deemed intolerable in this brighter day of their abolishment. The Loomis family, however, has come into its reward. It has taken its place among the great families of the world,--all through one man's courage, faith and prescience. And now do not the descendants of Joseph Loomis. the emigrant of 1638, far outnumber and outrank all of the name who have as yet been born to call England their home? The glory attaching to the blood and name of Lomas and Loomis, is part, parcel and product of American individual independence.

(It was thought to give, at this point, a list of all of the records pertaining to this county that the writer has searched, in order that the members of the Loomis Association of America might realize that full effort has been made in their behalf for "Loomis evidence;" but the list is deemed too wearisomely long and hopelessly technical.)

After 1500 the family appears in various parts of Lancashire, not heretofore referred to, and with which this narration need have naught to do. An item indicating about the time when the "Lomax" spelling came into vogue is of value:

Close Roll, No. 1883, 5 James I (1608) Indenture dated 28 July 1 James I, between Gyles Aynsworth of Aynsworth, Lancs, and "Thomas Lommas alias Lomas" of Little Lever, parish of Bolton-in-the-Moor, as to the sale of certain tenements. Before 1500 the Lomas family had spread over into the adjacent county of Derby, and became firmly established, where it still flourishes to this day. The earliest offshoots from Lancashire, however, are shown by the following quotations from the records:--

Inquisitions post mortem. No. 145. 9 Richard II (1386) (Translation)--"Henricus Lunales alias Dictus Lunhales son and heir of Henry Lunhales, who died seized of 30 acres of land held of the crown in Penbrugge (now Pembridge), Herefordshire.

Patent Rolls, 17 Richard II (1394) part 2, membrane 41--dated 8 Feb. at Westminster. Pardon to Roger de Lumhale of Crosseland (Agbrigg Wapentake, West Riding, Yorkshire, close to the Lancashire border and in the mountains) for the death of William Arkeland of Fossa Crosseland killed there on Wednesday before Palm Sunday in the seventh year (This item like Roger de Lumhale himself is isolated; no further evidence of his name in any form has been found in the courts of Yorkshire at any time after 1394.)

The next item affords the earliest recorded instance of the "Lomys" spelling--hence is very significant, occurring in Somersetshire, some ninety miles south of county of Lancaster. The name thus introduced into another shire than Lancaster, wherein the dialect was different and the name Lumhalgh or Lomas unknown, the phonetic spelling readily crept into the reports sent to London by the representatives of the crown in Martock whose duty it was to report these evasions of a license to alienate or enter premises.

"Thomas Lomys" and nine others entered into 4 messuages and 48 acres of land in Cote in the pch of Mertok--said grantees entered without license. Now the king for 5 marks paid in the hanaper, pardons the trespasses done in this behalf and licenses the said last-named parties to retain the premises."

(The name of Martock represents the old pronunciation of `Market Oak' in Somer setshire, and this pardon illustrates the fact that the crown exacted a fine, or the purchase of a license, from a tenant who bought property, or removed from one house to another, similarly as did a lord of a manor.)

Thirteen years later the same Thomas Lomys repeated the same performance in Bower Henton, a tithing in and one mile south of Martock:

Patent Roll 15 Henry VI (1436) 1st Dec. Membrane 7 Thomas Lomes (and 2 others) bought a messuage and a moiety of a virgate of land in Bourhenton, Somerset, held in chief of the king, then granted the same to those he had acquired it of. "whereas the premises were again entered without license; the king for one mark paid in the hanaper has pardoned these premises."

The subsidy rolls for Somersetshire have been searched for further evidence as to these Lomyses, without result; the only rolls now extant for the period required and bearing names, for the hundred comprising Martock, are temp. Richard II (1366-99) and for 1412. It is determined. though, that this Somerset branch had either become extinct, or removed to some other part of England not long after.

It should be noted that the suggestion which has been made in print that the name of Loomis may derive from Le Mans, a city in France, is one that has been looked into and, of necessity, rejected. The name of Leman, Lemon (sometimes Loman), as a surname in England, arose from the Anglo-Saxon and Chaucerian word lemman, meaning sweetheart, etc. One "Alan, the son of the Leman" is mentioned in the Hundred Rolls (1273). "Its primary meaning," says Lower, "seems to be a person much beloved, or very dear." Maundeville's Travels, page 24, instances this:--

"And he sayde he would ben hir Limman and sche asked him if that he were a knyghte and he seyde Nay, and than sche said that be myghte not ben hir Lemman." With respect to the name of Lomaz and some of its variants, appearing in Spanish topography, and possibly also as to persons in southern Europe, that is merely a coincidence having no bearing upon the family of Lomas of England. It is not uncommon to find apparently the same surname applied to persons in racially different countries, who have nothing else in common; the name of Williams, for instance, a surname among several races.

The name of Lunnis (confounded with Lummis), is a contraction of "Londonoys." The name of "Lymesy," of 1272, became "Linsey" in Norfolk; while the surname of "Lamse" (Lamerse) in Rotolus Curiae Regis, 1189-99, for West Wycombe, Bucks, became Lammers. "Lumes" is an English provincialism for beams, and has no connection with the surname of Lomas.

Turning our attention now to Derbyshire and its borders, therein is found a flourishing Lomas colony--the second largest in England. The reader is now on the road of the Lomas descent from Lancashire, through Derby, into the county of Essex, where resided Joseph Loomis, the emigrant to America. It is found to be now impossible to prove a chain of descent complete in every link, from Lancashire across the country to Essex in 1530, for the records necessary to such perfection are non-existent--such as exist being disconnected and incomplete; and no Lomas of the fifteenth century was apparently far-sighted enough to have his pedigree inscribed upon parchment for deposit in any antiquarian collection of MSS. The reader may see plainly, nevertheless, from the evidence, the broad track of the migration into Essex. Derbyshire is the northerly midland county famous for its wooded hills, stone quarries, lovely vales and streams. The branch from Lancashire is first noted at Chapel-en-le-Frith in 1432, in the High Peak Hundred, and six miles north of Buxton. The Lomases may have been influenced to remove from Lancashire, by the Bradshaws who had acquired hundreds of acres in Chapel-en-le-Frith about a hundred years before. The Wars of the Roses, however, which had been disturbing England for several years before 1432, may have made some Lomas acquainted with this charming region. In the forest courts, held in the open air, by itinerant justices, two Lomases are first mentioned:

Pleas of the Forest of Peak 13 Henry IV to Henry VI (1412-1432) Duchy of Lancaster Rent Roll. Belvoir Castle Records (pages 187-265) "Capella le Frith." "Rents of Assize."
"Thomas Lumhales."
"Ric Lumhales."

Descendants of these men are found to-day in the very same Chapel-en-le-Frith, all writing their name "Lomas"; some twenty-one households of them, seventeen being farmsteads. Some of these farmers till the very same acres from which their ancestors drew substance almost five hundred years ago, though not one of them, when inquired of, seemed to be aware of the fact that their ancestors had there dwelt quite as anciently. One of these farmers, "Mr. George Lomas," occupies old Bradshaw Hall, now a farm-house, though both the house and its accompanying three hundred acres have been owned by the Bradshaws from feudal times. King Edward VII is lord of the manor of Chapel-en-le-Frith in right of the Duchy of Lancaster, which owns estates in various parts of England besides Lancashire. As it was only a hundred years after 1432 that our direct line of Lomases had found its way out of this Derbyshire-Stafford colony further to the southeast into Essex, the inquiry in the former region has been confined, mostly, to between 1400 and 1570; no further information of the family in Chapel-en-le-Frith, within this period, has come to hand. In the subsidy rolls, all of which have been searched, only the names of places were entered with the amounts of the tax assessed or collected in each place. Any rolls that may have borne the names of the subsidy-payers are not now extant. Equally unfortunate is the fact that the vital records in the parish church, for the generations before 1620, have gone no man knows where. Thomas and Nicholas Lumhales of this place, about 1432, worshipped in the church of St. Thomas Becket, which was already more than two hundred years old in their time, it being of proven record in 1224. The loving care of the parishioners has kept the old structure in good order, otherwise,

"But for the ivy's buckler green, With stems like stalwart arms sustained, Here else had little now remained But heaps of stone * * * *"

In a Derbyshire Charter (Bradburne, No. 395) dated 6 Edward IV (1466-7) is recorded a power-of-attorney from Laurence Lumhale and Laurence Parker to Thomas Brewster to take seisin of lands called Malderigge Cardellhay in Bradburne and Harbington, which they held of John, prior, and the priory of Dunstaple.

In a court roll of the Duchy of Lancaster for Castleton, Derby, number 427-41, dated Henry VIII (soon after 1504), View of frank pledge, "Ricus lumalls" is presented and fined four pence for not appearing as a juror when summoned. Evidence of the evolution in Derby of the family name from Lumhales, is interesting, i.e.:

Duchy of Lancaster, Court proceedings Vol. XCIII--H. No. 3 27th of Elizabeth, 1585: Nicholas Heathcote in an action of law against Nicholas Lomas over lands in Hartington Manor, Derbyshire.

20th of Elizabeth, 1578 "John Lommas" of Wirksworth, Derbyshire, in an action-at-law. This item keeps pace with a Lancashire spelling of the same time, viz: Duchy of Lancaster, Court proceedings, Vol. XIV No. 7, 5th of Elizabeth 1563 wherein Henry Talbot sues one "Ralph Lommas" as to messuage and lands in "Nother Derwent" Lancashire.

Parish Register of Chesterfield, Derbyshire: "1616 Ralf Lomas of Glasswell and Mary Cresswell" (married) Parish Register of Longstone, Derbyshire: "1641, Henry Lommas and Parnel Mellor, 10th Feb." married.

Court of Quarter Sessions, held at Chesterfield, 1689-1702; "George Lomas of Chapel-le-Frith" fined for assault.

The courts of Chancery have been faithfully searched for Derby, but, as in Lancaster, the Lomases scarcely went to law at all; only three cases are entered-- all after Joseph Loomis's line of the family had gotten fixed in Essex, hence further description is not essential:--

Chas. I Reynardson:
L. 44-22
Henry Lomas of Castleton, Derby, yeoman
L. 48-25 John " Eaves" " "
L. 52-29 Nicholas Lomas of Thornlers, Derby, yeoman

The probate records for Derby and Stafford contain 21 Lomas wills between 1533 and 1651; all wills filed prior to 1580 have been examined. One of the earliest references is the record of a letter of administration granted to widow Margaret Lumalls of Youlgrave, Derby, where a Lomas family was still residing in 1904:

Litchfield Registry: Derby, Alveton, XIIId die Februari 1533. Comissa fuit admistraco bonorum Margaret Lumalls vidue poch de Yolgrave Roberto Steyre filio in legibus defunct ad exhib. Inven cit fm pasche p X.

Two other administrations of property recorded at Litchfield in the same reign are chiefly valuable for the spelling of the surname:

1533 "Apud Lichfield xxmo die May. Comissa fuit admdstraco bonorum Thome Lumaus poch de Drayton in Hayles (Staffordshire) Elizabeth filie defuct peo qd Ricus filius et Executor noiate in testo dict defunct. Comissa fuit admdstraco bonorum Jacobi Lomaus poch p'dct (Drayton-in-Hales) Elizabeth sorori naturali defunct administratrici bonorum sol jurat." The registers of the parish church of Alstonfield, Stafford, show that some of the family in the Derby-Stafford group had lived there for some time before 1538, when baptisms, marriages and burials were first recorded in England, the earliest items therein being:--
Burials 1541 "Sept. 19, Margaret, daughter of John Lomas buried."
" 1542 "Feb. 18, James, son of Margaret Lomas"
" 1545 April 9, John, son of Emot Lomas"
" " July 10, Joane, wife of John Lomas "
And so on the entries continue. The will of one of these John Lomases of Alstonfield bears no reference to any of the family in Essex:

John Lomas of Basford (Beresford) in the parish of Alstonfield, Staffordshire. Will dated 21 August 1558.
To be buried in the churchyard of Alstonfield.
To St. Mary House of Coventry and St. Chad House of Lichfield iiiid.
To Agnes my wife ii great pewter voyders.
The rest of my goods to be divided into three parts.
My wife to have one part, the second part to John Elsabeth, Joane Margreate and Elyn my natural children equally--the third part to my executors to pay my legacies, etc., namely to the said Elsabeth my daughter one-third of the said last mentioned third part and the other two parts of the same third part to be equally divided amongst my above named children.
Witnesses--Richard Smythe curate James Pedley George Tyterton Edward Redferne Robert Meylond and Xpofer Meller.
Inventory dated XXIIII September 1558; Amount p27:19:0.
Appraisers--Laurence Benett Thomas Tyterton Henry Tyterton and Xpofer Meller.
Executors--John Lomas my natural son and Phillip Lomas my brother.
Proved by both Executors 21 Oct. 1558.

At Sheen in Staffordshire, on the borders of Derby, Lomases were resident in 1904 and here is an abstract of the will of a Sheen Lomas of 1546. (No parish records of Sheen before 1545):--
Nicholas Lommas of Shene in the county of Stafford.
Will dated 6 October 1546.
To be buried in the churchyard of Shene.
After payment of my debts etc. the rest of my goods to remayne withe my son Raffe Lomas and hys chyldren.
Also to John Bateman one shepe Thomas Mylwarde one shepe and Roberte Gylmon one shepe.
Debt owing from Gorghe Holrobyn.
Executors--my son Raffe Lomas and Thomas Mylwarde.
Overseer--John Lomas (no relationship given).
Witnesses--Ryc Malken preste Raffe Coke & Roberte Gylmon.
Inventory not dated; Amount p5:16:0.
Appraisers--Henry Slacke John Batemon and Thomas Mylwarde.
Proved by both Executors 5 May 1550.

Up to the year 1500 no form of the name of Lomas appears of record in England to the east or southeast of the counties of Derby and Stafford, save in one notable exception. In 1496 one Richard Lumhals was sent to be rector of the parish church of Surlingham St. Mary, in the County of Norfolk, directly to the east of Derby. Blomefield's Norfolk (V-p. 465) mentions him:

"1496 William Gore rector of Surlingham St. Mary died the next year. Ric. Lumhalx succeeded him and lies buried by him with this inscription--

"Orate pro anima Domini Ricardi Lumhawkys quondam Rectoris istius Ecclesie qui obiit rro die decembr. Ao Dni. Mvc riii cuius anime propicietur Deus."

This item affords an instance of another Latinized spelling of the Lomas surname and in a shire to which the name was new. The use of the letter "x" instead of the "s" (pronounced as if written "s") was common in other cases besides "Lomax" and "Lumhalx"; for example, "Blesby" was occasionally written "Blexby." "Lomax" has always been more aristocratic in England than "Lomas" and these two forms are really the truest of all developments from "del Lum halgh." "Loomis" is an accidental variant of that other modification of "Lummys."

In six hundred years of English Lomas history the name never appears as "Loomis," save the exception of the family of Braintree, Co. Essex, hereinafter noted.

This Sir Richard Lumhals was the only Lomas clergyman of record in England prior to 1638. The registers of the English Universities do not mention him; it is not discernible where he was educated, but, at least, his father must have come from Lancashire, or Derby, if the clergyman was not actually born there himself. The rector's use of the letter "x," a forerunner of the Bolton, Lancashire, use of the same letter, and the fact of his being educated for holy orders suggests that his people were of the more prosperous line of the general family, then resident at Bolton. This rector used the prefix "Sr," (Sir)--the only Lomas who has ever had that honor; his name, however, is not found in the official lists of the knights of England. He was a priest of what was then the church of Rome in England; he died officially unmarried, seventeen years later. English priests of his day were not always childless; they sometimes easily and openly circumvented the laws of their church with respect to what may now be held to constitute a marriage. Rector Lumhals bequeathed to a "Lumhalx,"--not necessarily a son, for he appears to have had relatives living nearby (as hereinafter):
Abstract of the will of Sir Richard Lumhals:
In the name of God, Amen:
I, Sr Richard Lumhalx, Vicar of Surlingham; in good regarde and memory--at Surlingham make my testamt in this wise:--
I comend my soule to Allmighty God, to our lady seint Mary and to all Seints and my body to be buried in the Chauncell of our lady of Surlingham.
To the reparacon of the church vjs viijd.
Also to the churche of St. Saviour vjsviijd.
Also to Essabell Santifort xd and a cowe.
To John Dux, a kowe.
To Wilton Hobart a styrke.
To the howse of Carrow xxs.
To the iiij orders of friars, to eche order a comb of barley.
Also to lumhalx (sic--no Christian name) my horse and my Russet gowne and xxs.
To John Hakon a doned (dun colored?) sulken.
To Edmunde Sport a calfe.
To Anne Liston, a shillid calf (probably--weaned calf.)
John Grene, Wilton Russell and Isabell Santiford exors.
Dated the laste day of August 1510.
Proved 18 January 1513-14 by Grene & Russell.

At South Elmham, Suffolk, a few miles south of Surlingham, Norfolk, one Helias Lumhals, Gentleman, acquired real estate some time prior to 1514, evidently by marriage, or inheritance from other than a Lomas, but no record of its purchase appears in feet of fines for Suffolk, or in deeds. Rector Lumhals was very likely one of the sons of this Helias, Senior, as both were in the same diocese and the city of Norwich was their business and ecclesiastical centre. Helias Lumhals, Junior, sold this property in 1514, as is shown by an enrollment in a close roll. The introduction to this roll is so interesting on account of its having been made at a moment when Henry VIII was out of England and his Queen Catherine was the actual ruler of the country, that the Lumhals deed of sale is here prefaced with its official introduction at the head of the roll:

"Foras much as the iiiith day of July, the vth yere of the regne of oure Souvaigne Lorde King Henry the viiith my Lorde Chauncellour of Englande and other the king's counsaill appoynted by his highness for the tyme of his absence in the parties of beyonde the see be ascertayned that the Kinges Highness on Thursday last past that is to seye the xxxth day of Juyn the yere aforesaide toke passage at his porte of Dovorr towardes his voyage into the parties of fraunce and at vii of the clok in the evenyng of the same day applyed and arryved at his toune of Caleys. Therefore my saide lorde chauncellour sitting in full court of the kings chauncellarye the iiiith day of July by thadvise as well of the kings saide counsaill as also by thaduyse of the Chief Justices of cither benche then beyng ther present considering that the kings grace by his Irs patents under his great seale hath grunted and made the Queenes grace genall and Rearite of this his Royalme in his absence oute of this Royalme hath yeven openly in commaundement that according as in cases hertofore in the absence of the kinges noble pgenito's kinges of England being for the of this Royalme it hath ben uses and accustomed the Tests of Itrs patents gunle and writtes to be chaunged, that in likewise all maner Ires patents guntes and written passing heretofore wt thees wordes Teste me ipo from the saide XXXth day of Juyn during the kinges said absence to here Teste as is underwriten:--
Teste Kat...na Angelie Rgina acgenali Rearite ejusdem."
The Grant by Helias Lumhals is a good specimen of a conveyance of its time:--
Close Rolls 5. Henry VIII 7514 No. 381 Public Record Office, London (Translation):-- Of the writing enrolled for Henry Chauncy:

To all the faithful of Christ to whom the present writing shall come Helias Lumhals, son and heir of Helias Lumhals, late of Southelmham in the county of Suffolk, Gentleman, as also son and heir of Agnes Lumhals late wife of the said Helias, Greeting. Know ye that I the afore-named Helias have remitted released and for me and my heirs for ever utterly quitclaimed to Henry Chauncy of Norwich gentilman and Dorothy his wife, Henry Att Mere, citizen and alderman of Norwich, George Chauncy, Dennis Leventhorpe and John Spelman, being in their full and peaceful possession and seisin, and to their heires and assigns, to the use of the said Henry Chauncy and Dorothy his wife, and their heirs and assigns for ever, all my right estate title claim demand possession and interest which I have ever had, have, or in any way in the future might have, or which my heirs might have, as well of and in all the lands and tenements, rents reversions and services, with all their appurtenances, in Southelmham aforesaid which late belonged to the aforenamed Helias Lumhals and Agnes his wife, or either of them, of which the aforesaid Helias Lumhals and Agnes, or either of them, or any other person or persons, to the use of the said Helias and Agnes, or of either of them, was or were seised or enfeoffed, as in all other the lands and tenements, rents, reversions, and services, in Southelmham aforesaid, with all their appurtenances, by whatsoever right or title they may have come to me the aforenamed Helias Lumhals, in such a way to wit that neither I the aforenamed Helias nor my heirs nor any other person by us, for us, or in the names of us or any of us, can or may henceforth for ever exact claim or vindicate any right estate title claim demand possession or interest of or in the aforesaid lands and tenements rents reversions and services abovesaid, with all their appurtenances, or in any parcel thereof. But by the presents we are for ever wholly excluded from all action of right estate title claim demand possession and interest, or from seeking anything therein, and I the aforesaid Helias Lumhals and my heirs will by the presents warrant and for ever defend all the lands and tenements, rents reversions and services aforesaid to the aforesaid Henry Chauncy and Dorothy his wife, Henry Att Mere, George Chauncy, Dennis Leventhorpe and John Spelman, their heirs and assigns to the use of the aforenamed Henry Chauncy and Dorothy his wife against all men. In witness whereof to this present writing I have affixed my seal. Given on the first day of February in the fourth year of the reign of king Henry the eighth" [1513]

Three most important issues arise from this deed: (1) The grantor had a seal--presumably heraldic; (2) What became of "Helias" Lumhals, Jr.? (3) The Christian name of Helias. The latter may be considered first. This name proves the Lancaster or Derby origin of Helias, Senr., the father. Helias is a contraction, phonetically spelled, of the Latin "Elizeus." more modernly appearing both as Elias and Elys and sometimes Ellis. The will (as hereinafter) of Helias Lumhals, Jnr., maker of the aforesaid deed, is entered in the Court Calendar as "Elizeus"; on the index margin of the register on which it is recorded the name is written "Heliseus," while the testator himself. in his will, contracts the name to "Elys," as also was done in Lancashire by "Elys Lummas," who, as has been seen on page 70, was sued for diverting a brook from its natural course. "Eliseus" is a scriptural form of the name. Now, it is indeed significant that Elias was a Christian name peculiar to Lancashire and its borders. It was particularly so in early times. This came about because of a Lancastrian hero who achieved fame as a crusader, His name was Elias, or Elizeus, as referred to in Hopkinson's MS. Pedigrees of the North Riding of Yorkshire. This Elias, it is written, "was of such strength and valour that he was reputed a giant and in the old scripts is often called `Elias Gigas.' He fought many duels, combats, etc., for the love of ourSaviour Jesus Christ." Well he might, for his name meant "Jehovah is my God." After his return from the Holy Land, in the eleventh century, his name became popular, and many male infants were christened with it, as Elias, Elyas, Helias or Elys. In Salford Hundred, Lancashire, where the Lomases originated and developed, this name of Elias was especially in vogue; numerous instances of it have been noted, some of the earliest of which are:--
"Helias de Pendlebury" living 1087-1100.
"Elyas de Batheton" living 1230-1246 (Duchy of Lancaster Charter.)
"Elias de Thornbrantheved" of Bolton, Lanes, living 1201-1216 (witness to a charter.)
"Elyas de Plesinton," 1246-47 (Lancs, Assize Rolls.)
"Elias de Tonge" 1300 (Tonge in Bolton, Lancs.)
"Elys Lummas" 1543 (Duchy of Lancaster Plea Roll.)

The records applying to South Elmham, Suffolk, have been searched, in vain, for something more about Helias Lumhals, Senior, and his wife Agnes; the subsidies do not even mention him. He died before parish registers were inaugurated and the rolls of the manorial court therefor are not in the Record Office. There is no gravestone within or without the five old churches of that town to the memory of either Helias or Agnes. Their days there were short; the place may have been her home-town. Their children did not continue to live in the Elmhams. If Helias, Sr., or even Agnes, had only made a will before they died naming their children, we should seize upon it and feel certain, if a younger son was named therein, that that son, after his father's death and the Elmhams property was sold by the eldest son and heir Helias, Jr., had crossed over the frontier of Suffolk county into the adjoining Essex, settling at Thaxted, fifty miles away and close to the Suffolk line.

It is a remarkable fact that at this time, 1496 to 1523, the name of Lomas, in any form whatever, was absolutely unknown in any of these eastern shires of England, save in this family of Helias and Agnes Lumhals; equally significant, moreover, is the incontrovertible fact that the first appearance elsewhere, after 1523, of the Lomas family is in the parish of the said Thaxted, where it is safe to say, there lived and died, (in 1551) the great grandfather of the emigrant, (Joseph Loomis)--and born possibly before the year 1500--exactly in season to have been a younger son of Helias Lumhals, Gentleman, and his wife, Agnes of South Elmham, Suffolk, the first county to the north of Essex, and the county to which several of the immediate relatives of the said great-grandfather removed from Thaxted. It is useless to exclaim-- "This must be the line of descent into Thaxted!" It is all likely, plausible, probable, reasonable,--altogether a fair and flawless "deduction" with no other line of the Lomas family extant at the time in that whole east of England. A glance at the map is confirmatory. But proof of it cannot be had, search as one may, and everything available has been searched. The records are broken, incomplete, and in some classes there are no records at all preserved for South Elmham: neither can that claim, belief, or conception of the line of descent be successfully doubted. We state the evidence; the Lomas descendants may judge; whatever is thought for, or against, this understanding of the descent--the palpable fact will ever remain--they were there--at the right time in South Elmham; their surname disappeared for many years from Suffolk and Norfolk with the death, in middle age, of Helias Lumhales, Jr., in 1523. who had removed to Norwich, and it reappears soon after in Thaxted. No sons are named in the will of Helias, Jr., though it is not safe to say that he had none. Episcopal Consistorial Court of Norwich, Register Herman, folio 33:
"Helisei lumhalys" (in margin testamentum.)
Elys lumhalys, being off holl mynd and good memorye consideryng that deth is certen & ye owir of deth uncerten, make & ordeyn my testament & last well etc. etc. "I bequeth my soull to almyghty god; and my body to be berid in yt chirchyard under whose precyncte it shall plese god that I shall dey in."
Item to the churche of St. Cruche in Norwich xijd.
To the high awlter of St. George of Muspole in Norwich xijd.
Item to my ij dowters Dorothie & Marjerye, to iche of them xxs.
Item I bequethe xs to be equally devided betwixt my sustur children, yt is to say, to Henry Chauncy & Frauncs Chauncy & Elizabeth Chauncy & George Chauncy.
I will have said for my soull & my frends sowlls xxx masses called St. Gregory Trentall as shortly after my deth as it may be conveniently.
Item to the Trinite Churche in Norwich xxd.
The residew of my goods I giffe them to Ann my wiffe to pay my detts & to fulfill ys my testament etc. I ordeyn & make her myn executrix.
Dated 5 September 1523.
Proved 22 October, 1523, at Norwich by the execx.

South Elmham in Suffolk is a district embracing nine parishes and forms a subdivision of the Hundred of Wangford, anciently called the liberty, manor or township of South Elmham. It is a deanery within itself. Several churches were founded here in Saxon times, the dedication of which to patron saints led to its subsequent division into parishes; of which St. Margaret's became the ville or principal residential part of the township. These parishes are, All Saints, St. George, St. Mary, St. James, St. Margaret, St. Michael, St. Nicholas and St. Peter. Though anciently of large renown South Elmham, aside from its many ecclesiastical antiquities, is now only what, to American eyes, would appear to be a sweet, beautiful countryside. Suckling's History of Suffolk contains forty-eight pages of description of South Elmham. As we are unable to determine at which one of the eight churches in this township, Helias Lumhals, Gentleman, worshipped, or lies buried, further reference to them is reserved. It is said in Fuller's "County Proverbs," that St. Mary's parish (also called Homersfield) anciently contained so many ale-houses as to have occasioned this distich:
"Denton in the dale, and Arbro' in the dirt,-- And if you go to Homersfield, your purse will get the squirt."

Before engaging the reader's attention altogether with his (or her) Lomas ancestors in Thaxted, Essex, it may be well to present the fact that about a generation after the family became settled in Thaxted, a branch of Lomases, issuing either out of Thaxted, or directly from the distant shires of Lancaster, Derby or Stafford, took lodgment in the town of Tenterden in the county of Kent. This town is nearly as far to the south of London as Thaxted is to the north thereof (about forty miles). There is no especial occasion to mention this fact except that one of the very first of this family in Tenterden was that famous young man, "John Lomas," the martyr, who was burned at the stake in Canterbury for his religious convictions, in the month of January, 1556; and also that it is more logical that he had gone to Tenterden with some relative--his father John, or uncle John, (as the Tenterden records imply), from the comparatively near and only eastern Lomas colony of Thaxted and Pleshey in Essex, rather than from the far distant Lancashire or its borders. It is admissible that, at the least, this great hero was a remote relative of Joseph Loomis's Essex forbears; but in the absence of proof it must not be accepted that he actually was of Thaxted or Pleshey. Thorough inquiry has been made in Kent; the name of Lomas first appears therein at Tenterden in 1552, and the extant records thereof, before this date, are ample enough to justify the state ment that this family was then newly domiciled in that region. Further than this we can only quote from the first records there and add the fact that a John Lomas of Pleshey (close to Thaxted) disappears from the Pleshey records soon after 1543:
COUNTY OF KENT. Parish of Tenterden: Records of baptisms, marriages and burials.
Baptism--
"1552. July. Margaret Daughtr of John Lomas, Baptd 24th day."
Baptism--
"1552. January. James ye sonne of John Lomas baptized ye 22d day."
Burial--
"1561. Marche. James ye sonne of John Lomas was burid ye 31st of Marche."
Baptism--
"1555. Octob. Elizabeth daughtr of John Lomas bapt. 3rd day of Oct."
Burial--
"1555. Octob. Elizab. daughtr of John Lomas burrid 26 Octob."
Baptism--
"1560. Maie. Item ye 12th of Maye was baptised Rachel ye doughtr of John Lomas."
"1560. Maye. The 16th of May was Rachell ye daughtr of John Lomas buried."
Baptism--
"1562. John Lomas ye sonne of John Lomas was baptized ye 26th day of Aprill."
Burial--
"1567. Marche. The 5th day was burd John Lomas."
Baptism--
"1565. Maye. The 27th was baptized James Lomas sonne of john Lomas."
Burial--
"1566. Auguste. The 8 day was buried Elizabeth Lomas wife of Lomas."

A little later some of this Tenterden family appear at Addington (near London) just over the Kent border in Surrey, from where the next generation removed into the city of London, as per the many proofs in the London church records and marriage records, and with which our branch of the family is not identified.

The aforesaid John Lomas of Pleshey is first found in a lay subsidy roll, number 108-246, dated 34 Henry VIII, 1543, the same being the record of the assessment of a tax upon the inhabitants of the Hundred of Dunmow, within which the towns of Pleshey and Thaxted are located. This record reads:--
"Plecye"
"Johnes Lamence in bourd li xs vid."

"Bourd," meaning messuage, or cottage, it is seen that he was not taxed for goods as a merchant would have been, nor upon land as a freehold or copyhold farmer. This John Lomas, therefore, appears to have been a man of some craft, such as a weaver, or maker of something utilitarian. With this he disappears from view; nothing before or after 1543 turns up as to the family in Pleshey. Not so, however, with the name in nearby Thaxted. Therein the Lomases rapidly flourished after implantation, many times figuring in the records. In the subsidy of 1525 (No. 108-202) no Lomas of Thaxted was taxed on goods, land or house, but the church records (as hereinafter) give strong testimony to the certainty that the family had entered Thaxted by, or about, this date, while the manor rolls of the Duchy of Lancaster (of which Thaxted was part and parcel, as a personal possession of the Sovereign) now in the Record Office, London, do not mention any Lomas among the inhabitants up to 1515. These manor rolls, after 1515, are missing from the archives of the Duchy deposited in the Record Office. Thus this fact is the only thing that prevents the reader from knowing the exact date of the first entry of a Lomas into a house, or other property, in Thaxted as a new resident in that town.

We have noticed hereinbefore, that, with every advent of the Lomas family out of Lancashire, or out of Derby, or out of Suffolk and Norfolk into some other shire where the family name was unknown before such advent, the surname has become subject to being written, by the record-keepers of such new parts, in some slightly different spelling than in the region the Lomas traveller had before abided in. Thaxted is no exception, though the dialect and mode of speech of the native Essex folk did not differ so much from that of Norfolk, as from Derby and Lancaster. The majority of the whole population of England could not write its own language in the sixteenth century; almost as many could not read it throughly. Reading and writing was then a vocation, a pursuit, followed by a sufficient number of men in each locality to meet the demands for their services. The term "clerk" then signified these writers; their skill with a mere quill exceeded that of to-day, and much of their work was done in Latin and upon parchment. Some of the Lomases cannot be excluded from this common inability to write or to read. Under such conditions the variegated spellings of their name in the Thaxted records need excite no other thoughts than of curiosity, save in the matter of the instance of "Lammas," (fully elucidated shortly). It has been aptly said that in the olden times some people wrote their names in one way in the morning and in another in the afternoon. A subsidy roll of the Hundred of Dunmow, No. 108-246, dated 1543, reveals:--
"Thaxted" "John Lommance in Bord & Cattall XLs iiijd"
In another assessment in the next year, 1544, roll No. 109-269, appears:
"Thaxted" "John Lommance, Goods X Ls ijd"

Owing to the term "Goods" doubt arises as to whether he was a farmer or a merchant dealing in live stock; probably he was both, and surely a man in comparatively fair circumstances. No other Lomas of Thaxted was so taxable in this year. There were, however, in 1540, as per the church records, at least three separate Lomas households, or rather, three male adults each having a family, viz: the above John, a William "Lommance," and a Thomas "Lummyus." The deaths of William and Thomas are on record in Thaxted; but the absence of John's death-record there, and the fact that the woman who must have been his wife and whose maiden name was either Pasfield, or Jackson, made her will and died as a widow, in Rettendon, Essex, some twenty-five miles away, whereto she had removed, leads to the conclusion that John had gone there also before 1571. He left no will that is now of record in the courts, and the burial records of Rettendon are lost prior to 1600. It will be seen, however, that Alice died quite "full of years" and directed that she be buried in Rettendon and also named her eldest son as John [died in Thaxted, 1588] and his wife as Dorothy, whose marriage to John is recorded at Thaxted in 1568. The will of Alice was written for her by some competent person of Rettendon as follows:--

IN THE NAME OF GOD AMEN the xviijth Daie of October 1580 I Alice Lamise of Rettendon in the countie of Essex widowe beinge sicke in bodie and whole of mynde doe make this my laste will and testamente in manner and forme following First I bequeathe my soule to almightie god my maker and redemer and my bodie to be buried in the churche yearde of Rettendon aforesaide. Item I geve all my sonnes and daughters children and unto either of them ijs Item I geve unto Samuell Seymer, John Lamise, Nathaniell Lamise, Robte Woode the younger and John haies unto everie one of them a shepe, Item I geve unto Sara Thornton ijs Item I do geve unto William Perce children to everie of them ijs. Item I do geve unto iij goddaughters that is to saie Ellen Miller, Judithe Lamise and Sara Woode unto everye of them vs Item I geve unto John Fraunce a sherte clothe of flaxen clothe. Item I geve unto John my sonne a sherte clothe of flaxen clothe Item I geve unto Judithe Lamise a smocke of flaxen clothe Item I geve unto Agnes Egeott my daughter my beste chaire & my square table Item I do geve unto my sister christianx my worstead kirtle my beste petticoate and my beste hatt. Item I geve unto Anthonye foote his wief a reade petticoate. Item I geve unto John Lamise my service booke. Item I do geve unto John my sonne and unto my three daughters unto everyone of them one paire of sheets of the beste. Item I do geve unto the wydowe Goodwyn one towen sheete and unto John Pasfeilde one other towne sheete. Item I geve unto Fraunce Thornton one sheete with a seame. Item I do geve unto my three daughters my weareinge lynnen Item I do geve unto Sara Edgiott my black apron Item I do geve unto Rebecca Egiott one table napkin Item I do geve unto Dorothie my sonnes wief my diap cubbarde clothe Item I do geve unto Dorothie my sonnes daughter one hollande apren and one frame to make tape. And unto Agnes one little brasen morter wth the peste and unto Judithe one diap napkin Item I do geve unto the widdowe Goodwyn my frise cassocke and one petticoate wth a lynnen upperbodie Item I do geve unto John haies and Emme haies unto Either of them xs. All the legassies that is given unto infantes to be paide unto them withe in one yeare nexte after my decease Item all the residew of my goods my Debtes paide and this my laste will pformed I do geve unto my thre daughters to be equallie devided betwene them. And I do make John my sonne and William Egiott my sonne in lawe my executors to se this my laste will pformed and they to have either of them ijs for theire paines in that behalf. And I do make my sonne in lawe Robte woode my overseer and he to have for his paines ijs Item I do geve unto the poore of Rettendon xs to be bestowed at the discreation of my executors, witness to this my will Thomas hopkins and Elizabeth Willingale wth others.

Item I geve unto Margaret Perce my oulde kirtle and vs in monye. Item I geve unto mother Pasfeild my blacke coate and my hatte. Item I geve unto Dorothie my sonnes wief the turned forme. Item I geve unto Emme haies one paire of sheete or ells all the yarne and flaxe. Item I geve unto Emme haies tow ticke pillowes lined withe blewe. Item I geve unto Martha Sudburye a flaxen kirchief and a workendaie apron. Item I geve unto Thomas Pasfeilde his wief one towen sheete. Item I geve unto my sonne my wastecoate of Flannell. Item I will that Eme hayes shall have a couerlett and John haies to have of Eme haies xs And the apples to be geven to poore folke, witnesses to this latter pte mother Pasfeild and mother Jackson wth others. 12 May 1581, John Lamise and William Edgitt, the exors, named in the will, renounced the execution thereof. (Possibly because the testatrix failed to concentrate her bequests.)

"Unto my sister christianx"--these words in this will we take to refer to her widowed own sister, Christiance or Christine ["Kyrsten"] the wife named in the 1567 will of John Lomesse of Thaxted, the grandfather of the emigrant to America, Joseph Loomis. This evidence makes her husband John, cousin of the other (our) John, who died in 1567; and this is in perfect accord with the church records which, as hereinafter, show Alice's eldest son John as distinct from the older John, the aforesaid grandfather, whose will of 1567 we append in full; and consequently Christine, the grandmother of Joseph Loomis, like her sister, Alice, was born a Pasfield (a creditable name in Essex) or a Jackson, as per the will of Alice. Moreover, this portrays Thomas Lummyus, dying 1551, and William Lommance, dying 1540, (apparently in middle age) in the positions of one as the father to John Lommance of the aforesaid subsidy roll of1543, with the other the father to John Lommys, the grandfather of Joseph Loomis. The evidence towards determining wlrether Thomas Lummyus or William Lommance was the father of our John is this:--(1) William Lummys, the younger, in his will, 1573, says: "My brother John's three daughters." These daughters are named in the will of Alice, 1580--whereas our John Lummys had no daughters of record. (2) The separate households of 1551 are distinguished at that date (we may assume that much from the records) by the two different spellings of the surname. There is nothing illogical in the idea that these separate households may have so desired this distinction one from the other, especially for the benefit and better identification of the two Johns. Therefore, on the face of the records, it may be believed that "John Lommance" first noted in 1543, and known brother of the younger William, was the son of the elder William Lommance of 1540 and, by the same token, "John Lummys" first noted in 1567 with son John "Lymace" in 1562, was the son of Thomas "Lummyus," who died 1551. We shall leave it that way.

The will of this John Lummys, grandfather of Joseph, the emigrant: Commissary Court of London (Essex & Herts), Somerset House, London:

In the name of god ams. The xix daye off februare in the yeare off owr lord god M.CCCCC threscore & syx I John lomesse off thaxsted in ye Cowntey off Essex Carpenter beyng off pfecte & hole off mynde thanke be gevyn to allmyghty god, do make thys my last wyll & testament in maner & forme foloying that ys to saye, Fyrst I bequeve my sowle into the hands off allmyghty god my maker & redemer & my body to be buryed in the churche yare off thaxted aforesayed, Item I geve unto the porem, box there iiij Itm I geve & bequeth unto kyrstyne my wyfe my howse wth a garden plotte ther unto belonging duryng her naturall lyfe and affter her decese, I will the sayed howse wthye garden to be solde & equalli to be devyded amonge all my chyldre & yff any off the dye I wyll that pey wch shall remayn to haue yt a monge them, Itm I geve unto my wyfe all my dett & movablys whatsoever they be out off the weh I wyll she shall paye to every on off my chyldren xiijs iiijd in fyve years begynnyg at the eldeste fryst & so forthe unto ye last. Itm I geve unto Krysten my wife all my other goods not bequeathed to paye my detts wt & to brynge my body in to ye erthe whom also I ordayne & make myn Executryx wth Robert almon ye elder, and I wyll that he shall haue for hys paynes vjs viijd thes beyng wytnesses John button, Wyllam Clarke & Roberte pker the wryter hereoff. Proved at Stortford xij May 1567.

From the baptisms (subjoined) it is seen that this testator was father of the John "Lymace" baptized in 1562, five years before this will, who, we shall prove, removed to the neighboring town of Braintree, becoming the father of Joseph Lummys, or Loomis, and other children.

The early register of the parish church in Thaxted, variously called St. Mary the Virgin, St. John the Baptist, and St. Lawrence of Thaxted, is a book with parchment leaves, well preserved. The records of marriages and burials, which the book contains are as old as exist in any church in England, viz:--from 1538. There is but one imperfection to break the continuity and completeness of these records from that date to the present time. Within modern years some one has cut out of the baptismal register the pages bearing the entries between 1538 and 1558. This loss is serious to the Lomas inquiry, leaving us, as aforesaid, unable to see quite as clearly as is desired the exact relationships, one to the other, of the earliest known members of Thaxted. All the baptisms, marriages and burials from 1538 to 1600, under the general name of Lomas, however written by the several clerks of this parish, are here beneath reproduced verbatim. The first Lomas item given is that of the baptism of our John "Lymace" whose father's will we have just read. As this document proves that there were other children, they must have been older than John, for their baptisms, not now appearing after the baptism of John, 1562, would have been entered upon the pages that were cut out of this register. One of these children, it is imagined, was the Edward "Lomys" who also appeared in Braintree and Bocking, marrying Alicia Perie in Bocking Church, 2 August, 1593, and had four children there, three of whom died very young, the son William surviving. This name of William again recalls the William of Thaxted, the apparent grand-uncle of John of Braintree. Edward and John are the first persons of their family name of record in Braintree-Bocking.

Thaxted church records, 1538 to 1625:
Baptisms:
1562 Januarye. Johes Lumace bapt xxixo die
1570 Julye Willns Lammarche fil Johis ix die
1571 Auguste Sara Lammarche xxxo die.
1573 December Walterus Lammarche ultimo die
1579 Januarye Elizabetha Lamas xxiiiio die
1580 November Johes Lammarshe viiio die (son of John and Dorothy)
1585 August Thomas Lammas fil Johes xxxo die (son of John and Dorothy.) Thaxted Church.
The finest and largest parish church in Essex, and one of the most beautiful parish churches in all England. It is 400 years old. St. Michael's Church, Braintree.
Here Joseph Loomis was baptized and here were pronounced the banns before his marriage day.
Marriages:
1549 ffebruary Richus Lummys & Annes Gylbarte, 7
1550 August Richus Hayloge & Johanna Lymace, 4
1559 April Willms Lummys et Margaret Brigham xxvo Aprilis
1568 November Johannes Lammas et Dorothy Moulton xxio die
1582 Januarie Nicolaus Woodde et Johanna Lummys xxio
1590 September Rowland Rice | xviid Dorothea Lamas |
1605 September John Silvester & Margaret Lammas xxixo

Burials:
1540 July William Lommance, 20
1541 May Elizabetha Lummis, 21
1549 July Margareta Lummeas, 31
1551 October Thomas Lummyus, 28
1567 April Johnes Lummys xii die [Father of John bap. 1562.]
1570 Julie Wilhelm Lammas fil Johis xx die (bap. 11 days before; son of John and Dorothy.)
1574 March Gualters Lummas xxiiii
1579 November Nicolai Woodd, wever, ultimo
1588 Aprill Johanes Lamas, Eutia custos, (*)iiii die (married Dorothy Moulton 1568; either she or her daughter married, 1590, in Thaxted, Rowland Rice.)
1597 March Agneta Lumys, Vidua [widow] xxv

These church records, when dissected and supplemented by other evidence which they have led up to, reveal the outline of the particular family in which we are interested to be substantially as set forth in the chart on p. 86, which see.

Contemplating the Thaxted evidence as a whole, it is seen that the burials do not indicate the presence there, before 1538, of but three adult Lomases besides the William dying 1540,--viz:--the two females, dying in 1541 and in 1549, and Thomas Lummyus who died in 1551. Therefore it may be accepted that there was not more than one generation, if even that, in Thaxted prior to these names of 1540-1551. A search of the manor Court Rolls of the Honor of Clare, for the sessions held at Thaxted was begun at the year 1420 and continued, voluminously, to 1515. No Lomas was mentioned; no mention was expected. The missing Court-Rolls after 1515 have been referred to. The Lay Subsidies and Fines (agreements in the sale of real estate) have been exhausted. The Proceedings in Chancery, Inquisitions, etc., reveal nothing about the family in Thaxted, or Braintree or Lavenham, in the county of Suffolk. By this it is plain that these Lomases, or Lummyses, kept out of the courts of civil law. The Ancient Deeds yielded nothing after a complete search.

Let us dispose of James Lummys, and his brothers. He did not die in Thaxted,--is known only by the mention in his brother William's will, 1573-- "my brother James chyldren." What were the children's names, where they lived (evidently not in Thaxted), what was their father's occupation and where he died, are points not disclosed in the probate records of Essex, Hertfordshire or Suffolk. Casting about over a wider area for a clue, it has been found that a James "Lummas" died in Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire, [about forty-five miles from Thaxted] between the years 1578 and 1589, and that he was the first person of that name there, and the only one in the court records of the county. Two of the Thaxted brothers of the aforesaid James settled in Lavenham, Suffolk--a place noted for its church and numerous dwellings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a carpenter and builder William Lummys came to Lavenham from Thaxted, some twenty-two miles. Upon sight of the oldest of Lavenham's quaint houses the visitor quickly realizes the probability that William, the cousin of John Lummys, or "Lomesse," of Braintree, built some of them. The parish registers here begin in 1558 and contain these entries:
(*)Warden "Buryalles A. D. 1562:
Ye xxiti July Joane Dautr. of Richard Lummas."
"Marriage A. D. 1581:
Ye xiitl Day Thomas Lummas & Anne Stephen."
"Chrysteninge A. D. 1581 (-2)
The same day Marche iiii
Brigide dautr. of Thomas Lummas
Ye same day Anne dautr of Thomas Lummas."

The will of William Lummys, the carpenter, requires presentation as it helps to illustrate the "quality" of the family:
Probate Registry. Bury St. Edmunds. Suffolk.
Archdeaconry Court of Sudbury.
Register Large--193.

In the name of god amen the xix day of Sept. 1573. I Wyllm Lummas of Lavenham. Suff. carpenter, being whole of mynde and of good and pfect remebrans make an ordaine this my last will and testament in manner and fforme as here after foloweth.

I bequeath my sowle unto allmightie god my maker and redemer and my bodye to the earthe.

I bequeath unto the poore people of Lavenham, thre pound of lawful mony of Englond to be given to them at suche time and times as shall seme best to the dyscretion of my father in lawe Robt. Llower & Robt. Lynche.

I bequeath all my lande & landes as well fre as copy wch I late bought of one Robt Yonge to the only use of the poore people of lavenhm aforsaid for ever pvided allwaies that the townshyppe aforesayd do paye or cause to be payde yerely to marget my wife during the tearme of hur naturall life twentye syxe shyllings and eyght pens at two severall tearmes in the yeare by equall porcons.

To mrgaiet my wyfe my howses I now dwell in with all appurtenances and also my howse in the mrket X for lyfe.

If it fourtune my wyfe to marrye againe and to have children, and any of them be sonnes then my howse I now dwell in to remayne to the eldest and to his hyres for ever. If she have two sonnes then I give my howse in the mrket to the next sonne. Yf she heve no sonnes but dawghters I will my howses to the eldest, with my mrket howse to the second daughter yf she chanseth to have.

Yf she have no chyldren or that her chyldren dye, all the howses to be solde, and the mony equally divided among the children of my thre brethren or their heyres.

I give to my brother Jhons thre doughters thre pound wt one yeare aftur my depture, equall partios. To my brother James chyldren thre pound each wtin one yeare aftur my depture out of this mortall lyfe.

The residue of my goods not bequeathed my detts being payd my will being fulfylled according to my meaning, I geve & bequeath to Mrgaret my wyf whom I make my sole executrix.

The wills of John Lummys's cousin, Richard and wife, are also of interest. Both testators having died at about the time their relative went from Thaxted to Braintree, John of Braintree might have been able to attend one or both of the funerals.

In the name of god Amen in the moneth of June in the yeare of our Lord god 1588 Richard Lumes late while he lived of Lavenhm in the Countty of Suff. and Diocesse of Norwich deceased beinge sicke in body yet of pfect mynde and good remembrance thanks be unto god therefore made ordeyned and declared his testment nuncupative that is to saye by worde of mouth conteyninge therein his laste will in manr & forme followinge viz. ffirste he did comend his sowle unto almighty God & his bodye to Christian buriall. Item: he did geve and bequeath to Anne Lumes his wife all his goods whatsoevr she to take his debtes and paye his debtes and to bring his bodye honestly to the earth. And he did name ordeyne and appoynt the sayde Anne Lumes his wife his sole and onely executrix of the same his will & testament. In the pence and hearinge of Mr. Henry Copinger pson of Laven ham, Richard Andrewe, Margery Barbor als Chapman widow, Margery Grome wife of Robert Grome, John Byxbve* and Anne Stannardex.

Probatim cora Johe Deye comissario et officiali archinat Sudbarie Decimo quarto die mensis Januarii Anno Dni 1588.

The widow Anne died within three months later, and her will supplies the details lacking in her husband's testament:

In the name of god Amen the xiith of Marche 1588. I Anne Lummas of Lavenham in the Countie of Suff. wyddowe whole of mynde and of good & pfect remembranc make and ordayne this to be my laste will and testamente in manner followinge ffirste. I bequeathe my soule to almightie god my maker and Redeemer, my bodye to the earthe ec. Item. I gyve unto Thomas Lummas my sonne fyve combes of wheate and xiiis iiiid of Law full money of Englaunde wch the sayde Thomas owethe unto me. Item I geve unto Anne Stonnarde my Servaunte a Trundle bedd the fflocke bedd and twoo pillowes Lyeinge thereon, twooe Blanketts and the coveryng, being thereon, a payre of my best sheets and one other payre of my canvas sheets, one turned chayre, a fyer panne, a payre of Tonges, a gredyron, a Tramell, a payre of potthooks, and my best gowne, my mydle brasse ketle and my beste brasse ketle, twoo of my best pewter plattrs and twoo of my nexte, one buffett stoole and one other stoole and my little table. Item. I gyve unto Susanne Bixbye my Daughter's childe a little framed chayer and a payre of my beste sheets. I gyve unto Anne Bixbye one other of my saide daughters children my beste cupbourd and a payre of my beste sheets. Item I gyve unto John Bixbie my daughter's sonne my beste cheste. Item I give unto Robarte Lynche iii pewter porringers. The Residewe of all my goods come, money Debts, household stuffe and whatsoever ells I have before not bequeathed, my debts being payde and this my laste will and testamente pformed & fulfilled, I gave unto John Bixbye my sonne in lawe whom I make & ordeine to be my sole Executor of this my last will and testamente.

In wytnesse whereof I have hearunto sett my haunds the Daye and Yeare above wrytten.

William Lommance, dying in Thaxted, 1540, left no will or inventory that is now of record, the same likewise of Thomas who died 1551.

As an apparent freeholder of both house and land, John Lummys, or Lomesse, the grandfather of the emigrant stood very well in his native town of Thaxted; but he died young, seemingly under forty. As has been seen (see top of page 84) his will did not name any of his children, possibly because they were so young.

John "Lomesse" must have been a man of few words, unless much indisposed when he sent for Robert Parker to write his will. Houses with or without "garden plotts," in his time, were known by names instead of numbers. Of but few citizens could it be said that they owned house or land. The great majority of houses and the most of the land was manorial and Crown property in Thaxted, as elsewhere, and obtainable only upon lease or rental. John Lummys was thus singularly independent. His property must have been sold as his will directs, if not before, for the family had all disappeared from Thaxted records by about 1600. If we knew how many children were in the family, how many grew up and married, and where they went from Thaxted, then we might answer some queries now not answered. But the veil is drawn, and we probably shall never know.

Thaxted, long since shorn of its commercial prestige, is more interesting than Braintree and the average town. Seven miles from the railways, it slumbers on with scarcely a modern building on its slopes. Upon approaching from the south, the traveller's first view discloses what seems to be a small cathedral city centering in a niche, upon a hill, round about a church,--its roofs tiled and mossy, jumbled and impressive in the sunshine. This view from the southward height promises much of modern import; but the promise is broken when the empty market-place meets the eye. The main streets seem quiet, lonesome and mediaeval, particularly by moonlight. Quaint, irregular houses of two and three stories, some with the front of each floor protruding out over the story beneath, lean forward, or upon each other sideways, as if forlorn over departed days.

Nevertheless, there is one object here, which no other Essex town or city can match-- the parish church. It is the "bright particular gem" of the Dunmow-Hundred hills. With timbered roofs scarcely equalled in any country parish in the land, the whole structure is just as pre-eminent in beauty. It is "frozen music,"--the love and worship crystallized, of those who made it and worshipped in it. 'Twas none the less the pride and joy of the Lomases than it has ever been to all, both before their time and up to now. Literally, the possession of God this church was to them, and holy in itself. So fine a church frowns upon a Separatist as an ingrate. This edifice, having been more perfect before 1600 than now, the Loomis visitor will hardly be willing to feel that any of his ancestors ever entered herein with an unwilling heart. There is little likelihood that the first Thomas, or John Lummys the elder, ever raised their voices in discordant protest within or without these chiselled walls. John Lummys's handiwork in wood should be in this church somewhere, even now. The last of the stonework had been finished before his day.

Mute evidence of the royal favor and of the prosperity which once were Thaxted's boon, this church shows to-day a need of repair, both in the hearts of men and in its fabric. The vicar states that the parish is poor and, of itself, unable to "restore" the decayed and falling parts of the building. An appeal has been made to the Essex people, and to lovers of architecture, for contributions, so that the church may continue to be esteemed as the finest of the four hundred and thirty-six churches of that shire.

The manors are now owned by the Countess of Warwick and Guy's Hospital, of Warwick, and by the owner of Horham Hall in Thaxted: whereas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Thaxted was chiefly the property of the English Kings and Queens, whose influence embellished the church, now called St. John the Baptist.

This church is of the late Perpendicular style, embattled and supported by wide buttresses, terminating in canopied niches. The building consists of chancel and nave, (each with aisles), south transept, north and south porches, somewhat enriched, and a western tower one hundred and eighty-one feet. including the slender crocketed spire. There are eight bells and a clock. Although the style of the architecture is the Perpendicular, the pillars and arches seem to belong to an earlier date--to Henry III or the beginning of the reign of Edward I, 1270. The vicar says that the south porch was added about 1337; and that the north transept and north aisle were built more than one hundred years later. The chancel was the gift of Edward IV. The paintings in the north aisle are of the same period--1461-1483. Entering by the south porch the font. at which the Lomases were baptized, is just inside. This was its position because a baptism being a formal recognition of the individual, the ceremony was performed near the door, and as marking the entrance, spiritually, of the subject into the church. This font is of stone, covered over the top with a spire-like hood of oak, old, costly and carved intricately. The choir stalls, that anciently added more of the beauty of carved oak, have disappeared, save a few portions to be seen in the screen enclosing the tower arch. Fixed on the east wall and north porch are carvings of the Crucifixion. There is a crypt under the chancel, without evidences of embracing interments. The corbels of the nave are chaste and happy in design. A celatura [hood] in the Lady chapel is curious and rare. In the end of the north aisle is the Thomas Becket chapel. There are no pews, the six hundred sittings being of small chairs, as in a cathedral. Coats-of-arms are carved upon the beams of the ceiling--none having reference to the Lomas family. The stone floor of the church includes some gravestones, none old enough, however, to be in memory of any Lomas. Unhappily the same absence is noted in the burial yard without, though two generations of the family were certainly buried in this ground. Words "in memoriam" should be etched in brass, and the plate affixed to the wall indoors, if permanency is desired,--or better, wrought in a window of stained glass.

The various forms in which the general name of Lomas appears, in the Thaxted church records, have been set forth, showing how the name appears several times as "Lammas" and "Lamas." This form is the name of another family than Lomas altogether and one not of the del Lumhalgh origin at all. The ecclesiastical scribes of Essex were familiar with the word Lammas before any Lomas appeared therein. They sadly confounded the two names, the similar pronunciation being deceptive indeed; and as it has been advanced that the name of Lomas or Loomis might have derived from Lammas [pronounced Lummas] it is advisable to disprove that idea.

Lammas (la m s) Hlaf, Hlammoesse, Lammasse, Lammesse, Lamasse, Lamese, Lambmes, Lammes, Lamas, Lambmass; "Hlaf" meaning bread, Loaf i mosse--meaning Mass; afterwards popularly apprehended as if Lamb-Massachusetts

The 1st day of August in the early English church was observed as a harvest festival, at which loaves of bread were consecrated, made from the first ripe corn. Lammas also meant the part of the year marked by this festival. The writings of King Alfred referred to--hlafmoesse; thus showing the word long before the beginning of surnames. The old English chronicles mention Lammasse. Tennyson also used it in the same meaning; "A voice ran round the hills When corny Lammas bound the sheaves." "Latter Lammas" was referred to as a day that will never come; used humorously for "Never." In 369 "Claudius began to reign in Lammesse." Lammas lands were those on which crops had been reaped, after which they were subject to common rights of pasturage until the spring. Lammas-apple, assize, eve, feast, month, night, tide and time--also Lammas land, Lammas field, mead, meadow-ground were common expressions. This is all gathered from various standard dictionaries, as it helps to confirm what record-investigations show, i. e., that the name Lammas, if considered as a variant of Loomis, had no reference to anything of an ecclesiastical origin. As to the parish of Lammas in Norfolk, a Lammas family did originate therein and did develop, at large, into a considerable family before 1540. We have made a thorough investigation of this family to determine if at any time before 1600, in any place whatever, this name became written (in the first syllable)--Lom instead of Lam, (and in the second syllable), mis, mys, or mus, instead of mas or mes. No such instance occurs. The name is always distinct from its earliest times; it is never found corrupted into anything that could be accepted or mistaken for Loomis, Lomas, or any other name. Moreover, Lammas has almost no variant at all; the only other spellings were "Lammasse," "Lamas," and "Lammesse." It is only fair to quote some specimens of the evidence and so allow any investigator to contemplate the remarkable features of the entries of the Loomis family in the Thaxted registers.

The Norfolk town of Lammas or (La Mers) "on the marsh," took its name from its situation on the Marsh, the churchyard being washed by the river Bure. In the Domesday Book it is called "Lamers." The Lammas family took its name from the town and soon after appeared in London. Year 1292, Hundred Rolls Vol I. p. 417. City of London--(translation) "Verdict of the twelve jurors of the ward of John Horn. They say (inter alia) that Richard Lammesse, Ralph le Fruter, Peter Cosin * * * * * (and a number of others) all of London, and a number of foreigners, have taken wool to parts beyond the seas, but they do not know where nor to whom they were sold, nor what they received for the same. We believe that it was by the King's warrant, and that they traded with the Flemish."

The next item is a fine illustration of the relations existing between landlord and tenant, at this time, as referred to on p. 72, hence it is worthy of being translated and quoted in full:--

"In a sworn return made as to Stanton in this county, the jury return that (among other copyholders) Richard Lammasse holds in villenage in Stanton 5 acres of land and meadow from Nicholas de Cheney, paying him 3s. yearly for the same. Also Richard will plough every Friday from Michaelmas to Christmas 1 ridge, and each work is worth 1d. Item, he will drive to the lord's hall all the sheep he has from Michaelmas to Christmas, value (of this service) unknown; Item, he will thresh at Michaelmas in his lord's barn one trave of corn, worth 1/2d.; Item, he will harrow for one day with one horse at the winter sowing, worth 1/2d. Item, at Christmas he will give to his said lord one hen, worth 1d 1/2; Item, he will plough one ridge every Friday from the Feast of the Purification to Easter, each work worth 1d.; Item, he will harrow for one day with one horse at the Lent sowing, worth 1/2d., and at Easter he will give his lord 10 eggs worth 1d. Item, he will plough one ridge every Friday from Hokeday to the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, and each work is worth 1d. Item, he will hoe the lord's corn for one day with one man, the work being worth 3/4d. Item, he will mow, turn, cock, and carry the lord's grass. Item, he will reap his lord's corn for four days with two men all day, food supplied on two days by the lord, and not supplied on two days, and on the food days each man will receive for his food bread worth 1/2d., and for his meal worth 1/2d., to wit, on one day fish and cheese without ale and on the other day bread and meat and cheese with ale; and these works are worth 8d. Item, he will carry his lord's corn for one day he himself with one of his associates, with one cart, receiving sufficient food from the lord, and this is worth 1d. Item, he will work when he may be called upon, provided he is able to return to his dinner. Item, in return for these works, he with his eleven associates will receive from the lord one quarter of corn and one sheep worth 12d., and half an acre of meadow called Denhalvaker."

An offshoot of this family in Stanton is later found in the nearby city of Cambridge; also in Ware, Herts.

The next item illustrates also the care taken to prevent merchandise exported from England from being purchasable by a nation with which England was then at war:--

Year 1337. Patent Roll 2 Edw. III pt. I--M 3. April 15, Windsor. "License, until Michaelmas for the king's merchants, Gilbert de Wendlyngburgh, John de Lammesse and John de Astewyk, to put 20 lasts of ox hides, 30 sacks of feathers and 10000 rabbit skins on board ships from parts beyond the seas in the port of London, and to carry 300 weys of cheese from the county of Essex to the mouth of the Thames and there to put these in the same ships, to be taken to the town of Midilburgh in Seland; they to find security that they will take these to Midilburgh only and receive security from the buyers, in the presence of the bailiffs of Midilburgh that the same will not be taken to Flanders or other parts at enmity with the king, and will send to the mayor and sheriffs of London letters of the count of Hainault and Seland testifying that the cargoes have been discharged within his power and that they have received such security from the buyers." Year 1283. Patent Rolls. 2 Edw. I--M. 21 April 17 "Protection granted for Richard de Lammasse."

Year 1628. Close Roll. 3 Charles I. part 42, m 105: "Stephen Lamas of Ware, Herts, yeoman, son and heir of Stephen Lamas of Ware deceased sells to John Lamas a messauge and tenement in Hocker Hill in parish of Stortford, Herts called the White Harte & garden."

Year 1285. "Blomefields Norfolk VI--343--The manor in Scothowe (Scottow, Close to the town of Lammas) which belonged to Rainald Fitz Ive was held in 1285 by Richard de Milliers; Gervase de Lammas sued Simon, son of Simon de Parva Riston for it soon after, but unsuccessfully.

Year 1329. Court of Hustings, London, Roll 57 (132). Will of Roesia de Borford:-- To James her son the residue of the term of apprenticeship of John de Lammasse--Proved 25 March 3 Edward III. Year 1350. [Here is an item evidencing that a Lammas aided in provisioning the army of Edward III soon after the victories in France in which the Lancastrian earl, John o' Gaunt, was so prominent.] Patent Roll 24 Edw. III pt I--m 16, 21 July. Westminster. "License, until Michaelmas for John de Lammesse and Richard de Leyhamme of Ipswich, (Suffolk) to ship 300 quarters of wheat in the port of Ipswich and take the same to Calais for the munition of that town."

Year 1350. Patent Roll. 24 Edw. III pt. I--M 22d. "Apr. 2. Westminster. Appointment of John de Sautre (and 4 others), the king's serjeant-at-arms to take John de Roiston, who is indicted before the late sheriff and the then coroners of London of the death of Peter Lammasse, lately killed in the said city, and has fled from the city and is now a vagabond, so that justice has not been done upon the indictment."

Year 1350. Patent Roll. 24 Edw. III. pt. 2, M. 15,--"24 July appointment, with the assent of the King's merchants, John Malwayn and Nicholas de Wandelesworth, attorneys of the main pernors of the farmers of the customs and subsidies, of John Lammesse to hold the office of troner of wool in the port of Boston (Lincolnshire), during pleasure as others have been accustomed to hold it. (Troner means keeper of the wool beam--the scales for the weighing of wool. This same man later was appointed to the same office for the port of Bristol.)

Year 1367. Blomefield's Norfolk IV 91--Church of the Austin friars, Norwich, dedicated to "St. Mary the Virgin and St. Augustine; the most remarkable men of this convent were priors thereof xxx 1367 Brother Richer de Lammesse prior."

Year 1550. Patent Roll. 3 Edward VI. Part 2, rot 34, 19:--(Translation) For William Lammas, Pardon for defending himself. The King to all his Bailiffs and faithful subjects to whom etc. Greeting. Whereas we have understood by the record of James Fletcher and John Rust, our coroners in the county of Cambridge and in the liberty of the town of Cambridge, upon view of the body of William Stokedall, late of Cambridge in the county of Cambridge, "cooke," lying dead there, that on the fifth day of July in the second year of our reign, about the fifth hour of the afternoon of the same day, the said William Stokedale and one William Lammas of Cambridge aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, "cooke," were in the kitchen of Queen's College in Cambridge aforesaid preparing supper for their masters, and because the said William Lammas reproved the said William Stokdale for not duly performing his office, the said William Stokdale made an attack on the aforenamed William Lammas with a stick called "a basting styke," which he was then holding in his hands, whereupon the same William Lammas ran away from the aforenamed William Stokdale as far as he could, viz: to the wall of the said kitchen, beyond which he could not get, and the said William Stokdale pursued the aforenamed William Lammas furiously up to the wall, and drew blood from him, with intent to slay him, wherefore the said William Lammas then and there, being obliged to defend himself, on the said day, year and hour, struck the said William Stokdale on the left side of his head, with a stick worth 1d. which he was then holding in his hands, there and then giving him a mortal wound one inch in breadth, of which wound the said William Stokdale at Cambridge aforesaid languished from the said fifth day of July until the seventh day of the same mouth then next following, and then died there, and that this said William Lammas on the said fifth day of July in the year aforesaid killed the aforenamed William Stokdale at Cambridge aforesaid in the county aforesaid and in the liberty of the town of Cambridge in his own defence and for the preservation of his life, and not otherwise, and not feloniously nor or his malice aforethought, as by the tenor of the record aforesaid, which we have caused to come before us in our Chancery, fully appears. And whereas the same William Lammas surrendered himself in our prison of the Marshalsea before us for this reason, and remained therein, as was certified to us by our well-beloved and faithful Sir Richard Lyster, knight, our chief justice assigned to hold pleas before us, by our command, We, moved by pity, do pardon the same William Lammas the suit of our peace which belongs to us against the same William Lammas for the death aforesaid and grant him our firm peace therein. Provided nevertheless that he shall stand to judgment in our court if any one shall wish to implead him for the death aforesaid. In witness whereof etc. Witness the King at Westminster on the 30th day of January.

Year 1612. Blomefield's Norfolk II 345. Thomas Lammas, rector of Scoulton, Norfolk 1612. (It was with regret that the present writer was obliged to reject this interesting evidence as not having any direct relation to the men who were of the branch of the Lomas family with which this article is chiefly concerned).

It is already known, of official evidence, that the "Joseph Lummys" ("Lommys"), who resided in the town and parish of Braintree in Essex, England, left that place in the spring of the year of 1638; also, that without any appreciable delay thereafter, he became a passenger of record in a vessel of goodly register, known as the "Susan and Ellen," and that this vessel did depart on the eleventh day in the month of April, of that year, from the port of London, bound for Boston in New England, carrying quite a number of other voyagers with their personal properties.

In this connection it is the writer's duty to deal with facts that have not been made manifest hitherto--with respect to the scenes and circumstances amid which he lived; and as well, to the elements contributing chiefly to his taking leave of England. Thereunto let attention first be directed to the ways and the means by which Joseph Lummys, with his family and worldly goods, had "come up to London" from Braintree. By the sworn deposition, or affidavit, of one Joseph Hills of Charlestown, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (see herein page 21), made thereat on the 30th day of July, 1639, he, (Hills) being the "undertaker"--the manager or promoter of this particular vessel, voyage or emigration--it is learned that the various parcels embracing the goods of Joseph Loomis (we shall principally refer to him as Loomis hereinafter) were "transported from Malden, in the county of Essex, to London, in an Ipswich hye." This place of "Malden" being Maldon, the Essex port, and an "Ipswich hye" meaning a smart craft of small size and especially engaged, we may retrace the journey of the said Loomis, his family and friends, from London, viz: down the Thames, up the Essex coast, across the Maplin and Foulness Sands, into the wide and long reach of the mouth of the river Blackwater, and continuing thence up the river some ten miles, and so, Return to Maldon. This small port was one through which there long had passed commerce and people between England and the Continent. That Joseph Loomis and family attended personally the transportation, from Maldon in this hye, of their eleven separate and varying pieces of baggage and "divers other goods," which the above-noted deposition recounts, may well be believed. The inland Blackwater river, though but a very small stream of only a few feet in width, reaches northwestward from Maldon, to and past "Six Bells Corner" in the end of Bocking parish, by Braintree. But by so devious a route does it flow, that Joseph Loomis, in his journey seaward, only followed it in its lower half, viz: from Witham to Maldon. The "River Brain,"--a mere brook--lightly slips down direct from the southern slope of Braintree to Witham, there uniting with the Blackwater. So it was that the emigrants came out of Braintree by the pleasant highway, paralleling the Brain. They passed through Black Notley, White Notley and Faulkbourne,-- all sparse hamlets strung along the gently undulating road, above the stream, yet each little settlement with its handy inn. Thus was reached Witham, then on the great Roman road between London and the northeast. Thence out of Witham, they followed the course of the Blackwater by Wickham Place, through Langford and Heybridge to Maldon. Some fifteen miles in all from Braintree it was, and over a favorite route for bicyclists nowadays. Alternating copses and fields, freshly furrowed for the seed-sowing, marked the way between the snug hamlets and the occasional houses plastered in white or yellow beneath their low-browed roofs of thatch. Some of these houses still exist along the way, and pretty much the same sort of people as of yore still abide in them.

This longest way around, of 100 miles to London, may have been both an easier and a quicker progress than by the forty miles of the shortest highway thereto, by the way of Chelmsford. It should have been less costly a journey than that which necessitated frequent stops at taverns for rest and refreshment. Very well-ordered seems to have been the Loomis's departure. Many a stop was made at gate and door, in those familiar fifteen miles, to give and receive blessings and farewells--the last of earth--repeating what had but just happened in Braintree church and market-place.

Braintree scarce could afford to lose such a citizen as Joseph Loomis; but America needed him more, and he knew it. Just that same need was exactly why he went away. Verily, it was not merely religion, not all prospect of gain, not great dissatisfaction with home,--not any one of these things that chiefly moved him to arise and go to set himself down three thousand miles from the ease of home. Broader than any of these causes was the reason. To help found a new country, with fairer laws and wider liberties, where the ordinary man might be more supreme--that was the Great Idea that possessed him, and many others. As of the non-conformist faction out of the church of England they wanted to dominate the church at home, which power they could not quite attain to there. But deeper than that desire in the breast of Joseph Loomis was the spirit that moved him. He felt himself equal to the task that other men had set. The challenge of their example stirred him. The appeal of Opportunity decided him. It convinced his mind that he was one of "the chosen" for the Great Purpose. And the apparently unlimited possibilities, to him and his, of the natural resources of an unclaimed land, hovered in his imagination. He had all the money that he would require to pleasantly establish his family in America. Let us dismiss, as being insufficient, the idea of "a band of Christians fleeing from persecution" -save with respect to the Mayflower's Pilgrims mostly. To the so-called Puritan settlers, the comforts of religion were vastly more of a necessity and more relished in the New than they had been to them in the Old England. Daily spiritual refreshment kept them to their hard tasks, soothed the longing for a return to the beautiful land they had forsaken, and, in fact, the church was the keystone that held up the arch of the early colonization.

On the point of persecution in England, the writer would like to add the words of a deceased American who was an expert student of English records and history of the seventeenth century, because actual and severe persecution had pretty much died out in Essex before 1632:--

"It is a mistaken notion, although the one usually received, that the early New England settlers were all, or even generally, men properly classed under the denomination of Puritans; and the sterotyped declaration in secular and religious American histories, that the continent was first settled exclusively by bands of men fleeing from severe and unrighteous persecution, and enforced to seek a new home where they might enjoy unmolested their freedom of conscience, etc, is one that involves both an absurdity and a falsehood, and ought at once to be expunged from the record. That many, perhaps most, of the early emigrants were non-conformists, to a greater or less extent, is doubtless true, and that some of them desired a larger liberty of speech than was then permitted them in England may also be admitted; but beyond this, there is no foundation for the frightful picture so persistently presented to the mind of the young American student, whether he stands in his pinafore at the knee of his village school-mistress, or pores over the ponderous volumes of American history at the University. At the risk of being charged with heterodoxy, and a want of patriotism, I venture the assertion, after protracted researches into the family Map of England, with locations of Bolton, Thaxted and Braintree--Loomis homes.

History in England of the earlier settlers, that not one half their number left England on account of religious persecution, or were men and women who could justly be termed puritanic in their notions. The simple fact is that the first colony was composed--as all colonies ever since have been--of a heterogenous admixture of very good people and very bad; with still another, and perhaps, larger class than either of the others, that may be described as neither the one nor the other, but simply indifferent. That the good predominated over the bad is a matter of history; and it is greatly to the credit of the early rulers of the colonies that they were able, from such rude and antagonistic materials to lay the foundation of a nation that has proved so great as it has.

Speaking particularly of the early emigrants from Essex, it is unquestionably true that a large portion of them were actuated by a desire for more religious latitude than they then enjoyed at home; but there was still another and equally large class, for whose motives there may be entertained a respect quite as sincere, and for whose character a reverence quite as profound. These were men in the humbler walks of life, whose circumstances were moderate, whose families were large, and who foresaw, in remaining at home, only a perpetual struggle for existence, without the prospect or hope of elevating their offspring above the level of their own lives. To such men as these the New World opened a vista of positive enchantment. The farmer, tilling laboriously land not his own, and certain only of the conventional six feet of soil, where his own bones would at last be laid, believed that there, after a little season of toil and hardship, and perhaps even of extreme suffering, he would be able to stand under the shelter of his own vine and fig-tree, call broad acres of wood and meadow his own and then, having distributed his possessions, and seen his sons and daughters comfortably settled in life, lay down calmly, satisfied that he had fulfilled his duties as a parent and a citizen."--Col. John L. Chester.

Joseph Loomis was not one of these unfortunate yet ambitious farmers. His wife was the daughter of a man considered as very well-to-do in that time and region; a man whose testamentary bequests of money alone were upwards of fourteen thousand dollars (present reckoning). Loomis is known to have been a woolen draper, a merchant engaged in the purchase of cloth from the many weavers who wove on hand-looms in their cottage-homes. He had a store in Braintree stocked therewith and with other goods which a "draper" dealt in. These products, he sold at large, both wholesale and retail, to tailors and consumers in general: Braintree and nearby towns were centres of cloth manufacture. (The methods of weaving then in vogue are described by S. Baring-Gould).

The scope of the cloth business of Joseph Loomis probably was not confined to Essex, as most of that product was disposed of in a foreign market. The Flemish people are referred to as having "respected woolsacks much more than Englishmen," and so the weavers of Flanders were induced to settle in England by Edward III, to teach a better style of weaving. Many more of these clothmakers came into Essex in the latter part of the sixteenth century, settling not far from Braintree in 1570. They influenced the methods and stimulated that manufacture roundabout. Braintree and Bocking were then prominent cloth centres. Norden, the Essex historian, wrote in 1594: "There are within this shire these especial clothing towns: Colchester, Brayntree, Coggeshall, Bocking, Hawsted (Halstead) and Dedham"; and, in an Act passed under Elizabeth, Bocking is referred to, with other places, as a "fayre large Towne * * * * inhabited of a long time with Clothe makers which have made and daylye doo make good and trewe clothe." Later, when Parliament contemplated placing a duty upon Portuguese wines, the cloth makers and dealers sent in a petition to Parliament, objecting thereto,--saying "As our Bays, Says, Perpetuanos, etc., go Nine Tenths of them to Portugal and Spain, if a new Imposition be laid upon wines, the King of Portugal (we cannot but reasonably expect) will then prohibit our Manufactures, * * * * which will prove fatal to us as the Stagnation of the Blood. It will totally destroy the woollen Manufactory of Essex for 50 or 60,000 Families as Spinsters, Weavers and Combers, who are employed therein, etc." Norden also mentions the kinds of cloth. Perpetuanos or "lastings" were a kind of serge; Say was a light crossed stuff, all wool, and Bay was a fine woollen texture with a long nap, a specimen of which is preserved in the Museum at Colchester in Essex. Woollen drugget, or baize, was made in Bocking, and became known as "Bockings."

"John Lummys," the father, and tailor, is shown by his will, dated 1619, to have been a tradesman and real-estate holder in comfortable circumstances, and a citizen of esteem in the church and community. His son Joseph advanced the fortune of the family. Contemplating his means and position in England, and his situation in America, it seems entirely fair to say that he was a prosperous man in England, and of the better class of settlers in New England. Long it has been seen that he was independent in Windsor--and particularly so as to the location of his estate there.

Not driven out of England, not forsaking duties or obligations there, not an enthusiast or Puritanical extremist in religion was Joseph Loomis. He came to America on general principles, after long deliberation. As a practical business man of the world his decision so to do, it will be now agreed, was the apotheosis of wisdom. A study of his life in America prys up no indication that he regretted his transplantation, as did many other settlers, with cause.

No indications of any connection, either remote or near, with any titled, landed or armigerous family, of the Loomis surname in England, have been found, nor is such ever likely to be found. The brave Englishmen who took their very lives in their hands and faced with dauntless courage all the certain dangers and uncertain terrors of the sea and of a hostile shore--aye and brave Englishwomen, too, whose sublime devotion has never since been paralleled, and to which all justice has never yet been done, were not, it is plain to see, of what is claimed as "gentle blood."

"It is enough to know that the primitive aristocracy of New England was an aristocracy of intellect consecrated to duty, and not of blood: that her peerage and her knighthood were honors direct from the creative hand of God, and not from the touch of a monarch."

Joseph Loomis, John Loomis, the father, "John Lummys," the grandparent, and all of the known men of their family before them, and practically all of the numerous persons found under all forms of the name of Loomis in England, of all times, were of that great middle-class, which may be summed up in the word "yeomen," though some of them wrote themselves down as gentlemen; the only indication of any other prefix or affix is in the person of the Vicar of Surlingham, Norfolk, who wrote his name, "Sr Richard Lumhalx," in 1510. As in the days of the Saxons, when the Lomases were "neither men of title, nor serviles," so ever since in England, they have maintained the position of "men of property, freemen," merchants, yeomen,--albeit gentlemen, as the word is understood in America. The significance of this word of yeoman may not be quite fully appreciated in America. No misapprehension should be had as to its breadth and value. Let us look at it technically and as anciently applied:--

"The antiquity and consequence of the family of Septuans in Kent (now extinct) is well known in that county. Their pedigree is entered in all the Visitations of Kent from 1530; yet Raymond Septuans, alias Harflete, in possession of the ancient family estate at Ash, in the reign of Henry III (1216-1272), is styled in a deed `yeoman.'

"So the family of Abkettleby, recorded in the Visitation of the County of Lancaster 1619 -John Neale of Abkettleby styles himself in his will, 1606--`yeoman'--though his mother was a Brabazon of honorable descent, sister of the celebrated Sir Wm. Brabazon, vicetreasurer of Ireland, father of Lord Ardell and grandfather of the first Earl of Meath." (From Streatfield MS. in Additional MSS, 33919. fo. 326, British Museum.)

"In a ten-generation pedigree of a Suffolk family, the same persons are sometimes styled `gentleman,' sometimes `yeoman,' sometimes `farmer.' The term `gentleman' is correct wherever applied, if the family be one having coat-armour." (From the East Anglian.) "The father of Latimer (Bishop of Worcester 1490-1555) was a solid English yeoman. He had no lands of his own, but rented a farm of four pounds by the year on which he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men, four hundred sheep and thirty cows." (From Froude's History of England, Vol. II.)

"* * * the yeomanry or small freeholders and farmers, a very numerous and respectable body, some occupying their own estates, some those of landlords." (From Hallam's Constitutional History of England, Vol. I.)

"* * * the yeomanry, an eminently manly race, * * * formed a much more important part than at present." (Thomas Babington Macaulay.)

"The titles ascribed to individuals in various records do not absolutely mark the status held by the person in society, but rather denote the positions which the scribe considered were held by those of whom he was writing. In the military assessment for the Blything Hundred, Suffolk, 1642, twenty-seven persons in the village of Henstead are styled `ffearmors' (farmers). Even the vicar is so called because he farmed his own glebe.

By a statute of Henry IV it was "enacted that no yeoman shall take or wear a livery of any lord, upon pain of imprisonment and a fine at the King's pleasure." So the dignity of a yeoman's position was not to be thus lowered even by a yeoman himself.

Shakespeare was of yeoman ancestry, and in the First Part of Henry VI, Act II, Sc. 4, he pays respect to yeomanry:--Somerset taunts at Richard Plantagenet--
"We grace the yeoman, by conversing with him."
Warwick corrects him:--
"Now, by God's will, thou wrongs't him, Somerset;

Nothing concerning John Lummys, the father of Joseph, has been known heretofore other than that, as a tailor, he died in Braintree in the year 1619, leaving a will, which is interesting. The will of John Loomis of Braintree, England (The name is spelled Loomis)

It is dated April 14, 1619; was exhibited in the Court of the Commissary of the Bishop of London for the counties of Essex and Hertford on the 29th of May following, and was proved by the executor, his son Joseph, June 21st. The following is a copy of the will verbatim. The words within brackets supply portions where the paper of the original manuscript is torn away, and they are believed to be the words of the original document:

In ye name of God Amen I John Loomis of Braintre in ye County of Essex Tayler being sick of bodye but of perfect and wholl minde and carefull to prepare my selfe for ye enioying of a better life Do make and ordeyne this my last will and Testament the fowrteenth Daye of Aprill in ye yeere of our lord god 1619. In manner and forme following ffirst I c"mend my soule into ye hands of almighty god my creator And my vile and corruptible body to ye earth from whence yt was taken wth a sure hope and sound perswac"n by my faith in ye mirritts of Jesus Christ my Redemer to haue this my body changed into a glorious being at ye last Day in his heavenly kingdome Item I will that Joseph Loomis my sonn shall haue my little Tenement or Dwelling house standing and being in Braintre aforesaid wherein John Lunt now dwelleth at ye Rate of fforty pownds towards ye payment of my Debts wth a Garden plott thereto belonging adioyning nere unto his owne And also one Stable standing nere the markett Crosse in Braintre at ye Rate of Thirtye pownds or to be sould to the uttermost that may be made of yt Item I will that all my hushould stuffe and moveable goods shall be praysed and my son Joseph to haue tenn pownds worth of them as shall seeme fit to him for his owne use. Item I giue to Marye Brooke ye Daughter of Ralph Brooke five pownds out of my said moveables Item my will is that all my Debts and funeral Charges being Defraied and paied my fower Daughters (vizt.) Ann Warr Sara Burton Elizabeth Preston and Jane Pengelly haue ye Remaynder and ouerplus as well of ye said houses as also of ye [moveables] equally to be devided among them parte and parte like to [them and their] heires or assignes All wch my will and meaning [is the same shall] not be parformed until one halfe yeere next [after the] deceace of Agnis my loving wife whom I will to enioye [all the] said moveables whatsoever During her naturall life And I make and ordeyne my said sonn Joseph Executor to this my last will and Testament Revoking all former whatsoever. And I request my sonne in law Willm Preston to be Supervisor to see yt performed according to my true intent and meaning. In Witnes whereof I have heervnto sett my hand and seale the Day and yeere wth in written The mark of John Loomis [mark] Theis being wittnesses I John Lunt his marke Richard Kimbould

It names wife Agnes, son Joseph, and daughters Ann, Sara, Elizabeth and Jane. Perhaps there was also a son, Geoffrey. These five children had all married by this date of 1619, and had done so when quite young in years.

As to this Geoffrey Lummys, there is no record of him in the court rolls or subsidies for Braintree, or Thaxted, nor for the Hundreds of Hinckford and Dunmow. He was also a clothier and must be considered as a brother of Joseph Loomis, even though there is no extant record of the baptism of either man. Geoffrey Lummys figures in Close Roll, number 2580, part I, for the 22 year of James I (1624) filed in the Record Office, London, as per this abstract:--

Indenture, 16 April 20 James I, between Ezekiel Clarke of ffelsted, Essex, clothier, and Jeffrey Loomys of Brayntree, Essex, clothier, the same being a mortgage deed for p10, with 10 shillings interest, loaned by Jeffrey Loomys on one messuage and tenement with a garden and overcrofte of land adjoining called Baseleyes tente (tenement) in ffelsted church, between the king's highwaie there leading from ffelsted church towards Hartford Bridge, and a field called sixteene acres with theire appertances which the said Ezekiel Clarke late had to him and his heires by the grante and ffeoffements of Mary Clarke widowe, his mother by reason of the decease of the said Mary as by deeds of ffeofement thereof made the Seaventh day of August 15th of James I.

John Lummys, the father, as will be proven shortly, had come to Braintree, from his birth-place, when a young man and unmarried. Ere this narration should take the reader away from Braintree over the road to the town of Thaxted aforesaid wherein John Lummys was born, much needs be related of Braintree and vicinity. This information may be taken up under these four heads:
(1) A reference to the Lingwood family.
(2) Some description of the town and market-place.
(3) Non-conformity in Braintree.
(4) Notes on the parish church and graveyard.

By the marriage of Joseph Loomis to Mary White (of which more anon) in Shalford Church, or through his father's marriage, he became a "cousin" (meaning either a cousin or a nephew in this instance) of one William Lingwood of Braintree. That fact is evidenced by a letter written by this gentleman, in the year 1651, to "Cousin Clark," of Hartford, Connecticut, which letter was that of a lawyer and upon a business subject. (This letter suggests a relationship between the Clarkes of Felsted and the Lummyses as well). William Lingwood was of a very good family indeed; one that was both armigerous and "landed." The Lingwoods were recognized by the heralds in the Visitation of Essex in 1634, at which date this William Lingwood was contemporaneous with Joseph Loomis. The family is also honored with mention in Morant's and other histories of Essex. From these authorities it appears that this family may be summarized as:-- Shalford Parish Church, in which Joseph Loomis and Mary White were married, 1614. Robert White and Bridget Algar were married here also.

John Lingwood of Braintree 2572 descendant out of Herefordshire or Gloucestershire--

Geoffrey Lingwood--Elizabeth, dau. of two other sons, three daughters of Braintree John Sibthorpe of Gt. Bardfield, Essex, and by dau. of M. Berners William Lingwood of Braintree--Mary, dau. of Thomas Wilson and of Barnard's Ins, of Bocking, Essex London 1634 William LingwoodJohnaged 19 in 1634.

In Stisted Church, three miles from Braintree, there is a monument to Elizabeth, wife of William Lingwood, died 1719.

Just how Lingwood and Loomis became "cousins" does not appear. The Braintree church records are lost, and the Bocking records reveal only a part of the Wilsons, notably the above Thomas Wilson, Gentleman, who died 1627. Elizabeth Wilson, daughter of William Wilson, also of Bocking, had married John Goodwin, 1604, in Bocking Church. The church records at Stisted, where some of the Lingwoods lived, have not been examined. Thomas Wilson having been buried in Braintree Church, though residing over the Bocking line, the names of all of his children and of his father's family were recorded among the now lost church registers. When John Lummys came to Braintree he may have married into the Wilson or Lingwood families. Geoffrey Lingwood had two sisters; and when it is considered that Geoffrey Lummys (whose estate was administered, 1636, by John Lunt, the apprentice or sucessor to John Loomis) was probably a son of John Loomis, though not mentioned in the will, it is easy to believe that this Geoffrey was named after Geoffrey Lingwood, whose son William called Joseph Loomis "cousin." Elizabeth Sibthorpe, who married Geoffrey Lingwood, came to Braintree from Great Bardfield. This town closely adjoins Thaxted, from where John Lummys came to Braintree via Great Bardfield. It is to be expected that this John married a Lingwood or a Wilson in Braintree Church. The records of this church before 1660, were mostly used by the sexton for lighting the furnace fires. This destruction was confessed by the culprit to the present vicar.

In Braintree town and market-place but little of the antique still exists. The external aspect of the main streets is wholly modern. Relics of two hundred and seventy years ago must be searched out. Prosperity seems to hover most everywhere in this town huddled on a hill that is low and flat-topped. The historian Wright states that before 1530 "The vast crowds of pilgrims going to the shrines of St. Edmund (Suffolk) and our lady of Walsingham (Norfolk) proved a source of emolument to this place, which rapidly increased in population and importance." These shrines were like the modern Lourdes--having relics believed to possess the power of healing, etc.

Thousands of Roman coins and some Roman pottery have been dug up in Braintree and Bocking. With Bocking, the population is now about ten thousand. 'Tis a clear and healthful place of residence. The feudal town "suffered the penalty of prosperity." Only a few of the buildings of the "golden age" of architecture remain; even these are mostly altered. Internally many houses reveal old carving and mantel pieces of oak. The old inns seem to have been the most favored of Time, the destroyer. "The Boar's Head," "The Six Bells," "The White Hart," "The Horn," "The George," "The Wheatsheaf," "The Woolpack" and "The Black Boy," all show evidence of age. Above all there is one fine old house remaining which has very particular interest to the American Loomises. This is the house that was occupied by John Hawkins who, when about to die in 1633, had Joseph Loomis visit him to witness his will. As this will pays to Joseph Loomis the tribute of the words "my loving friend and neighbor," it now may be well believed that Joseph Loomis was more than just this friend and neighbor in Braintree. The proof that he was an eminently prosperous man, and an intelligent one, enjoying social privileges of distincton, locally, is here had in plenty to our view--for who was this John Hawkins? He was no less than a Braintree man, who had risen to commercial eminence and wealth in London, becoming a dignitary of the Grocers' Company there, (then three hundred years old); and he was made an Alderman of the city of London in 1626. This office was then of more significance than it is to-day in America. The house of John Hawkins now faces "Great Square;" a view is given of its garden front. With wealth he built or bought this fine home in Braintree and laid out a beautiful garden behind it. The street front has been remodelled for a large store. The alterations have caused the Tudor mantelpiece of stone, bearing the Arms of the Grocers' Company in one of the spandrels, to be removed,--and also some valuable oak carving. Ornamental ceilings of plaster in the Italian style still remain. Hawkins's place of burial, in the chancel of the church, also indicates his importance. A mural monument is there inscribed to his memory.

It is not merely such things as that Hawkins and Loomis were friends, or that the latter probably was a bearer at the funeral, with which we are the most impressed. The great facts that issue out of the association of these two gentlemen are these:--

First--May it not be held that a neighbor who is called to witness a will, in the sick chamber, is apt to be one who resides close by? Second--The house of Hawkins stands on the upper side of the market-square, facing west. Some of the property of John Lummys, as his will shows, stood "near the marketcross." This cross is just below the Hawkins house on the south, viz:
1. Orange Tree Inn
2. Nag's Head Hotel
x Market Cross

Between the corner nearest the market-cross and the Hawkins house there are a couple of good-sized structures; one an old house modernized, while the other is entirely new, but surely replacing some former building. The upper building adjoins the Hawkins house, but has no old features now. The rear of the house is shown slightly, in the picture of the Hawkins place. Like the latter, the other Braintree Market Place, England, 16th century. house has a garden extending from the rear eastward, and adjoining the Hawkins garden; but unlike the still open latter, its garden has been built upon modernly. Significant also it is that there was no drive-way, or outlet, from the garden eastwardly, but rather to the south, and thus opening directly out into the square close to where the market cross stood. Now, therefore, one is easily led to conceive that the residential and business premises of Joseph Loomis were between what is now the Nag's Head Hotel and the Orange Tree Inn, and that the other house which John Lummys owned and had rented to John Lunt, his apprentice or successor in the tailoring business stood adjacent. Such locations would have been satisfactory for the vocations of these residents, and business was generally then and still is carried on in the first floor of the houses, while the proprietor resides upstairs. Braintree's business center clusters about the upper side of this square. The modern growth has added stores along the two streets leading westward and northeast from the square or market-place.

Issuing out of the square, directly to the north of the Hawkins house, is what is called "Little Square," with narrow, crooked passages leading into it between the buildings. Most of these houses are old and residential. Several of them date from 1600, perhaps older. A photograph shows the corner of one of them with a glimpse of its overhanging front facing the "Gant," or "Gantway," which name means a thin, slender or narrow foot-way.

Braintree was a part of the Duchy of Lancaster; part of these personal possessions of the sovereign, in Essex, were held of the crown as of the Honor of Clare, by the family seated principally at Clare Castle in the County of Suffolk. A search of the Court Rolls of the Honor of Clare now filed with the Records of the Duchy of Lancaster, in London, has not resulted favorably. The "Book of Reliefs and Fines," number 124,862, from 1377 to 1742, made up from various records remaining in Clare Castle and the Duchy office, does not contain the name of Lomas in any form, which seems peculiar, since every person upon first entering into the occupancy of a building, for the purpose of residence or of business, became subject to a "fine," or tax. This book is fragmentary, in the earlier portion, and also may be from 1600 to 1638, as seems evident. Court Roll 123-1860 (5 Nov. 1591 to 1605) for Braintree names no Lomas, which omission may be taken to indicate that John Lummys, father of Joseph, may have been within this period, in the employ of another man and resident upon that man's premises. The Court Rolls of the Duchy, numbers 1231860, and 123-1861 for Braintree, give no Lomas evidence, though the Goodwins, with which family the Lomases later became intimately related, are mentioned, viz:

Rentals of the Manor of Markes in Braintree. Philip and Mary, 1st and 2 years (1553-54)

Itm of Mr. Goodinge for iii shoppes in the mrkett place in B (Braintree) sometyme Jo Turnor undr Mr. Ponder, iiid.

Feet of Fines, the governmental records of the final agreements between querants and deforciants (buyers and sellers) of real estate, have been searched for the entire period of the residence of the Lomas family in Essex; there is no such record of such Loomis ownership. The lands, houses, business premises, etc., in their occupation were principally held by them (with the possible exception of the house of John Lummys in Thaxted, grandfather of Joseph Loomis), under conditions similar to those of their neighbors, i. e.--by lease for life, or for the period of several lives, or for a lesser term of years, or by yearly rental. They owned the right of occupancy, and could bequeath this right by will; the land and buildings were held by the lord of the manor to whose court leet they, the lessees and tenants were subject, and the lord, in turn, paid a yearly revenue into the Honor of Clare or the Duchy of Lancaster therefor, the first title to the property being vested in the crown.

The Lay Subsidy records in the Record Office, London, which yielded vital results in Lancashire, as has been seen, also favor us a little in Braintree. The first mention in these national taxes of a Lomas occurs in roll number 112-626 for the third and fourth years of Charles I (1628-29). This roll is an assessment upon the taxable inhabitants of the whole Hundred of Hinckford in which Braintree is embraced; the membranes composing this roll are in a fine condition. The subsidy was levied upon goods ("stock in trade") as follows:--
"Brantry. John Hawkins gent. viii li--xxi s iiii d"
" "Wm. Lingwood gent. iii li--viii s"
" "Josiph Lomys iii li--viii s"

Subsidy Roll number 112-630 is headed:--"Payment of the two first subsidies of five entire subsidies granted from the Temporalty by Act of Parliament holden at Westminster 4 Chas. I." (1624); and gives: Braintree "Goodes," "Joseph Lomays iii li viiis--viiis John Hawkins vi li xvis (xvis)

These are the only subsidy rolls now remaining bearing the name of Loomis before 1640; John Lummys may have been similarly taxed, and the roll therefore be now missing; the above items are scant, but brief as they may seem, the figures are eloquent. First it is seen that Joseph Loomis was thoroughly established as a merchant in 1628 in Braintree, and doubtless had so stood for some years before; second, we see herein that the taxable value of his goods-- in comparison with those of his friend, the wealthy John Hawkins, (probably then the richest merchant in Braintree), was as large as one-half; also that he was estimated exactly the same as his relative, Wm. Lingwood, whose means and position (inherited) gave to him the rank of gentleman. Loomis doubtless inherited little, and as for the affix "gent," he assumed nothing, as became such a sensible Christian man. The tax paid in 1629 was eight shillings. p3:8:0 in (taxable) goods nowadays seems trifling; but to the assessors of 1629 and to their owner, this sum meant over $150.00, which was a highly respectable showing for a Braintree merchant of that time. The sum represented a formidable pile of "Bays, Says and, Perpetuanos." Pennies went as far then as dollars do now; everything was then on a small scale. To an American even the business of the Braintree of to-day would appear as "upon a small scale." By ten years later than 1628 our venturesome ancestor, with due care, could have easily accumulated the fair estate with which he embarked for America.

Joseph Loomis also paid the ship money tax, an act of special legislation. The account of the assessments of this tax is headed:--"An account of the money raifed in the County of Essex for the fetting out of a Ship of eight hundred Tunne appointed by his Maiesties writt to be ready at Portsmouth on the first of March 1636.

In which the Several Summes imployed by the Sheriffe upon the inhabitants and the rates of the Whole County are particularly expressed according to an order made by his Maiestie at the Councell Board the 23th of Aprill Last upon occasion of a complaint then exhibited against the proceedings of the Sheriffe in that business. The whole charge being eight thousand pounds." . . .

This assessment was the one which caused such an uproar. John Hampden refused to pay and fought the measure in Parliament. This item, and the will of John Loomis (see p. 97) are the only known instances of the name being spelled

"Loomis" in England, and the former is, undoubtedly, the last existing record of Joseph Loomis in England.

Here in this market-place of Braintree, for upwards of seven hundred years, there has been held a "market." This market-day is still a weekly affair. From all the surrounding towns came the people with their produce, horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and the various products of their handiwork, including home-spun cloth, offering them for sale, or in exchange for other commodities. It was on market-days that emigration was talked over. For years after 1630 the chief topic of conversation, aside from business matters, was the news from those who had gone to America and of those who intended to go. It was on these market-days that the visitors absorbed some influence of Braintree's independent spirit and non-conformity. The practical business men readily took to dissent from the "high church" performances of the time. Their fathers and grandfathers had done something along that line too.

Joseph Loomis, on some market-day, must have first met Mary White, who had come to town with her father from Shalford, four miles to the north. Soon after their marriage her parents removed to Messing, where her father died leaving the following will:
The Will of Robert White The Father-In-Law of Joseph Loomis
In the name of God Amen. May the seaven and twentyeth in the fifteenth yeare of the raigne of our Soveraigne Lord James by the grace of god Kinge of England ffrance and Ireland defender of the faith etc and of Scotland the fiftyeth. In the yeare of our Lord god 1617 I Robert White of Messinge in the countye of Essex yeoman, beinge of good and pfect remembrance, doe make this my last will and testament, in manner and forme followinge. Imprimis. I commend my soule unto the hands of god almightey my most faythful creator redemer and sanctifier and my bodie to be buried in the parish church or church yeard of Messinge, at the discretion of mine executors. Item I give and bequeath unto the poore people of Messinge fortye shillings of lawful mony of England, to be distributed amongst them, at (at) ye discretion of mine executors and the minister of Messinge, within one month next after my depture from this naturall life. Item I give and bequeath unto Mr. Richard Rogers preacher of gods word at Withersfield in Essex aforesaid; and to Bartholomew Scrivener Minister of the church of god in Messinge aforenamed to each of them the severall summe of fortey shillings of like lawfull monie, to be payd unto them within two monthes after my departure. Item I give and bequeath unto mine eldest daughter Sarah, the wife of James Bowtell of little Salinge, the summe of fifteene pounds of lawfull mony of England, to be paid within fower years next after my depture. Item I give and bequeath unto Jeames Bowtell the younger, son of my said daughter Sarah Bowtell, the summe of five pounds of good and lawfull mony of England, to be paid unto him when he shall come to ye sixteenth yeare of his age.

Item I give and bequeath unto my daughter Marie the wife of Joseph Lummis of Branetree, one pewter platter.

Item I give and bequeath unto my daughter Elizabeth the wife Willm Goodinge of Bockinge the summe of fortye markes of like lawful monye (monye) within one yeare next after my depture, to paid unto her.

Item I give and bequeath unto my daughter Bridgett White the sum of one hundred marks of like lawfull monye, to be paid unto hir upon the day of hir marriage, provided that she my said daughter bridgett shall not bestow hir selfe in marryage without the approbation and consent of my two sonnes in law Joseph Lummys and Willim Goodinge formrly mentioned, and my wife Bridgett White or the consent of two of them whereof my wife to be one of the twaine. But yf it happen that shee mariye without the consent aforesaid then I give hir only the summe of thirtye pounds of like lawfull monie.

Item I give and bequeath unto my daughter Anna White the summe of one hundredth markes of like lawfull mony: to be paid unto hir upon ye day of hir marriage; yf soe be she shall bestow hir selfe in marriage, accordinge to the likinge and consent of my two fornamed sonnes in law, and my wife, as is aforesaid. But yf it soe fall out, as that she my said daughter Anna shall marrye without the consent and approbation formerly mentioned, then I give and bequeath hir only the sum of thirtey pound of like and lawfull monie.

Item I give and bequeath unto my sonne Nathaniel White the sume of fortie pounds of like lawfull monye, whereof my will is that twenty pounds shalbe paid within one yeare next after my depture, and the other twentye pounds to be paid unto him within two years next after my said depture oute of this naturall life. Item I give and bequeath unto my sonne John White the summe of two hundreth pounds of like lawfull monie to be paid to him when he shall come to ye years of one and twentye of his age; yett provided that my said sonne John shall not bestow himselfe in marriage without the approbation and consent of my aforesaid two sonnes in law Joseph Lummys and William Goodinge, and my wife his moth er. And yf it soe fall oute that this my son John shall match him selfe contrarye to the good likinge and consent aforesaid, then I give and bequeath unto him onlye as his full portion the summe of one hundred pounds of like lawfull monye.

Item my mind and will is, that yf any of my foresaid children that are unmarried shall depte this naturall life before the tymes appointed for the paymt of their portions; or yf any of them shall marrye contrarye to the consent and approbation mentioned, then such summe or summes of monie (as shall remaine and accrew, eyther by their death or disobeydience), shall be equally devidedt amongste the rest of my children whither marryed or unmarried, pte and parte like.

Item I give and bequeath unto my son John White the ioyned standinge bedstead wch is in the parlour, wth the featherbed, flockbed, bolster coueringe wth other furneyture thereunto belonginge; alsoe the presse cupbourd the cupbourd table and newest chest, all wch are in said ploure to be delivered him after the death of my wife Bridgett White, or instead thereof the summe of twenty marks of like lawfull monye.

Item I constitute and ordaine my aforesaid sonnes in law Joseph Lumys Willm Goodings supulsors of this my last will and testament and doe give unto each of them the severall summes of fortey shillings of like lawfulle mony: touards their charge and paines in seinge this my will executed according to my minde.

Item I give and bequeath unto Ralph Bett the younger my kinsman and servant me summe of five pounds of like lawfull monye, to be paid unto him within one yeare next after my depture. Item I give and bequeath unto Joseph Digbie my servant, twentye shillings of like lawfull monye, to be paid within one yeare next after my depture.

Item all the rest of my goods unbequeathed I give and bequeath unto my wife Bridgett White, and to my sonne Daniel White whome I constitute and ordayne the ioynte executors of this my last will and testament, hopinge they will faithfullye execute this my last will accordinge to the trust reposed in them.

In witness whereof I have hereunto sett myne hand and seale the daye and year first mentioned. Robert White.

Robert White, yeoman, b. England, prob. at Messing, and there d. and buried June 17, 1617. He m. June 24, 1585, Brydgette, bapt, at Shalford, Mch. 11, 1562, dau. of William Allgar, who d. at Shalford, and there buried, Aug. 2, 1575. (See N. E. Hst and Gen. Reg. June 1901.)

Robert White lived in Shalford most of the time from his marriage, until a few months before his death. He was a rich man, for those times. He was friendly to the Nonconformists. Shalford is 2 miles south of Weathersfield; bere (Shalford) were b. his children; and here baptized; viz.:
1. Daniel.
2. Sarah, m. James Bowtell.
3. Mary, bapt. Aug. 24, 1590; m Joseph Loomis, Windsor, Connecticut
4. Elizabeth, m William Goodwin, Windsor, Connecticut
5. Bridgett.
6. Anna, or Rosanna, m John Porter, Windsor, Connecticut
7. Nathaniel.
8. John, m Mary Levett, Hartford, Connecticut

The Braintree men, through their business abroad, had opportunities to look out upon a world that was wider than their own shire. London was doubtless no strange city to Joseph Loomis. There he must have gone both to sell and to buy. As a wholesale cloth merchant he may have visited the continent,-- even Spain and Portugal, since it was that the Braintrce-Bocking cloth was largely sold in those countries. Non-conformity developed with Braintree's commercial growth. Both features seem to have started together. Spiritual liberty was likely founded upon the material independence of the individual. Dissent in Essex dates Return to 1375, the days of John Wyclif, the Reformer, whose ideas were favored by John o' Gaunt, he over-lord of our early Loomises in Lancashire. In the following reigns the government tried but failed, even with the measures that were severe, to stamp it out. But it was not until Tyndale's translation of the New Testament reached the people that Braintree residents became dissenters, conspicuously. The church and state soon proscribed the translation, and those who were found to possess a copy of it were punished. In 1527 three men and a woman, all of Braintree and of the name of Beckwith, were dealt with for having a copy of the New Testament in English. Some ecclesiastics sought to "corner" the Bible and maintain "trust methods" in disseminating its contents. The repression did little good, for on January 27, 1550, some sixty persons--(it is related by Frederic West) met in a house in Bocking on a Sunday, where arose a great discussion amongst them. The subject thereof was "whether it was necessary to stand or to kneel, to be bareheaded or covered at prayer." These people soon arrived at a remarkably sensible and clear judgment, viz. (that) "the ceremony was not material, but that the heart before God was required, and nothing else." The wonder now is that everybody else could not then see the truth of that utterance. As for the clergy, they would not see it if they could. Moreover, the church determined that nobody should be suffered to express such a sane belief. And so those Braintree-Bocking people, who could think a little for themselves, were denounced as "dangerous," which, in another way, they certainly were. The Sheriff soon appeared and these people of clear insight were brought before the Council. They confessed that they had assembled "for to talk of the Scriptures;" also that they had not attended communion at the parish church for two years. Five of them were condemned to prison, and seven bound over in a penalty of p40 each (over $2,000).

The Baptists of Braintree claim the date of that meeting, in the house at Bocking, 1550, as marking the origin of their church. Between 1553 and 1558, when the persecuting statutes against heretics were revived, during the temporary increase of Papal power in England in the reign of Queen Mary, and while the Bishops Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer and others were being burnt, quite a number of citizens in and around Braintree, also were condemned to death at the stake. These were William Piggott, Stephen Knight, Thomas Hawkes, John Laurence, William Hunter, Richard and Thomas Spurge, Catherine Hutt, William Purchas, Cavell and Ambrose. The burning of these martyrs is described in Fox's Book of Martyrs, wherein is also mentioned the putting to death at Canterbury, of one John Lomas of Tenterden in Kent, heretofore referred to.

All that sort of actual and severe persecution quite came to an end with the death of Queen Mary, 1558. England then ceased to be Catholic, and became nominally Protestant. Non-conformity so steadily increased, however, that under Queen Elizabeth Parliament enacted the following:--

(Statutes of the Realm, 23 Eliz. (1581) C. I. Vol. IV, p. 657--"That every person above the age of xvj yeares, which shall not repaire to some Churche Chappell or usual Place of Common Prayer, but forbeare the same contrarye to the tenour of a Statute made in the firste yeare of her Maties Reigne for Uniformite of Common Prayer, and being thereof lawfull convicted, shall forfaite to the Queene's Matie, for every Moneth after thend of this Session of Parliament whiche he or she shall so forbeare, twentie poundes of lawfull English Money; and that over and besides the said Forfeytures, every person so forbearing, by the space of xii Monethes as aforesaid, shall for his or her obstinacie, after certificat thereof in Writinge made into the Courte commonlye called the Kinge's Bench, or by the Ordinarie of the Dioces, a Justice of the Assise and Gaole Deliverye, or a Justice of Peace of the Countie where suche Offendor shall dwell or be, be bounde with two sufficiente Suerties in the somme of two hundreth pound at the leaste to the good Behavior, and so to continue bound, untill suche tyme as the persons so bounde do conforme themselves and come to the churche, accordinge to the true meaninge of the said Statute made in the said firste yeare of the Queene's Maties Raigne." Absence, from church alone, unaccompanied by any other act, constituted recusancy. Till the Statute of 35 Eliz. (1591) C. I., all non-conformists were considered as recusants; this statute was the first to distinguish the Popish from other recusants. The Protestant recusants continued subject to the statutes before 35 Eliz.

The statute of 35th Eliz. (1591) added imprisonment, and if after 3 months persistence the subject must adjure the realm, and that if he return after banishment or refuse this condition, he should suffer capitally as a felon, without benefit of clergy.

In the third year of Jas. I, 1606, this statute was amended to a fine of p20 per month, and for not receiving the Sacrament p20 for the first year, p40 for the second year and for every default thereafter p60. Non-conformists were not relieved altogether from these statutes until the Act of Toleration, I Wm. and Mary (1689) 1, c. 18.

The act for imprisonment and death was passed probably before Joseph Loomis was born and before his father settled in Braintree. Hence all the legal proceedings that were taken against those who violated this law have no special application to these Lomases, but Joseph Loomis faced a heavy fine for a withdrawal from the parish church. We do not consider that he did withdraw therefrom, but rather continued therein though as one of the dissatisfied minority. Before the last year of Elizabeth, 1603, some of the Essex clergy had become enlightened, which cost some fifty of them their positions. The liberal or Puritan party in the church continued to gain in members for fifty years after 1603, and many Separatist assemblies had become organized. It is, of course, to be expected that John Lummys was something of a Puritan, though from what is known of him, no hint is had that he was an extremist--a Separatist. His son Joseph undoubtedly, was something of a Puritan sympathizer. Both men probably attended St. Michael's church in Braintree so long as they lived there. There is every reason to believe that they did so. There were small groups of people in Braintree that did not conform at all; but they were not composed of important men like John Hawkins and Joseph Loomis. We cannot conceive the loving friendship of these two men as possible, without religious harmony between them; and Hawkins certainly did not withdraw from the parish church. John and Geoffrey Lommys and their wives must have been buried in the churchyard. The business success of Joseph Loomis is evidence that he lived agreably with his neighbors. His father-in-law, Robert White, was a communicant of the Shalford or Messing churches until he died. We do not see anything in the Braintree religious conditions as particularly applied to Joseph Loomis, to warrant the belief that he was any such puritanical sort of gentleman as Macaulay so vindictively and unnecessarily described some Puritans were, viz:--

"The dress, the deportment, the language, the studies, the amusements of the rigid sect (the Puritans) were regulated on principles not unlike those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play chess, to wear love locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw over all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the great Reformers had been eminently distinguished for their success, were regarded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with aversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar, because the names of Mars, Bacchus and Apollo occurred in it. The fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was superstitions. The light music of Ben Johnson's masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, the upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and style of Scripture. Entrance to St. Mary's Chuvchyard, Bocking.

Hebraisms violently introduced into the English language, and mataphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetry of a remote age and country, and applied to the common concerns of English life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant, which moved, not without cause, the derision both of Prelatists and libertines."

The truth of the whole religious situation in Braintree is revealed in letters written by the vicar of Braintree, about 1628-1631, to Bishop Laud. It is understood quite well in Braintree that Collins, the vicar there, while substantially a conformist, tried to prevent and keep out of all trouble. He sought peace in his parish--possibly preferring peace to principle. But he attempted the impossible when he endeavored to please both parties,--his bishop and his congregation. Among the latter was a strong non-conformist element. When Thomas Hooker was deposed from preaching in St. Mary's church, Chelmsford, in 1629, Collins, being on fair terms with Laud (then bishop), advised mild measures toward Hooker; and Collins added, "My Lord will be careful who succeeds him, for it's the greatest grief of my soul to see how full of whirligigs the heads of the people begin to grow." Two years later, 1631, the whirligigs seem to have gotten into Collins's own head somewhat, he being then reported to the bishop as inclining to the views of the reformers in his own parish. As a modern nonconformist of Braintree has remarked, "Poor old Collins! he wasn't made for a martyr"--so it may now be conceived that this vicar's object might have been the saving of the "living." He held it for fifty-two years, 1610 to 1662, which was remarkable, seeing that he was, at heart, both a Prelatist and a Royalist.

From Collins's letter, in self-defence against the charge of his own nonconformity, written in 1631, to Bishop Laud's Chancellor, it will be seen just what were the conditions for some years prior to Loomis's departure for America; and these conditions surely do not admit of that "picture of persecution" which has been hereinbefore referred to with respect to the causes of the emigration from Braintree; and would it be fair for us to lament or complain at the fines and imprisonments imposed by the English courts of justice upon those nonconformists, who (however noble and inspiring their motives), broke the laws of their country, when these same non-conformists, later in America, inflicted harsher penalties upon the devout Quakers,--a religious people upon whose hands are no stains of blood or of intolerance in American history? Collins wrote:

"My Lord's displeasure pierces deep with me. The complaint which hath provoked him I willingly and wittingly occasioned, to reform the error of sundry on my towne, which would not be persuaded, but that it still lay in me to procure them a toleration of their wonted unconformity which I labored to draw them from. It is no easy matter to reduce a numerous congregation to order that hath been disorderly these fifty years."

Collins continues the letter by saying that these non-conformists in his congregation were prepared, if he had been severe, to leave their homes and go to New England, or elsewhere. That this meant that they were men of means, whose contributions would be missed, and also quite a number of them, is clear for he adds: "What a burden of the poor and other town charges would be thrown upon those that remain." This letter concludes with--" My Lord of London needs not to implore the power of the High Commission to rule me, the least finger of his own hand shall suffice. It makes me add a new prayer to my Litany: `From this people, good Lord, deliver me!' If I may neither prevail for remission of His Lordship's intention, nor for removal from hence in convenient time, I hope I shall ere long be at rest with the Great Bishop of our souls."

In the life of Dr. Kidder, rector of the little church at Rayne (afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells), located nearly two miles from Braintree market, occurs a passage that well indicates the marked intellectual and commercial independence of the citizens about Braintree; it shows that they had little esteem for services with "no preaching and dumb ministers." After settling at Rayne be, (Kidder), stated:--

"I soon discovered that the country I was come into was very different from that which I left. The country, indeed, was more agreeable as to my health, but in other things the difference was great. I had lived among a people that were modest and teachable, very conformable to the orders of the Church, and that showed great respect to the clergy; that paid their tithes and offerings exactly. I came to a people that were factious to the greatest degree, that endeavoured to defraud the minister of his dues, that were censorious, and given to separation, and great inveighers against the innocent rites and ceremonies of the Church. I do not say they were all such, but there was much too much of this leaven, and it had infected a great part of this country side."

Conditions continuing contentious, without improvement for the reformers, and discouragement at the growing power of Bishop Laud, all contributed to the cause of the emigration of the so-called "Braintree Company" in 1632, a year after Collins's letter. Laud's accession to the Archbishopric in 1633 made the situation in Braintree still less agreeable for those who did not leave with the first voyagers. These people followed, from time to time, in small groups. Joseph Loomis doubtless felt some force of the threat, that "they who make innovations in religion are enemies of the Kingdom." Business became affected by religious controversy. War was about to quite upset commerce and manufacturing altogether. Joseph needed not much foresight to see that the prospects at home were unfavorable. Several things contributed to his decision to join his kin in New England. He could hardly have had any particular sorrow in leaving, save parting from personal friends. Scarcely any great sacrifice by him was involved, as he saw it, at the time of his departure. That Vicar Collins was sorry to lose him, personally, may be believed. That they parted as friends, forgetting the while their differences of opinion, is also entirely plausible. The vicar's blessing surely was given to Joseph and his family in the last hours of their Braintree days. And that the good-will and "God-be-with-you," regrets of every friend and neighbor, regardless of everything else, filled the last moments in Braintree and the last in England,--no one can doubt it who understands that time and its people.

St. Michael's church. Here for forty years or more Joseph Loomis passed in and out. Here he was baptized between 1585-1592--undoubtedly. Here were proclaimed the banns before his marriage-day,--the wedding having been consummated as per this entry in the parish church of Shalford:--
"Anne Dni 1614
"Joseph Loomys was married unto Marye whight the XXXth Daye of June anno pr dicte."

Here without St. Michael's, Braintree, were laid in consecrated ground, Joseph's father, his mother and his probable brother Geoffrey and sister-in-law, Priscilla--all so laid from sight before his sight. No word, no mark, no stone or brass--nothing whatever remains to-day, either within or without the church, to show that any of these people ever here lived and died. Scarce two acres is the churchyard, yet within this space have been placed the thousands of the parish dead for nigh a thousand years. This ground has been buried full over and over again; interment has been put upon interment,--stone upon stone. All is confusion,--hopeless and hapless. And yet all these earlier dead were here taught to believe in the actual resurrection of the body. Their wills expressed that belief and ordered explicitly the disposition of their remains in accordance therewith. Well it is for their church that these dead have not risen in the flesh on earth, as yet! "Dead men pay no tithes," saith the ecclesiastic. The church ever owning the ground, fixed the tenure of a grave subject to its pleasure. Not one single lettered stone in St. Michael's yard to-day will compare in either age or careful preservation with any one of scores of gravestones in Windsor, Connecticut. The English custom of disturbing graves and destroying the older memorials (which has often been the practice outside of the cities-- barbarous though it be--), instead of acquiring new land for new needs, is one that will not bear comparison with the nobler methods of the heathen. The gravestone to the memory of Deacon John "Lomas," 1683, in Windsor (Connecticut) churchyard must be the oldest Loomis memorial standing in the world to-day.

Though St. Michael's is placed meanly, shut in behind business premises, approached by narrow gantways, and requiring a fringe of trees around the yard to hide the surrounding structures, the edifice itself is inviting. Externally it is quite the same as in 1638, being built of small stones of flint set in a mass,-- a patternless mosaic. Unlike the soft Portland stone so common in English churches, the vicar says this flint can: "Smile at the tempest and Time's sweeping sway."

It is known that there was a Parish Church here in the time of Edward the Confessor (1042) and the Church is named in the Domesday Book (1086) shortly after the Norman Conquest. How long before this the Christian religion was regularly ordered in these parts cannot be ascertained; but we may well believe that there has been a continued succession of ordained clergy here ever since the conversion of the people of Essex to the Faith of Jesus Christ, about the year 600 of our era.

"William S. Maria, Bishop of London, and Lord of the Manor of Braintree, was the Founder of the present Church. He was consecrated June 22nd, 1199, the first year of the reign of King John; he was successor in the See of London to Richard Fitz-Neal, and was sometime secretary to King Richard I. In the time of these two Bishops old St. Paul's Cathedral (London) was built, besides many other Parish Churches in Essex belonging to the gift of the Bishops of London, of which Braintree was one. * * * * The date of 1199 is given for this church. The market town of Braintree and the origin of the Church of St. Michael are inseparably linked. * * * * The present church consists of the main portions of the original with later additions; most of the first fabric remaining to the present day. The Tower with the Nave Arch, the Belfry Chambers and Windows up to the eaves of the wooden spire in the Nave, the Bases, the Pillars and the Arcades on both sides belong to the time of Bishop William, the Founder. The Chancel Arch of that time was in existence when the Church was restored. The North and South Chancel Chapels were added, the former about 1380-1400--the latter is proved by the Arms in the Carved Oak Roof to belong to the reign of King Henry VIII, and about 1543. The East Wall of the Chancel except the Window, is of the same period as the Tower and Nave. The earliest addition made was in the year 1349, when "Thomas, son of John de Naylinghurst of this town in his testament bequeathed certain funds for the work of the Church going on at that time." This work can be proved to be the rebuilding of the North Aisle, and in all likelihood the Clerestory of the Nave with a new roof, flatter than the old gabled one. Certain Essex historians have taken this date, 1349, as given in this Will, to show that the Church was first built at that time; but those who understand the divisions of style of English Church Architecture are well aware that the original Tower, Nave and East Wall still remaining agree with the date of the license for the Market and the building of a Church for the town, viz., 1199. Everyone who has studied the subject of Gothic Architecture, and has read the statements of recent writers (see Muray's Handbook to Essex), knows that the old historians of Essex, Morant. (Wright takes his history from him), Newcourt, Ousely, Tyndal, and Muilman, all follow each other in giving us a wrong date for the foundation of the Church, viz., 1349, instead of 1199. This is fully treated of by the Vicar in the Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, Vol. IV, Part IV, 1893. The history of the Bells would form a subject of itself. * * * * During the years which elapsed between 1522 and 1532 the old South Aisle was taken down, lengthened and widened, and a new South Porch was built; soon after this the present South Chancel Aisle was added and made into Jesus Chapel. Other changes were made to meet the prosperity of the times and the increasing religious ceremonies; but most of these were soon after rendered useless by the incoming of the `Reformation of Religion.' During the Reformation period our Church suffered grievously by being stripped of its ornaments and robbed of its emoluments. The puritanical period which followed did still greater harm to the fabric, either by actual mutilation, or by deliberate destruction, or through generations of neglect. The endowments were nearly all taken away; and those bequests which were formerly made for the Church now went to the maintenance of the ever-increasing poor. To save the old Church from approaching decay, Thomas Trotter, a merchant of London, and native of this place, left a bequest towards the reparation of the fabric, in 1630." [Statement by the Vicar of Braintree.]

Unfortunately the floor of the church in which were old gravestones bearing inscriptions, was concreted over in 1852. Then too the old baptismal font was removed. There are some memorial windows of stained glass, though of wholly modern erection. The tower, which is Early English and almost the same to-day as when built, contains a large single lancet window and a good Early English archway into the nave. The three small round holes in each of the four sides of the tower, near the base of the pointed shaft above, are to let out the sound of the bells, which hang just below. The hood jutting out from the spire, about twenty feet below the top, held the old sanctus bell, but now shelters a clock. The original bell for the clock still exists, and was bought with the "XXa" bequeathed by one John Peppis of Branktre, in 1518, "to the charges of a newe clocke bell to be made to serve for the clocke of the Churche of Branktre aforesaid."

In the old parish chest was found, not long since, a large parchment bearing the names of Braintree residents who died of the plague about the year 1670. This M.S. is now framed and fixed to a pillar in the church. The records of baptisms, marriages and burials now exist only Return to 1660. Some woodcarving that is old and fine remains, though much has disappeared. On the outside of the church, in the east wall, is a recess with a depressed arch fifty by thirty inches wide, and about three feet from the ground. Near the right end of the sill-stone is a small circular depression, eight inches in diameter, with a drain. It is the vicar's theory that the feet of the pilgrims on their way to the shrines at Bury, St. Edmund's and Walsingham, were here washed by the master of the Jesus Guild.

With this we will leave Braintree, thinking of its ancient people and as a beginning-place of emigration, to which now--

Thither romantic pilgrims shall betake Themselves from distant lands. When we are still In centuries of sleep, thy fame shall wake, And thy great memory with deep feelings fill These scenes which thou hast trod, and hallow every hill.

We will take the road to Thaxted, over which John Lummys came--if he made his way by the direct route. The journey leads northwest, through the hamlets of Great Saling, Great and Little Bardfield, and Bardfield End Green,-- fourteen miles to Thaxted. Thus one traverses an upland still thinly settled, through what is now a farming region, but well wooded in 1600. Topographically the progress is still upward, rising from Braintree's elevation of two hundred feet above the sea-level to three hundred and fifty feet at Thaxted, which is perhaps the highest town in the county of Essex.

Why did John Lummys go to Braintree? Love or business is generally the moving factor in such events. We have seen that he did not marry in Thaxted; as for business, Thaxted was declining, while Braintree ever prospered between 1500 and 1700. The historians of Essex explain how Thaxted, the "ancient Sheffield of England," lost its industries,--the making of cutlery, arms and armor; how its people sought to emulate Braintree by introducing the manufacture of cloth to replace the metal working, and so save their town from commercial disaster. The old chroniclers also recount how the making of cloth was not attended with the success essential to save their town; how they failed to rival Braintree, and how the latter, long established as a center for cloth and kindred trades, profited still more by Thaxted's decline.

To the mind of John Lummys, as a young man in Thaxted, Braintree offered a prospect both near and inviting. If he had served an apprenticeship to a tailor in Thaxted, his removal to Braintree, between 1580 and 1590, seems quite to be expected of a young man of spirit then engaged in that vocation. But the Thaxted records already quoted show that he was left a fatherless boy when in his fifth year; thus is seen why he did not follow his father, as a carpenter or builder; and the leaving for Braintree may have been his own idea. His mother neither died in Thaxted, as a Lummys, nor married there, firstly or secondly.

We conclude this narrative of the Lomas family of England with a statement of facts as to the coats-of-arms of "Lomax" and "Lomas."

The family of the Laurence Lomax of Lancashire, who settled at Eye, in the county of Suffolk, about 1561, as a school teacher [Records of Cambridge University] and mentioned in the Loomis Genealogy of 1875, has been dismissed in the foregoing pages from consideration, in Suffolk, in connection with the Lomases of Essex. The descendants of this gentleman [Add. MSS. British Mus. 19140] have been all traced and disposed of in the present search. This is simply another branch out of Lancashire. Members of this family were prosecuted for papacy. Also must be dismissed the descendants of his brother, Roger Lomax of Hemsbey and Caistor, Norfolk [Davy MSS. fo. 113 British Museum]. Also for the same reasons must be eliminated from notice, other than heraldic, the family of one Joshua Lomax, mentioned in the Loomis Genealogy of 1875, who long after the Loomises were established in Thaxted, went from Bolton in Lancashire, to become lord of the manors of Childwickbury, Peminston and Hemelhempstead, in the county of Hertford, adjoining Essex [Vol. 377 Augmentation office].

With these aforesaid ineligibles there must be also passed by, from present acceptance, their respective coats-of-arms. These bearings were utilized--tentatively it is presumed--to form the frontispiece in the Loomis Genealogy of 1875, viz:--

Laurence Lomax of Suffolk; Per pale, or, sable, on a bend, ermine, cotised, three escallops, gules; crest--a unicorn's head erased, holding in its mouth an olive branch. These arms also are found quartered with the arms of Heydon, viz. argent, gules, a cross quarterly countercharged.

Joshua Lomax of Lancashire and Hertfordshire:--Ermine, a greyhound courant, between three escallops, sable; crest--a demi-greyhound argent, collared gules.

Argent, between two pallets gules three fleur-de-lis in a pale sable, a chief azure: crest, on a chapeau a pelican vulning herself, proper. The first two of the above bearings have not been further displayed in America because it was seen thirty-six years ago that they did not belong, after 1540, to the branch of the general English family out of which came Joseph Loomis. The third coat-of-arms, not having been then found accredited to any particular branch of the family in England, though it surely does have exactly that specific and exclusive application, if any at all, was deemed the safest for American adoption. To some minds it will be now deemed as a little unfortunate that such adoption of this bearing was occasioned so generally, and so long before a full investigation in England. Such inquiry now confirms the earlier supposition that the two bearings above first quoted have no possible relation to either the ancestors or descendants of our Joseph Loomis. They cannot be considered as ancient enough to apply to Lancashire or Derbyshire before 1540. The third bearing is only mentioned in England in a wholly casual, unofficial and indiscriminate collection of notes, drawn from all possible sources, some authoritative, others conjectural and in many instances from unknown, uncertain and unacceptable sources, and also containing arms that were officially disclaimed and rejected.

This collection printed and issued to the world, at large, solely as a private enterprise, is generally known as "Burke's Encyclop'dia of Heraldry." Neither the dates of grant, or of confirmation, of the last-named coat-of-arms, nor to whom granted, nor where granted is given by Burke. Regretfully. It must be said that this item is out of the unhonored flotsam and jetsam on the sea of heraldry, no man knows who sent it adrift: nor when, nor where; like a bottle thrown overboard at sea, it has been washed by the tide upon the American shore, where, as an orphan, it has been well treated. Most reluctantly we are now forced to abandon any claim of title to it "by right of descent" from the English "Lomas" who first rightly or wrongly conceived or acquired it. It may be the bearing of Helias Lumhals, Gentleman, of South Elmham, Suffolk, or of his apparent son or near relative, Sir Richard Lumhals, rector of Surlingham St. Mary; both were in a position to have arms, and the former's affix "Gentleman" would have been properly used, if for no other reason than armorial honor.

It will be remembered in this connection that in that South Elmham deed of 1 Feb., 1513, of which the close roll is a copy, not the original. Helias Lumhals, Jr., wrote: "In witness whereof *** I have affixed my seal." The original deed went to the grantees and is not now traccable. We must ask in vain-what was that seal?

So far as official records go, they have been consulted with this following result. At no heraldic visitation of England was this bearing accepted or confirmed, so far as official records now show, and in no instance do we find Joseph Loomis, or any of his proven ancestors in direct record contact with any specific heraldic evidences. The door of the College of Arms is shut upon us, viz:-

Dear Sir:
I was in Town yesterday and made the search you required for arms of Lomas. I do not find any grant to that name on our records. The neareat I can find to it is the name of Lomax. Laurence Lomax of Eye in Suffolk bore at the time of the Vititations "On a bend engrailed between two plain cotives ermine 3 escallops gules." There is also a grant dated 4 July 1815 to Richard Grimshaw Lomax of Clayton Hall. Co. Lancs. of "per pale or & sable on a bend engrailed with plain cotises ermine 3 escallops gules--crest issuant out of a crown vallory or a demi lion argent charged on the body with 3 escallops between two bendlets & holding between the paws an escallop gules." and another grant dated 5 May 1860 to Richard Lomax of the laner Temple of "or, or a bend between a flears de lys rules an annulet between two escallops of the field "crest"-- a demi-lion crased per bend or & gules charged with two fleurs de lys countercharged & holding between the paws an eacallop gules within an annulet or." I am afraid these are of no use to you, but I send them for what they are worth. I do not find any record of the arms attributed by Burke to the family of that name. I of course looked for alternative spellings.

The opinion was advanced at the College of Arms upon a call there in person that this bearing might be possibly accounted for in three ways, namely:--

(1) Granted during the period of the Commonwealth--the Puritan ascendency--under Cromwell, between 1648 and 1660. All coats-of-arms so granted were principally to non-royalist and non-prelatist applicants. These grants were mostly, if not all, annulled after the Restoration of Charles II, 1660; and the official records of them were destroyed. In no event, however, would a bearing so granted have any application whatever to Joseph Loomis or his descendants.

(2) Presented to the officials for confirmation at the time of some visitation of the shires by the representatives of the Clarencieux King of Arms, but for want of sufficient proof of title thereto, as presented by the applicant's statement, the arms were "disclaimed." rejected, confirmation refused, etc., or--arms extant but never presented for such confirmation, when the official demand therefore was proclaimed.

(3) A bearing of some other English family, assumed without proper confirmation. by a Lomas from his mother or grandmother's family; or possibly a bearing of some family extinct, or greatly declined after 1638.

Had any ancestor, in England, of Joseph Loomis, used this coat-of-arms without being able to prove that it was granted to him by the crown or rightfully inherited, he would have been subject to indignities, viz: --

Persons assuming to be gentlemen, but who were not entitled to the honor of bearing arms, were subject to the following indignities, on their names being struck from the former visitations. "Their names being written on a sheet of paper," says William Flower, Norroy King-at-Arms, "with fayre great letters, was carryed by the Bayliff of the Hundred, and one of the Heraulds men to the Chiefe Toune of that hundred, where in the chief place thereof, the heraulds men redd the names after crye made by the Baylife and the people gathered. And then pronounced openly by the said Bayley Every man's name severally contained in the said bill: that done, the Bayley set the said Bill of Names on a poste fast with wax where it may stand drye, so it be as aforesaid in the chiefest place of the said Towne." Baines' History of Lancashire VI--243.

The displaying privately of these arms of the three fleur-de-lis in America, however, as a souvenir, a trophy, or relic of some yet unknown Lomas, or extinct line of a Lomas branch, is a matter that is not quite open to criticism.

In all other usages the American Loomis descendants should be guided by the report of the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historic Genealogical Society made to the Council 15 December, 1898, and adopted by the Society at its annual meeting in 1899, viz:--

As there is no. person and no institution in the United States with authority to regulate the use of coats of arms, your Committee discourages their display in any way or form.

Prior to the Revolution, as subjects of a government recognizing heraldry, certain of the inhabitants were entitled to bear coats of arms; but only such as were grantees of arms, or who could prove descent in the male line from an ancestor to whom arms were granted or confirmed by the Heralds.

Females did not regularly bear arms, but the daughter of an arms-bearing father could use the paternal coat in a lozenge. When she married, such arms did not descend to her children except by special authority, unless she were an heiress marrying an armiger, and then only as a quartering of her husband's arms.

The mere fact that an individual possessed a painting of a coat of arms, used it upon plate, or as a bookplate or seal, or had it put upon his gravestone, is not proof that he had a right to it.

Proof of right must either be found in the Heralds' records, or be established by authenticated pedigree direct from an armiger. A coat of arms did not belong with a family name, but only to the particular family, bearing the name, to whose progenitor it had been granted or confirmed; and it was as purely individual a piece of property as a homestead. Hence it was as ridiculous to assume arms without being able to prove the right, as it would now be to make use of a representation of the Washington mansion at Mt. Vernon, and claim it as having been the original property of one's family, unless bearing the name of Washington and being of the line of those who owned it.

C. A. HOPPIN, JR.
London, May, 1908. HARTFORD, CONN. The Loomis Family in America
Migration from Dorchester, Massachusetts, in Windsor, Connecticut
BY
MRS. ALBERT HASTINGS PITKIN

HAVING followed Joseph Loomis from Braintree to London, and thence to New England, (Dorchester, Massachusetts), during the early summer of 1638, as set forth hereinbefore, there remains but one journey more--from Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Windsor, Connecticut, sometime in 1639. By what route did he and his family make this journey,--a journey more difficult to complete than any heretofore undertaken? Having, in imagination, come with him so far, let us go from Dorchester to Windsor. This established, any descendant of his can retrace the steps from his present habitation, through his ancestors, Return to Thaxted, England --a journey, in time, of 400 years. This final part of Joseph's journey is admirably pictured in the following, from the pen of one of his descendants, Sarah H. Loomis, now Mrs. Albert H. Pitkin.

The wide-spread restlessness which obtained in four of the chief settlements of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, within four years after these towns were planted is a curious fact. It was not that these people had repented of coming to America. They had no desire to return to their homes in England. When the first suggestions of removal began to be whispered abroad, it was supposed that the settlements would be near at hand and that the strength of the Massachusetts Colony should not be weakened. But, at length, it began to appear, that the distant valley of the Connecticut was territory to be occupied. In various ways since 1630, this rich and fertile valley had been brought to the notice of the Massachusetts settlers, and had doubtless stirred their imaginations. The word "Connecticut" meant to them, then, only the valley, and the story of its richness, beauty and extent had charmed their thoughts. The real transfer which originated and established the colony of Connecticut took place in 1635 and 1636 but people continued to come for several years in considerable numbers to the valley from England seeking these towns as the places where their kindred and friends had settled. (I. N. Tarbox).

On April 4, 1631, three Sachems from Agawam or vicinity of Springfield, one of whom had for a time, been in the service of Sir Walter Raleigh, visited Gov. Winthrop and bore to the English the first intelligence of the Connecticut river and the way overland to their place of residence. This is the route that is to be particularly considered. As early as Sept., 1633. Mr. John Oldham with three others, travelled through the wilderness to Connecticut to view the country and to trade with the Indians. They appear to have had information from the Dutch of New York of a valuable tract upon the Connecticut river. Mr. Oldham knew the ways of the Indians and their habits and had some knowledge of their language and he was hospitably received. He and his companions seem to have been the first white men who had gone across the country from the Bay to the Connecticut river. When they returned to the Bay Colony they brought back such flattering accounts of the fertility and products of the soil that in 1635 a large company were induced to emigrate thither. The greater part of the companies, came through the woods by land and the remainder by water, and Winthrop tells us of one company of "about sixty men, women and children who went by land to Connecticut with their cows, horses and swine and after a difficult and tedious journey arrived there safe." That which is now a three or four hours trip was then a journey of two weeks. Their household furniture, bedding and winter provisions were sent around by water.

Only a mile or two from their habitation in Dorchester they were in a wilderness with no sign of human life. There were hills to be climbed, streams to be forded, and morasses to be crossed. Their guides were the compass and the north star. Evening by evening they made camp and slept, guarded and sentineled by the blazing fires. Their toilsome and devious way led them near the mouth of the Chicopee, not far from where Springfield now stands. They at length came in sight of the river, the object of their ardent expectation, and thence down, along the Connecticut was a comparatively straight and easy pathway. The wide, full river, flowing with larger tide than now, was crossed on rafts and rudely constructed boats.

The spirit of adventure and commence was strong in the early American settlers and the English Colonies were not half a century old before roads were opened between the settlements. Already Indians had made trails across mountain and through forest. Some of these were for hunting and some for portage paths, and some were war-paths, over which silent-shod warriors filed into the country of the enemy. These Indians' trails followed still older ones, made by the wild animals, and because of some instinct of direction with which the Creator had endowed these red men and their game, the paths were always the most direct natural routes.

(I quote from the N. E. Gen. & Hist. Register). "From wigwam to wigwam that had hospitable doors always open on the leeward side, the pre-historic people drifted on their long distance paths. A stone mortar for the grinding of parched corn was a halting place. Their trails by constant use became paths. Upon the advent of another race, the marks of the Indian's moccasined feet were very soon covered by the heavy steps of the White Man, and the path of the Indian became the roadway of the pioneer settler."

In the N. E. Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. LV, page 155, is a copy of the map published in 1642 by Woodward and Safferey which gives the probable route of the early settlers to the valley of the Connecticut. These two men were employed to establish the southern bounds of the Massachusetts Bay patent and the map which they publish bears the date 1642. Written upon the map is the following: "A Description of the bounds of the Massachusetts Bay patent--crossing the Connecticut River at the Windsor ferry place, the house of John Bissell being at the west side and the Widow Gibbs, her house on the east side of the river. Also a description of the most remarkable rivers, brooks, ponds, hills, plains, swamps, situations of Indians, discovered by the way." They followed a well-known way from Boston to Springfield, then passed down the river to latitude 41 degrees 55 minutes and established a bound at the Windsor ferry place. From thence they made their way as directly as possible across country to Providence, noting latitude from time to time, and remarkable things seen. They passed from Shenipsit Pond above Rockville through the location of the villages of Tolland, Willington, Warrenville, Ashford, and Phoenixville. The map is very interesting and will well repay the time spent in investigation.

The four long distance paths from all the seaboard between Boston and New London, that approached each other, as they extended into the interior, were united as one "Great Path," in passing through the valley of the Quabaug and, thereafter reaching "Quabaug Old Fort" stretched away in diverging lines to where the Indians were wont to resort. To-day a person in Oxford or Woodstock, desiring to drive to Springfield by country road, the most direct, will travel along what was once called the "Great Road" in Sturbridge; and Sturbridge is the only place in all the memorable journey of Mr. John Oldham and his associates that can be identified as having been visited. "Quabaug Path" at Oxford Village and "Quabaug Old Fort" at Brimfield are connected by a path still traceable and very direct in its course.

Perhaps it is sufficient to say that writers agree that from Dorchester the route of the early settlers was through the location of what is now South Framingham to Oxford, Sturbridge, Brimfield and Springfield.

There has been transmitted to us from early time, some knowledge indefinite in parts, of the general course of some of the long distance paths used by the Indians.

In the history of Windham County, Connecticut, mention is made of a well-known path of the Indians from Mt. Hope and the Narragansett country to what is now Woodstock, known as the "Providence Path."

In Bowen's "History of Woodstock" we read: "The old `Connecticut Path' over which the distinguished band of Colonists went in 1635 and 1636 to settle the towns of Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford passed through the heart of what is now Woodstock. (Stiles Ancient Windsor). This path so famous in the early days came out of Thompson's Woods, a little north of Woodstock Lake, and proceeding across the Senexet Meadow, ran near Marcy's Hill." A footnote on page 52, Vol. I, of Stiles Windsor is as follows: "In regard to the course of the first settlers on their way to the Connecticut, Dr. McClure's manuscript in possession of the Connecticut Hist. Soc., preserves the following narrative--`In conversation with the late aged and respectable Captain Sabin of Pomfret, Connecticut, ie related to me the following discovery, viz: About forty years ago he felled a large and ancient oak about the north line of Pomfret, adjoining Woodstock. On cutting within some inches of the heart of the tree it was seen to have been cut and chipped with some sharp tool like an axe. Rightly judging that the time when it must have been done the Indians so far inland were destitute and ignorant of the use of iron tools he counted the number of the annular circular rings from the said marks to the bark of the tree and found there were as many rings as the years which had intervened from the immigration of the Dorchester party to that time. Hence the probability is that they journeyed along the north border of Pomfret and as they traveled by a compass the conjecture is corroborated by that course being nearly in a direct line from Boston to the place of their settlement on the Connecticut river.'"

Another mention in the grant of the old town of Mendon, date about 1660, called the "Path to the Nipmug Great Pond."

The Rev. J. H. Temple in writing the histories of N. Brookfield and Palmer, locates the "Quabaug Old Fort" on Indian Hill, north of the Great, now Sherman's Pond in Brimfield. This fort was directly upon the great Indian trail from Woodstock to the "Great Falls" at Holyoke, and but a little way South of the trail to Springfield. This fort is named oftener than any other, contemporaneous, of the neighboring defenses. The messengers and agents sent at different times by the English authorities to the Quabaugs for one purpose or another, often mention their stop at "Quabaug Old Fort." Four paths are mentioned as diverging from the fort. The great western path passed north of Steerage Rock to the bend of the Quabaug river; parting there, one branch kept on south of the river to Springfield; the other crossed the river into Palmer and on to the Great Falls of the Connecticut now Holyoke City. One path ran to the falls of Ware river, and still another to the Indian village at W. Brookfield. The character of the country lying between the eastern and western paths for a distance of twenty or more miles, north and south is peculiarly obstructive to an east and west thoroughfare; so much so that even to-day no road has been made or path found in that direction except where the valley of the Quinnebaug furnishes the way. The town of Sturbridge occupies the middle portion of this territory and the river enters from the west about mid-way between the north and south boundaries of that town. The Rev. John Eliot wrote while at Windsor in 1649: "20 myles up the river layeth Springfield where Mr. Moxon is pastor, and this town [Springfield] overland from the Bay layeth; 80 or 90 myles southwest, and is the road way to all the towns upon this river and (that) lye more south-ward." This was the way over which passed all the parties of immigrants and all the intercourse between the Bay settlements and those on the Connecticut river overland previous to 1648.

This was the "Bay Path" of Dr. J. G. Holland's historical novel bearing that title, of which the author writes as follows: "The principal communication with the Eastern settlement was by a path marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. The path led through the woods which bore the marks of centuries. This path was known as the "Bay Path" or the "Path to the Bay," and received its name in the same manner as the multitudinous "Old Bay Roads" that led to Boston from every quarter of Massachusetts. It was wonderful what a powerful interest was attached to the "Bay Path." It was the channel through which laws were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends. It was the vaulted passage along which echoed the voices that called from across the ocean and through which rolled the din of the great world. The "Bay Path" was charmed ground--a precious passage.

We are not accustomed to think of any indebtedness to the Indian, but in no respect do we owe him so much as for leading the way through what otherwise had been a trackless forest. The Indian paths and land-marks became by adoption those of the pioneers who gave to the present generations their homes "in a smiling land."
MRS. ALBERT HASTINGS PITKIN.
Hartford, Conn, June, 1908.
The Loomis Family in Windsor, Connecticut
The history of Connecticut begins with the year 1630, and that of Windsor with the year 1633. The original town of Windsor was about 46 miles in circumference, lying on both sides of the Connecticut River. It was originally called Dorchester. At the Commissioner's court, Feb. 21, 1637, it was "ordered yt the plantacon called Dorchester shall bee called Windsor."

Seven miles above Hartford, some Pilgrims from Plymouth Colony, in order to prevent the Dutch of New Netherland from getting control of "the finest valley in New England," built a block-house on the site of Windsor near the mouth of the Farmington, in 1633, and began trading with the Indians. This first settlement of Connecticut was made on "the Island," so-called, now owned by the Loomis Institute.

Early in 1639 the people of the three towns of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield met in convention and agreed to govern themselves according to a written constitution. By this act they united themselves into a republic, the first in the new world, and which was finally called Connecticut. This republic of Connecticut is believed to be the first state in the history of the world which was created by a written constitution. Moreover in the state thus founded there was no restriction of suffrage to church members. This constitution was inspired by the learned and eloquent Thomas Hooker of Hartford, and through it a democracy in which freedom, equality and individuality are potent factors was obtained.

Here, then, at the very door of our pioneer ancestor, was the birthplace of the written constitution, the full flower of which became the constitution of the United States of America. His sons and their families helped to build this first experimental republic. And from this republic and the town of Windsor have gone out freedom and equality, and sturdy and loyal descendants of Joseph Loomis, until the radiating lines of each reach to the uttermost bounds of these United States.
God gives all men all earth to love,
But since man's heart is small.
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all,
wrote Rudyard Kipling; and we may particularize thus:
And this one spot, for you and me
Who do the name of Loomis bear,
Now and for aye, truly shall be

In 1633 Capt. William Holmes with a few other men, sailed carefully up the Connecticut, "pluckily disregarding the threats of the Dutch commandant of the fort at Hartford, and landing at Windsor, erected a frame trading-house that had been hewed and fashioned at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and established the first permanent English settlement in Connecticut." The site of this trading-house is marked by a boulder, erected by the Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth Chapter of the D. A. R., of Windsor; it stands about a mile south of the "meeting-house" on what is called "the island," on land now owned by the Loomis Institute. An Early Map of Windsor, Connecticut, 1633-1650. (From Stiles' Ancient Windsor.)

The "Island" is the elevated portion just west of Plymouth meadow, and the Loomis Homestead is at the place marked thus--x

"From our Ancestors come our Names, But from our Virtues our Honors." JOSEPH LOOMIS, son of John and Agnes Loomis, was probably born before 1590, England; married in Messing, Co. Essex, England, June 30, 1614, Mary White, bap. Aug. 24, 1590, (See N. E. H. and G. Register, Vol. 55, pp. 28-29, for copy of Register of Shalford, England, marriages and baptisms), d. Windsor, Aug. 23, 1652.

Mary White was a daughter of Robert and Bridget (Allgar) White of Messing, Co. Essex England, who were married June 24, 1585.

Joseph Loomis was a woolen-draper in Braintree, Essex county, England; sailed from London April 11, 1638, in the ship "Susan and Ellen," and arrived at Boston July 17, 1638, tarrying about 1 year at Dorchester, Massachusetts, it is thought. It is mentioned in the town records of Windsor, Vol. 1, that on the 2nd of Feb., 1640, he had granted him from the plantation 21 acres adjoining Farmington river, on the west side of the Connecticut river, this 21 acres including the site of the first English settlement made in Connecticut; (See Records of Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth Chapter, D. A. R.), also several large tracts of land on the east side of the Connecticut, partly from the town and partly by purchase.

He therefore probably came to Windsor in the summer or autumn of 1639, and he is generally supposed to have come in company with Rev. Ephraim Huet, who arrived at Windsor, Aug. 17, 1639. He brought with him five sons, all of whom were freemen, Oct. 7, 1669, and three daughters. His house was situated near the mouth of the Farmington river on "The Island," so called because at every great freshet it became temporarily an island by the overflowing of the Connecticut River. He died Nov. 25, 1658, as appears from the following record: Abstract of the Disposition of the Estate of Joseph Loomis, Windsor, Connecticut

Found in Original Records, Vol. 2, page 115-116, and in the printed Digest of Manwaring, Vol. I, page 135. He died Nov. 25, 1658.

Inv't. p178-10-00. Taken by Henry Clark, John Moore. Ct. Records, p. 115. 2 Dec. 1658. An agreement for a Division of the Estate by the Children of Joseph Loomis, Dec'd and approved by this Court of Magistrates to be an equal Division. To Joseph Loomis, to Nicholas Olmsted, to Josiah Hull, to John Loomis, to Thomas Loomis, to Nathaniel Loomis, to Mary Tudor, to Samuel Loomis.

This agreement of the children of Mr. Joseph Loomis respecting the division of the Estate of ye father deceased, approved by the Court 2 Dec. 1658: We whose names are hereunto subscribd doe by these presents testify that it is our mutual and joynt agreement to attend an equal division of the Estate of Mr. Joseph Loomis, Our father, lately deceased, wch said estate being distributed in the equal prption we doe by these presents engage to set down Satisfied and Contented respecting any future trouble or demands about the foresaid estate now presented by Inventory to ye Court of Magistrates. Witness our hand, 2nd December, 1658. Joseph Loomis, Josiah Hull, Thomas Loomis, Mary Tudor, Nicholas Olmsted, John Loomis, Nathaniel Loomis, Samuel Loomis.

That pioneer Joseph Loomis spelled his name Lomas is conclusively proven by the rare document of which the insert opposite is a photographic copy. Notice, this signature occurred 6 yrs. before his death. This being his own writing it seems as though he held, in his riper years, that it should be written Lomas and not Loomis. If he was descended from, or related to, Helias Lumhals, whose land grant appears on page 78 herein, then possibly his reason for doing so was well-founded. Moreover, his eldest son, Joseph, m. 2ndly, Mary Chauncey, and this grant, on page 78, was a quit claim to Henry Chauncey and others, of Norwich, so that it appears as if the Loomises and the Chaunceys were somehow related--at least, acquainted. This being granted, Mary Chauncey, Joseph's 2nd wife, was very probably a descendant of one of these Chaunceys mentioned in the above land grant, and therefore a distant relative, a "cousin" some degrees removed, of Joseph Loomis. There being no conclusive evidence, we leave the reader to form what opinion he may both as to the spelling of the name and the relationship between Joseph Loomis and Mary Chauncey.

The following tabulation of the descendants of the five sons of pioneer Joseph, by generations, reveals many interesting and valuable facts. If the genealogy of other families contained such exhibits, a comparison of them would probably give us certain eugenic laws from which important deductions might be obtained.

That being impossible, no such exhibits being available, let us study our exhibit and compare the results with such vital statistics as are available relative to size of families, number who die before the age of 16, number who pass the age of 60 and of 90, per cent who marry, comparative number of sons and daughters, the average age of the whole family, and lastly how the descendants of John excel and of Thomas fall short of the average. Following this tabulation the reader will find a comparison of these tabulated facts with the averages as given in the world statistics on like investigations. Autograph of Joseph Loomis, April 17, 1652.

A rare document, with Joseph Loomis's signature, being the oldest written Loomis document in America.

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2ND GENERATION.
LIEUT. SAMUEL LOOMIS, b. Co. Essex, England, 2, 1628; m. Dec. 27, 1653, Elizabeth, dau. of Thomas Judd. He was freeman in 1654, and admitted to the church Nov. 26, 1661. He was a Lieut. and removed to Westfield, Massachusetts, between 1672 and '75. He sold his dwelling house in Windsor in 1679, and d. Oct. 1, 1689. His widow was living in Westfield, 1716. To children--all but last two b. in Connecticut
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SAMUEL, b. (???)+
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ELIZABETH, b. (???); m. Nov. 18, 1673. Thomas, d. May 6, 1719, son of Deac. Thomas and Deliverance (Langton) Hanchet. Westfield, Massachusetts
Children: 1. Elizabeth, 2. Thomas, 3. Mary, 4. Hannah, 5. Hannah, 6. Sarah, 7. Samuel, 8. Deliverance.
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RUTH, b. Farmington, Connecticut, June 14, 1660, bap. July 24, 1660; m. Benjamin, bapt. Apr. 11, 1658, d. Westfield, Massachusetts, 1738, ae. 80, son of William and Elizabeth (Stanley) Smith, of Farmington, Connecticut
Children: 1. William, 2. Ruth, 3. Benjamin, 4. Samuel, 5. Elizabeth, 6. Rachel, 7. Jonathan, 8. Job, 9. Mary. He m. 2nd, Mrs. Hannah (Hanchet) Loomis, for which see Stanley Gen., p. 28.
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Sarah, b. Feb. 3, 1662-3.
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JOANNA, b. Oct. 22, 1665; m. Nov. 20, 1691. Joseph, b. Aug. 25, 1655, son of William and Elizabeth (Stanley) Smith, his and wife. Farmington, Conn
Children: 1. Joanna, 2. Ruth, 3. Susanna, 4. Thankful, 5. Mercy, 6. Esther, 7. Experience, 8. Zephania.
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BENJAMIN, b. Feb. 11, 1667-8; m. Jan. 6, 1703, Ann Fitch. He d. 1726. No children.
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NEHEMIAH, b. July 15, 1670.
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WILLIAM, b. Mch. 18, 1672.
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PHILIP, b. Feb. 22, 1675.
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MARY, b. Aug. 16, 1678.

3RD GENERATION.
WILLIAM LOOMIS, b. Mch. 18, 1672; m. Jan. 13, 1703, Martha, b. Sept. 7, 1682, d. Feb. 22, 1753, dau. of Thomas and Martha (Wright) Morley. He d. 1738, Westfield, Massachusetts 10 children--all b. Westfield.
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MARTHA, b. Feb. 24, 1704; m. 1st, July 16, 1729, Jonathan Phelps, d. bef. 1758, ae. 80 yrs., at Simsbury; m. 2nd, (his 3rd w.) Feb. 15, 1758, Dr. Jonathan Buttles, or Buttoloph, b. 1692-3, son of David; m. 3rd, Zebulon Hoskins; she d. at So. Canaan, Apr. 30 (26), 1804, ae. 100 yrs. 2 mos. Her youngest dau. lived to be 102 yrs. old.
Children, all by 1st m.: 1. Jonathan, 2. Son, 3. Martha, 4. Son, 5. Martha, 6. Daughter, 7. Austin, 8. Margaret, 9. Eunice.
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JOSHUA, b. Aug. 24, 1706.
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BENJAMIN, b. Aug. 30, 1708.
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ANN, b. Aug. 27, 1710; m. Dec. 13, 1733, John, b. Westfield, Massachusetts, Nov. 15, 1705, d. 1781, ae. 76, son of John and Mary (Leonard) Root. Southwick, Massachusetts
Children: 1. Gideon, 2. Capt. Ezekiel, 3. Roger, 4. Anna, 5. Rhoda, 6. Lydia, 7. Mercy,?? grandmother of Rev. Sylvanus D.1 Phelps, D. D. (Mercy1 [Stevens], Mercy1 [Root]) b. May 15, 1816, editor and author of several books. 8. Grace.
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WILLIAM, b. Sept. 15, 1712.
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JAMES, b. Nov. 15, 1714.
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THANKFUL, b. Nov. 19, 1716; m. Sept. 21, 1747. Ebenezer Winchell, who d. Jan. 2, 1778. Torrington.
Children: 1. Thankful, 2. Daniel, 3. Silence, 4. Bethia, 5. John. 21. JONATHAN, b. Jan. 23, 1719.
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HEZEKIAH, b. Mch. 14, 1721, living 1746, an idiot.
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NOAH, b. May 12, 1724.

4TH GENERATION.
JOSHUA LOOMIS, b. Westfield, Massachusetts, Aug. 24, 1706; m. May 22, 1735. Abigail, d. Westfield, Apr. 23, 1795, dau. of John and Abigail (Phelps) Langdon. He d. 1779. 10 children--all b. Westfield, Massachusetts
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SETH, b. May 22, 1737.
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JOHN, b. Dec. 27, 1739.
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ABIGAIL, b. Oct. 28, 1742, d. Dec. 2, 1750.
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LOIS, b. Aug. 10, 1744; m. Dec. 21, 1767, Moses Hanchett, of Westfield.
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Children: 1. Samuel, 2. Eunice, 3. Lois, 4. Lucy, 5. Moses.
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MARTHA, b. Jan. 31, 1747; m. Aaron Nelson.
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JOSHUA, b. Sept. 23, 1748.
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ENOCH, b. Aug. 25, 1750.
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JUSTUS, b. June 19, 1752.
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ABIGAIL, b. June 30, 1754.
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ANN, b. July 10, 1758; m. Mch. 29, 1786, Seth Kellogg, of Southwick.

5TH GENERATION.
JUSTUS LOOMIS, b. Westfield, Massachusetts, June 19, 1752; m. Oct. 31, 1782, Tryphena Elmer, d. Mch. 25, 1839. She was probably dau. of William Elmer of Windsor, Connecticut He d. July 28, 1833, Westfield, where b. his 10 children.
SQUIRE, b. May 15, 1783.
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ELECTA, b. 1784; m. int. Dec. 13, 1801, John Shepard. She d. 1802.
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JUSTUS, b. Apr. 9, 1787.
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TRYPHENA, b. Apr. 10, 1789; m. Daniel Sackett. She d. 1850? They had a dau. Julia. See Atwater Gen., p. 255.
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THOMAS, b. Mch. 18, 1791.
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WILLIAM, b. Nov. 9, 1793.
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LUCINDA, b. 1795; m. Sylvester Olds. She d. 1860? Southwick, Massachusetts
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JAMES, b. Apr. 11, 1797.
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MAHALAH, b. Aug. 13, 1800; m. Dec. 2, 1824, George W. Noble, d. Nov. 9, 1871. Westfield.
Children: 1. Geo. Washington, 2. Amelia Maria, 3. Samuel Henry, 4. John Wesley, 5. Thomas Kellogg, 6. Joseph Gilbert, 7. Josephine Charlotte, 8. Julia Augusta.
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ELECTA, b. Apr., 1803; m. 1821, Stiles Fox. She d. Sept. 21, 1850. Westfield, Massachusetts
Child: 1. Juliette, d. Sept. 8, 1850, ae. 18.

6TH GENERATION.
SQUIRE LOOMIS, b. Westfield, Massachusetts, May 15, 1781; m. Nov 22, 1809, Parience, b. Aug. 22, 1782. d. Oct. 11, 1855, dau of Nordiah and Mario (Hitchcock) Root. He d. Aug. 6, 1854, at Westfield, where b. his 8 children.
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HASWELL, b. Aug. 9, 1810, d. "done" for his money, Mch. 20, 1894. unm. Westfield.
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DANIEL, b. Mch. 9, 1812.
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EVELINE, b. Mch. 14, 1814; m. Apr. 16, 1843. Lemuel, b. Sept. 17, 1817. d. May 23, 1890, son of Russell and Rebecca (Johnson) Grant. They rem. to Westfield, 1840-1. Lestber merchant. Meth. She d. Sept. 24, 1897.
Children: 1. A sou, 2. Chester, 3. Frank, 4. Martha, 5. Mary.
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ELIZABETH, b. Mch. 19, 1816; m. Vincent Shurtliff. They were Mormons. He had 3 or more wives. Tradition has it that Brigham Young at one time wished to marry Elizabeth, but she would not. She d. May, 1861. Salt Lake City, Utah.
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LYMAN, b. July 31, 1818.
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CHESTER, b. Aug. 14, 1830, d. Mch. 31, 1843.
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LUCY, b. June 11, 1823; m. 1st, May 16, 1844. Hubbard Bellows, b. Nov. 7, 1815. d. Sept. 5, 1830, son of Henry and Clarissa (French) T?? Rem to Cal in 1856, and d. at the mines. She m. 2nd, June 1, 1851. Milo Andrews. Spanish Forks. Utah.
Her children. by 1st m.: 1. Francenis Lucy, 2. Locina Clarisan. 3. Hubbard. See Tuttle Gen, p. 239.
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MARIA, b. Sept. 22, 1828: m. Nas??. Ill., May 21, 1826. Albert Cornine, b. Nov. 5, 1825. son of Asbbel and Harriet (Adams) Dewey. They were Mormons and he m. secondly. Feb. 11, 1856, in Salt Lake City, and ?? (Maria) refused to live with him after he got a second wife. She is still living in Salt Lake City. No children.