4 July 2020
In terms of y-chromosome DNA analysis, it has been shown that the man often called Sgt. William Cotton of Boston and whose estimated birth year is always shown as 1610, has the same male line ancestry as the 17th century Virginia immigrant Walter Cotton. Recently, it has proven possible to document Walter Cotton's English ancestry through the use of records contemporary with his lifetime. Also in terms of male-line ancestry, it has been proven genetically that the ancestors of Col. James Thomas Cotton of American Revolutionary War fame also share the same male-line ancestry. This last mentioned gentleman's ancestry can be taken back in the male line to the beginning of the 17th century to a certain Thomas Cotton who worked as a secretary for Thomas Weston, one of the financiers of the Mayflower Plymouth colony. This family falsely assumed without proof that it was a branch of the Viscount Combermere Cotton family and, due to the wealth they had earned in the mid-17th century, were accepted as such. As a result, the coat of arms which they used was not their own. Walter Cotton's proven (and not assumed) ancestry goes back to a mid-13th century individual called William Cotton, whose manor was eventually called Cotton Edmunds (in Cheshire) after William's great grandson and ancestor of Walter, Edmund Cotton. At present, all known male-line members of the Cottons of Cotton Edmunds family descend from Edmund Cotton's son, yet another William Cotton, and at least 90% of these from this William Cotton's grandson, John Cotton of Hampstall Ridware and John's second wife, Joan Fitzherbert. The likelihood of finding a common ancestor is, thus, greatest in this last-mentioned lineage and is where a search should first begin.
A further point in common between the three sub-lineages mentioned above is that they were either active non-conformists in the case of the William and Thomas Cotton or reluctant conformists in the case of Walter Cotton's ancestors and this, too, would suggest a fairly near relationship. This seems, in fact, to have been due to Thomas Cotton having been a secretary of Thomas Weston who was a non-conformist ironmonger who was heavily involved in financing the founding of the Mayflower Plymouth Rock colony. As a result of his association with Thomas Weston, Thomas Cotton seems to have not only become a convinced non-conformist, but also an ironmonger, himself, eventually founding an iron foundry dynasty which controlled a significant portion of the iron production of England during the 17th century. However, because the family was non-conformist, the traditional means of being able to use Anglican parish birth, marriage, and death records was cut off completely very early in the 17th century, making it impossible in the past to carry the family line any further back than Thomas, himself.
As part of a search done for me (Hikaru Kitabayashi, doctor of linguistics and professor emeritus of Daito Bunka University) by Dr. Neil D. Thompson to better determine my own y-chromosome Cotton ancestry, Dr. Thompson put together in a report dated 10 November 2009, in which he provided a complete list transcribed from a microfilm of the original parish record of all Cottons who, up to the end of the 17th century, were christened, married, or buried in various likely Staffordshire parishes, including Penkridge (a fairly active market town) where an exceptionally large number of Cottons appeared to be concentrated. Though his transcription was far more detailed in the information provided (identifying many of the Cottons as being of Penkridge, Bickford, or Whiston) than anything then available through online sources, nothing found was useful in determining my ancestry until the marriage record of Walter's brother and sister-in-law and fellow immigrants to Virginia was recently uncovered in the parish records of Uttoxeter. That provided the key piece of data that tied everything else found in the records of earlier centuries together, allowing ancestral Walter's line to be verified with absolute certainty.
Deciding, on a whim, that Dr. Thompson's data regarding Penkridge deserved careful analysis, I spent the better part of the week working on it. Without DNA analysis showing that three lines of descent have to have a close relationship, the analysis would not have led anywhere, but, having an intimate knowledge of the family history of the Cottons of Cotton Edmunds due to previous research done by me and Dr. Thompson at the Family History Library of the Church of the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City and later by me alone for a year at the Institute of Historical Research of the Unversity of London, I was in a position to identify possible connections which would have been invisible to others. One key piece of data with regard to the ironmonger Thomas Cotton is that he had a son Edward who was born in 1624, though the birth month and day had not been identified. Exactly such an individual appeared in the Penkridge records at a time where Thomas appears for the first and last time as Thomas Cotton of Wollaston, yeoman, indicating that he had come into possession of land in Wollaston, Shropshire, and was rising in prosperity. Other earlier siblings also appear at the times one would expect. The only one of Edward's siblings not to appear in Penkridge records was his slightly younger brother, William, who would seem to have been christened in a non-conformist church.
Additional analysis of Dr. Thompson's Penkridge parish records showed the existence of an Edward Cotton and his immediate family, for whom dates would suggest that, in comparison with other Cottons found in Penkridge, they had to have an especially close relationship with Thomas. The ultimate conclusion was that Thomas and Edward had to be brothers and that Thomas probably named his son born in 1624 for his brother. The parish record dates would suggest that Edward and Thomas also had an older brother named Francis. Even more helpful was that the transcript specifically identified the older Edward Cotton as the son of Humphrey Cotton of Penkridge. Moreover, a further examination of the transcript strongly indicated that Humphrey Cotton had a younger brother by the name of Richard. These individuals were born in the 16th century at a time when it was customary to name at least one of one's sons after one's father and often other sons after the child's father's father or mother's father, or after other family members or after the godfather of the child being christened. Only in fairly seldom cases, when there were many surviving sons, did people choose entirely new names. Thus, considering the relative rarity of the name Francis who seems to have been Humphrey Cotton of Penkridge's oldest son and that the next two names of individuals who could be placed as children were Thomas and Richard, we would do well to look for a Humphrey who was the son of Francis and the grandson of either a Humphrey or a Richard. In fact, there is a line of descent from John Cotton and Joan Fitzherbert which would fit this pattern. It starts with Richard Cotton, a younger son of the just mentioned couple. Richard, by his second wife, Alice Savage, in addition to an older son, Humphrey Cotton who was an ancestor of the Virginia immigrant Walter Cotton, had a younger son Francis who can be shown to have survived to adulthood and who then disappears from the record in the 1540s when his parents pass away. Thus, Richard, who was born about 1570, by Alice Savage, had a son Humphrey born about 1509 and another son Francis born about 1516. Francis would have settled in Penkridge where he had an older, though not oldest, son Humphrey who was perhaps named after the brother of Francis and would have been born in about 1542. Francis eventually had a younger son Richard who would have been named after his father who was born around 1556. This, however, would normally indicate the possibility of their having been a son named Richard (born about 1540 and dying around 1550) who was born before Humphrey, but who died in childhood after Humphrey was born, leading to the next son to be born being named Richard.
Francis's presumptive son, Humphrey, was a shoemaker who appears to have had three sons to survive with his oldest being Francis who would have been born around 1565, his second surviving son being Edward who would have been born in the years leading up to 1575 when Penkridge parish records begin and Thomas who was born in 1585 and whose christening is listed in the parish records. The oldest brother, Francis, seems to have been a farmer, the second brother Edward seems to have remained in Penkridge all his life, though his occupation is unclear. Thomas, however, can be identified with the ironmonger Thomas Cotton already mentioned.
There are also two William Cottons in the Penkridge parish records. One was born to William Cotton of Penkridge and Alice Birche in 1610, but whose burial appears in the church records for 1612. However, the father of the child concerned does not appear to be of the same Cotton family as the Cottons mentioned above and cannot presently be traced to John Cotton and Joan Fitzherbert. The other William Cotton for which there is a christening is Edward Cotton's son by Anne Hare who was born in 1603. As this would make the ironmonger Thomas Cotton mentioned above as the child's presumed uncle, it also provides an explanation for William becoming a Puritan and immigrating to Massachussetts.
In any case, the William, who was born in 1603, seems to have survived to adulthood, as there is no burial record for him but there is for his father Edward Cotton in 1635 as well as his younger brother John's infant daughter Margaret in 1643. It would seem that Edward took whatever inheritance he had and used it to immigrate to Boston, as he cannot be traced further in English records and only William's much younger brother John (born in 1616) remained in Penkridge. This is the man I would identify as being the William Cotton who settled in Boston as a butcher (probably the same profession he had in the market town of Penkridge but with fewer prospects for bettering his position in life), got married, had a family, bought property, became a sargent in the local militia, and settled down into a happy life of peaceful obscurity. His descent from the earliest known 13th century Cotton of the Cotton Edmunds family of Cheshire would have been: William -- Simon -- William -- Edmund -- William -- John -- John (the husband of Joan Fitzherbert) -- Richard (the husband of Alice Savage) -- Francis -- Humphrey -- Edward -- William (immigrant to Masachussetts). Being, in all likelihood, the brother of Edward, Thomas would have been one generation less.
The Cottons of Cotton Edmunds, as all families recognized as armigerous by the college of arms, were considered as being part of the untitled nobility of England and, when it was convenient to do so, were considered suitable marriage partners for members of the families of the titled nobility, but, with feudal law generally excluding younger sons from inheriting family lands and with both Richard and his son Francis being younger sons, from the generation of Francis onward, the descendants of this lineage had to work hard for a living and, consequently, they soon lost their identity as being members of the untitled nobility of England. By the time of William, the immigrant to Boston, memory of this descent would not have either been known, nor, if it were remembered, would it have been seen it as something to rejoice in, even though it entitled William to the use of at least five different coats of arms, being the original Cotton coat of arms and those of the heiresses of the various armigerous families his ancestors had married (Ridware, Basinges, Waldshief, and Fauconer).
Nevertheless, in the time of John Cotton and Joan Fitzherbert, the Cottons of Cotton Edmunds were a very well connected family. John, himself, was a sheriff of Staffordshire and a first cousin was the Queen's treasurer, while on Joan's side, her father had also been a sheriff of Staffordshire and a member of parliament as had two uncles. Two first cousins of her mother had been archbishops of York, her nephew became the chief justice of England, as also did a grandson of Joan and John, themselves. However, they and their descendants were, for the times in which they lived, not only incredibly fertile, but more incredibly also produced large numbers of healthy children reaching adulthood, which meant that younger sons, while possessing access to a better social network than most, nevertheless had to work for a living, doing whatever it would take to get ahead.
A note concerning Joan Fitzherbert and her daughter-in-law Alice Savage, their ancestry was equally illustrious. Joan was a descendant of the kings of Gwynedd and Powys in Wales, the Irish kings of Leinster, the Viking kings of Dublin, as well as the English king Henry I. Alice Savage was a descendant of king Edward I of England as well as being a grand-neice of the first earl of Derby, the third husband of Margaret Beaufort, who was the mother of king Henry VII.
Now back to William of Boston. Due probably to his presumed uncle, Thomas, various members of the family had not only become committed to puritanism, but also had an intimate connection with Massachussetts from the time of the Mayflower. It would have been only natural for him to have chosen the opportunities offered by the expanding Massachussetts economy of the 17th century when compared with the difficulty in making a go of it in Penkridge. As for Thomas, becoming a wealthy businessman enabled him and his family to ascend back into the ranks of the gentry, England's untitled nobility, once again, but on the unfounded assumption that he belonged to a different Cotton family, that of the future Viscounts Combermere. It was his great grandson, the non-conformist Reverend Thomas Cotton, who married a daughter of Leonard Hoare, a president of Harvard University whose descendants decided to make America their permanent home.
The line of the Virginia immigrant Walter Cotton diverges from the two other lineages mentioned by descending from the older (but not oldest) brother of Francis, Humphrey Cotton of Bolde. Thus, from John Cotton and Joan Fitzherbert, their line was: John -- Richard -- Humphrey -- William -- Walter -- William -- Walter (the immigrant to Virginia), with William Cotton of Boston being a third cousin of the father of Walter Cotton of Virginia.
