Ives Family History Blog

Lenham, Kent, England

The Atwaters came from Lenham, Kent, England and Royton. The following is taken from Atwater History and Genealogy by Francis Atwater, pp. 59+.

“Lenham is a town and parish in county Kent, southwest England, about 40 miles WSW from the center of London. It is midway between between the towns of Maidstone and Ashford, about nine miles from each. Its name comes from the river Len which begins in the parish, and ham: town. This is a very old place, some historians believing it to have been a Roman station. As early as 804, the kings of Kent and Mercia joined in a grant to the Abbot of the Monastery of St. Augustine, near Canterbury (about 10 miles to the west), of "certain land in Lenham".

The parish is about five miles long and four miles wide, lying chiefly in a valley. It is said to be "well inhabited" and "the valley part extremely well watered, for at the eastern extremity of the town there arises a spring, accounted the head of the river Stour, which flowing thence southward by Royton Chapel, at about a mile distance from its source, receives into its stream two other small ones from the northwest, and goes its way to Ashford and Canterbury."

Royton is a district in the parish of Lenham southeast from the church of St. Mary [which is at the south end of Lenham] about a mile. The name applies to a section of the parish which had an organization of its own in early times, and a market regularly held within or near its limits. The high-road from Maidstone, through Lenham to Ashford, ran through Royton street.

Royton is mentioned as early as 1259 when Simon Fitzadam was in possession of the manor at Royton. His successor was Robert de Royton who took his surname from from the place. The manor was purchased by Robert Atwater [who is not the Robert Atwood of this genealogy] early in the reign of Henry VIII, and he made it his residence and it continued in the possession of his descendants.”

Ives family in England – prior to 1600

The name Ives (Welsh) and Iver (Gallic) means chief or leader. The name Ives (Danish) means zeal or fervor. The family name Ives, in various spellings, is mentioned at different times in England but there is no certain link to the William Ives from Norfolk who sailed on the Truelove for Boston in 1635. Much of this information prior to 1600 came from Ives (1928) and Cook (1889).

The Saint Ives for whom the town in west Cornwall is named was a churchman who became as Bishop and was also a lawyer. He was born in Brittany and became the patron saint for lawyers. In eastern Cornwall there is the village of Saint Ive which contains a church named for Saint Ivo (1040 – 1116) the Bishop of Chartres. There is also an English borough named St. Ives in Huntingdonshire. Here in 970 Abbot Ednoth built a church on the burial site of Ivo, a Persian bishop who traveled through England preaching. One of William the Conqueror followers from Normandy was Ivo de Taillebois (Ives the Woodcutter). Rogerus de Iveri was cup bearer to William the Conqueror. His son, Ivo, fell out of favor with the king, Henry I, and died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In 1252 Henry III granted to Thomas Ives permission to enclose a portion of the highway adjoining his mansion at Kenteffetonne. The family of Ive were listed as of great antiquity in the Parish of Pancras, London.

In addition to William Ives, Miles Ives was one of the early Ives in New England/ He came to Watertown in 1639, moved to Boston in 1641, settled in Cambridge in 1660 and died in Boston in 1684. He married Martha and had three daughters, Sarah, Mary, and Hannah. There was also a Thomas Ives in Salem, MA who arrived by 1668. He was born in England in 1648 and his descendents are described in Cook (1889). There is no confirmation of how Miles and Thomas might be related to William Ives. A son of Thomas, also called Thomas Ives, was born in Salem in 1674 and settled in Marblehead, MA by 1710. There are several descendents of Thomas still living in the Salem and Marblehead area.

Captain William Ives from Norfolk was listed in the Original Lists of Persons of Quality 1600 – 1700 as taking the oath of allegiance and being accepted as a passenger on the Truelove that sailed for Boston in 1635. There are two candidates for William Ives’ father – John Ives and William Ives – but no current conclusive evidence exists for either.

The Ives coat of arms listed in the Burdis Armory of England Scotland and Wales refers to Ives of Bradwell County, Norfolk England. The Matthews American Armory and Blue Book states:

“The arms were used by the descendents of William Ives who came from London on the ship “Truelove” in 1635, one of the proprietors of New Haven, Conn.; also of the descendents of Major Simon Willard, one of the founders of Concord, Mass.”

There is no known family connection between William Ives and Simon Willard. The description was written by the John Frick jewelry Company of New York (undated).

The English origins of William Ives are consistent on both sides of each following generations as the families of the both sets of paternal and maternal grandparents of the first eight American generations prior to Sumner Albert Ives all came from England to New England in the early 1600s, including: Southwark, Surrey and Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire (Dickerman), Chester (Yale), England TBD (Turner), Lenham, Kent (Atwater), Knoston, Colchester (Peck), London (Cooper), Lowescroft, Suffolk (Smith), England TBD (Bassett), Bridgewater, Somerset (Street), London (Day), England TBD (Humiston), Kingston, Surrey (Bishop), and Dunbar, Scotland (Dunbar). The ancestors of these immigrants all lived in England with the exception of the Yale and Day families from Wales and the Dunbar family from Scotland.

Early History of New Haven Part One: London Beginnings

On March 30, 1638 the founders of New Haven left Boston with Gov. Eaton and their minister, John Davenport, to found a colony where they could live on their own terms. They were seeking relief from religious persecutions and illegal "taxation" in England by King Charles I, especially after he dissolved his third Parliament with the purpose of ruling without it. The beginnings of New Haven and its government occurred at the meeting of St. Stephen’s Parish, Coleman Street, London on October 6, 1624 when John Davenport, from Oxford, was elected as minister at age 27. Located in the middle of the financial district of London (see below) the parish was mostly middle class and, while officially part of the Church of England, strongly Puritan and Non-Conformist in its views.

In the seventeenth century, Coleman Street was a fair and large street with houses, serving as the principal artery between Moorgate and Lothbury. There were a number of alleys off to each side which is still the case.

The parish extended from about 100 feet west of Coleman Street to Draper’s Gasrdens and from Lothbury, north to beyond the Wall. The original church was in southwest corner of the parish. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, then rebuilt by Wren. It was damaged in 1940 during the Blitz, the site was sold and the parish was united to St Margaret Lothbury in 1954. St Margaret Lothbury was also rebuilt by Wren in 1686 and is the parish church of the Bank of England. It is located on Lothbury EC2 in The City of London and contains many church furnishings rescued after the blitz from other churches in the City.

Before the Great Fire of 1666 there were over a hundred church spires dominating the skyline. Ninety-seven of these were parish churches that fell within the walls of the City and many were extremely small. The Great Fire destroyed eighty-nine churches and, if the City authorities and Sir Christopher Wren, who was in charge of the rebuilding, had been allowed to prevail, the restored City would have had fewer parishes. But the demands of citizens prevailed and an Act passed in 1670 stated that fifty-one of the destroyed churches were to be rebuilt. This still meant that many old parishes would vanish entirely, their parishes being united to nearby ones, though they would continue to be represented by churchwardens and parish clerks and often retained their own parish registers for many years. Of those churches rebuilt by Wren, many were to be destroyed during World War Two and only thirty-eight survive today. (Continued)

Early History of New Haven Part Two: More on London Beginnings

There were several St. Stephens church members who joined Davenport in New Haven including, William Andrews, William Ives, George Smith, Jeremy Dixon, James Clark, George Ward, Nicholas Elsey, Jasper Crane, Henry Browning, Frances Hall, and Robert Hall. Other who lived in the neighborhood who also joined Davenport as founders of New Haven include: John Cooper, Francis Newman, Robert Newman, William Thorp, Richard Beach, Ezekiel Cheever, Edward Bannister, and others (Calder, 1936).

The parish met in general meetings of most householders to conduct both civil and church affairs as became the case in early New Haven. There were also subgroups or committees for specific functions. Various roles were appointed, including collectors for the poor, auditors of the accounts of the church wardens and the collectors. The general vestry met once a year in December to appoint two common councilmen, two constables, seven members of the ward, and two scavengers. They often had difficulties filling these roles and people paid fines if they refused service. The wealthy paid a general fine of 10 pds. to avoid all service. In contrast, 11 pounds was the annual base salary for the vicar, if appointed by the Bishop of London, but if the parish choose their own candidate, the sum was higher: 39 pounds, salary and a gratuity. Special meetings of the vestry appointed vacant church positions, audited church wardens’ accounts, and levied tithes.

Davenport’s views soon became known to the repressive head of the English Church, Archbishop Laud, and when Laud got the support of the king in 1633, Davenport hid for three months and then fled the city under disguise and went to Holland where he was made assistant Pastor of the English Puritan Church there. Not happy in exile, he came back to London in 1636 with the idea of emigrating to New England. He and his Oxford schoolmate, Theophilus Eaton, a wealthy merchant born in Buckinghamshire, were both members of the Massachusetts Bay Company but Davenport’s name was kept secret for fear of repression, even thought there many known Puritans in the company.

They assembled a group of supporters, including Thomas Yale, David Atwater, John Cooper, William Peck and their families and sailed from England for Boston in 1637 on the Hector. The exact composition and goals of the group was kept secret because if the powers in London had known that a group of Non-Conformists merchants were taking their whole estates to settle in New England, they might have been prevented. The Hector had already gone to New England once. The owners of the Hector did partition in January 19, 1637 to release the ship from the King’s Service. It had been pressed into this service just as it was ready to sail (Coldham, p. 181, Calder, 1936, p. 31). That action must have been in the Fall of 1636 as ships did not depart in the winter. It was released early in May. Its arrival to Boston was recorded on June 26, 1637.

Shortly after they left, the king issued a proclamation as quoted in Atwater (1902) “that the king – being informed that great numbers of his subjects are yearly transported into these parts of America…whose only or principal end is to live without the reach of authority – doth command his officers not to suffer any persons…to pass to any of those plantations without a license…and a testimony from the minister of the parish of their conformity to the orders and discipline of the Church of England.” This notice and other related actions did not stop the large wave of Puritans leaving England in the 1600s. Unlike many of those who came to the New World from England and other part of Europe in the early days, these English Puritans came more to escape the persecutions in their own country than a sense of adventure. Once the Puritans under Cromwell defeated the Royalists and gained control of the country, the migration stopped and did not pick up again after the Restoration. (Continued)