Old Colonial Families

OLD COLONIAL FAMILIES. Our neighbors in the United States, although they make such a boast of their democracy, pay far more attention to matters of genealogy than the people of Canada, and there is not one of their self-made men who is not well pleased to trace his descent from some distinguished British ancestor. The researches of American students of genealogy have extended over a wide area, and throw a great deal of light on the origin of families now settled in this part of Canada. A few notes in regard to some of these families cannot fail to be of interest. The Simonds family is as old as any in New Brunswick of British origin, James Simonds having taken up his residence at St John in 1762. He came from Newburyport, Mass. The first member of the family to arrive in Massachusetts was Samuel Symonds, who settled at Ipswich. He was born in 1595 and was a resident of the county of Essex before his emigration. The Symonds family seems to have come originally from Croft, in Lancashire, and Stratton, in Staffordshire. The Chandlers who came to New Brunswick were Loyalists and most of them had been residents of New England. The first Chandler who arrived in America appears to have been; William Chandler, of Roxbury, Mass., who came in 1637 with his wife Hannah and several children. John Chandler, a grandson of the emigrant, moved to Wor cester, Mass., and was appointed first chief justice of the court of common pleas. His grandson, Col. John Chandler, a leading Loyalist, was one of those Massachusetts gentlemen who accompanied the royal army to Halifax in 1776. Only one Loyalist of the name of Sears came to New Brunswick, Thatcher, who was the second son of Nathaniel Sears, of Norwalk, Connecticut. Thatcher Sears was a grantee of St John, and died here in 1819, aged 67. The first one of the Sears family to come to America was Richard Sears, of Yarmouth, Mass., who died in 1676. He was born in Holland, and was the son of John Burchier Sears, by his wife Marie L., daughter of Philippe Van Egmonde, of Amsterdam. John Burchier Sears was the grandson of Richard Sayers or Sears, who was born in Colchester, England, in 1508, and was obliged to fly to Holland on account of his religious opinions. John Bourchier Sayers, the son of Richard, married Elizabeth, daughter of the great Admiral, Sir John Hawkins of the Spanish armada times, so that the Sears family of New Brunswick are descended in the female line from that redoubtable warrior of the sea. The Uphams, another Loyalist family, which came to this country in 1783, were descended from John Upham, a native of England, it is supposed of Somersetshire, who settled in Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1635. Joshua Upham, the sixth in descent from the Weymouth settler, was a prominent Loyalist, a lieutenant-colonel in the King’s American Dragoons, and one of the first judges of the Supreme Court of New Brunswick. Mr. C. W. Weldon of St. John is his grandson.