RESEARCH SURPRISES
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Researching the Bishop and Cummings Family Lines
From the time I could reason, I was told that our relatives had come to America seven years after the Mayflower. And when Mom and I started our research, that’s what we went with. Have a close look at the two ship record facsimiles pictured here.
Acquired by Mom somewhere along the way, the first indicates the presence of a Bishop passenger on the Abigail arriving to Salem in 1628 and the second indicates a Cummings passenger on the Ambrose arriving in 1630.
Mom and I never questioned the accuracy of these documents. They coincided with the lineages that our distant Bishop cousin, Bud Harvey, had given us in the mid 1970’s. And when I recently took up the research again, I found that they matched up with current historical findings, such as this Winthrop Fleet document, which shows the Ambrose as the second ship to arrive as part of Winthrop’s Fleet in 1630. And further records tell of the Abigail’s arrival two years earlier, carrying a small group of passengers whose mission was to prepare the way for the Winthrop Fleet that would bring over 1000 Pilgrims to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
So it all made wonderfully perfect sense:
Our Bishop ancestor was an early scout on the Abigail for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which our Cummings ancestor would join on the Ambrose two years later. Mom would have liked that.
Only one problem: I couldn’t find a Bishop or a Cummings on the passenger lists for either of these two ships – lists now readily available online. Nor could I find them on any of the other ten ships in the Winthrop Fleet. Mom, wouldn’t have liked that. How could we have been so wrong? I wondered if our ancestors were perhaps crew, indentured servants or labourers, not considered significant enough to be listed. And so for a while I went with “workers” – a badge of honour for me, the family socialist. But how then did Mom come by the Abigail and Ambrose ship records with their names, shown above? I never thought to ask her and now, of course, I can’t.
But then something uncanny happened. And even though Bernice is not physically here, I have no doubt that she had a hand in it!
Here’s what went down:
Out of curiosity and an obsessive need for balance, I went looking for more information about Lola’s father, Leroy, and the entire Bishop ancestry, to balance the wealth of information we had about the Cummings – Lola’s maternal family. And I especially wanted to know why the Bishops had left New England for New York, where Leroy was born, and why they then moved to Minnesota.
So. . . I googled him and was immediately directed to a resource that would change everything:
FamilySearch.org All I had to do was enter Mom’s name for mountains of details to come flooding in about both the Bishop and Cummings lines going back centuries. More importantly I quickly learned why I hadn’t been able to find the Bishop or Cummings names on the passenger lists. They weren’t on them. Nor were they on any of the other 10 ships in the Winthrop Fleet.
But they did arrive during colonials times – just not when (and in Bishop’s case where) we thought.
Our first Cummings ancestor, Isaac, didn’t set foot in the New World until 15 years after the Mayflower. He arrived in 1635, five years after Winthrop’s Fleet. And even though he was not among those first colonists, he was very much a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony experience, serving as a church deacon, a constable and a grand juryman in several of the colonial townships. He’d inherited substantially from his father and was able to purchase numerous properties, the last of which was in Topsfield – where his grandson would marry the niece of Mary Towne Easty (among the last victims of the Salem Witch Trials) and his great grandson, Joseph, would marry Mary’s, granddaughter, Abigail.
This would have been a stunning surprise to Mom – assuming she doesn’t already
know and isn’t laughing with glee, as she nudges me towards these discoveries.
We’d only ever known that Mary’s granddaughter had married into the Cummings line
years after her death. How very close the families actually were will be explored
in the story devoted to Mary Towne Easty and the Trials.
As for the Bishops, well they were never even in New England – not our Bishops, anyway. Our first Bishop – Col. John Bishop – settled in the Jamestown Colony of Virginia in 1638, some 30 years after its initial founding, with a land grant from the British Crown to establish a tobacco plantation. He also served several times in the House of Burgesses – the first elected representative legislature in British America, and commanded the Jamestown militia.
We know that John II sold the plantation in 1664, but exactly what the next several generations of Bishops was up to is unclear – only that the next two generations would remained in Virginia and another would settle in North Carolina. Then in 1769 John Bishop VI moved to Long Island to marry Mary Reeve.
And their son John Armstrong Bishop would marry Elizabeth Smith, the granddaughter of Revolutionary War hero, Col. Josiah Smith.
Here’s Mom at Josiah’s grave in East Moriches, Long Island. (Photo to come.) Then three generations later – in 1863 – our grandmother Lola’s father – Leroy Smith Bishop – was born in Sag Harbour, Long Island, New York. We can only guess about the lives of all of these Bishops, including why Leroy’s parents moved from Sag Harbour to Minnesota in 1866 – we only know that they did. And only then does a clear story for the Bishops emerge when 16 year old Leroy meets 17 year old Estelle – the daughter of our Cummings ancestor, Methodist minister and great grandfather, Albert Webster.
But the most surprising discovery came from following Albert’s maternal line which
connects us directly to 10 surviving Mayflower passengers who settled the Plymouth Colony in 1620.
And, knowing Mom, while I’m sure she is delighted by our deeper connection to the Salem Witch Trials and our Jamestown ancestor’s ownership of a 17th century tobacco plantation (despite the implicit horrors of each) I’m quite sure that the Mayflower story is what she most had in mind when she led me to this site. So even though my initial intentions for “Our Family Stories” was only to tell our personal family stories beginning in the mid-19th century, Mom has clearly had other plans for me – for all of us. So if this is all getting too detailed and long-winded, you can blame her! I’m pretty sure I’m just the channel!
Anyway, here are the new and improved Bishop and Cummings Family Lines (fun stuff is in BOLD).
THE BISHOP FAMILY LINE
Thomas Bishop b. 1422
marries Hester Gunning in Dorset England.
Their son John Esquire Bishop 1444-1497
marries Isabella Agnes Burguille in Herefordshire, England
Their son Richard Bishop 1474-1526 marries
Elizabeth Ann Bullock in Stratton Strapless, Norfolk, England
Their son Robert Bishop 1500-1603 has 13 children with
Margarie Gray of Ipswich Suffolk, England. Their son
Sir Richard Bishop 1524-1625 has 14 children
with Lady Ann Dolabella Rippen of Suffolk, England
Their son Sir James Bishop 1540-1577 has 10 children
with Lady Mary Hudson in Linlithgow Scotland and their son
Sir William Bishop the Elder 1570-1634, Sheriff of Edinburgh,
marries Elizabeth Ramsay in Scotland and they have
Capt. John Bishop 1590-1656
who marries Elizabeth Booker in England.
He founds the 150 acre Swan’s Bay Plantation in 1638
in Charles City VA where he serves as Burgess 1644-53.
Their son, John Bishop II 1638-76 marries
Sarah Lawrence in Charles City, Virginia and
he sells the Swans Bay plantation in 1664.
Their son John Bishop III 1670-1716 marries
Sarah Harmon in 1690 in Charles City, VA,
Their son John Bishop IV born in 1691 has 16 children
with Mary Moss in Surry, VA, BCA. And their son
John Bishop V 1727-1795 has 9 children with
Rebecca Peebles of North Carolina. Their son
John Bishop VI b. 1749 has 7 children
with Mary Reeve in Long Island, Queens, NYC and their
son John Armstrong Bishop 1782-1860 has 10 children
with Elizabeth Smith – granddaughter of Col. Josiah Smith.
Their son Smith Bishop 1817-1866
marries Elizabeth Ann Howell and they have
Louis Smith Bishop 1840-1879 who marries
Emma Rebecca Turner in Sag Harbour, NYC and they have
Leroy Smith Bishop b. 1863 in Sag Harbour, who marries
Estelle Cummings in 1886 in Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Their daughter Lola is the last of this Bishop line.
. THE CUMMINGS FAMILY LINE
Cumming b. 1380 fathers
Lord Alexander Cumming 1404-1443 who
marries Janet Fraser – a descendant of British and
European royalty going back to the 1st century –
including, among others, Attila the Hun 🤣
Sir Thomas Cumming Esq. 1445-1506
m. Margaret G and they have
Alexander Cumming 1470 – 1550
who marries Lady Janet Brown. Their son
Thomas Cummings of Altyre 1520 – 1609
marries Janet Grant and they have
Sir John Cummings of Altyre 1540 – 1610
who marries Elizabeth Neepe. Their son
Sir John William Alexander Cummings 1565 – 1634
marries Lady Amy Greene and they have
Deacon Isaac Cummings Sr. 1601 – 1677 who
marries Anne Kinsely, in Mistily, Essex England in 1628
And they sail to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635
with son Deacon Isaac Cummings Jr. born 1633
who marries Mary Andrews in Topsfield. Their son
John Cummings b. 1666 marries Suzanah Towne in 1671
(Mary Towne Easty’s niece) and their son
Joseph Cummings 1689 – 1729
marries Abigail Easty 1692 – 1630
(Mary’s granddaughter) and their son
Daniel Cummings 1724 – 1812
marries Mary Williams and they have
Joseph Cummings 1751 – 1843
who marries Dolly Ingersoll and they have
Isaac Jennings Cummings 1794-1856 who marries
Lovina Caldwell 1801-1885 in Paris, Maine
(descendant of 12 Maylower passengers) & their son
Albert Webster Cummings 1829-1907
Methodist Minister and homeopathic doctor marries
Emaline Elizabeth Dean 1821-1911 in Forest City, Minnesota in 1860
They have only Estelle Elizabeth Cummings 1862-1951
who marries Leroy Smith Bishop – our Jamestown Descendant
in Sauk Center, Minnesota. Estelle is the last of this Cummings line.
SO THIS IS REALLY A WHOLE NEW STORY
And – from my point of view – a much more interesting one. For Lola’s birth no longer simply merges bloodlines from the same New England colony – as we so long believed. It merges instead bloodlines from three different colonies – the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth Colony and the Jamestown Colony – America’s first three surviving colonies.
What’s so fascinating about the merging of descendants from all three of these colonies is that they were each born out of uniquely different purposes and so consequently possessed very different values and mindsets. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by English emigrants seeking freedom from the religious and civic persecutions of the British Crown. The Jamestown Colony was founded by the Crown itself to establish an economic and political foothold in the New World. And the Plymouth Colony was founded by a mix of religious refugees and economic adventurers, whose forced cooperation to survive resulted in a particularly unique set of values.
Fast-forward 250 years . . .
. . . to a collision of these values and sensibilities when, in 1885, Lola’s parents, Estelle Cummings and Leroy Smith Bishop, married. And so it is perhaps of little wonder that their marriage was not an easy one and eventually failed. Estelle, was a descendant of New England Puritans – the daughter of a humble Methodist minister and a dedicated school teacher, both for whom service was everything. Leroy, in sharp contrast, was the son of a successful merchant and his socialite wife – descended from Virginia landed gentry, and New York “aristocracy” – for whom material wealth and social standing may have been everything,
The story of their marriage is one of my favourites to tell because of its dramatic complexity and the challenge of making sense of so many contradictory details. I’m also struck by the fact that while we have many individual portraits of the two of them spanning from youth to old age, we only have this one photo of the two of them together – sadly, but perhaps symbolically, marred.
Notice that the Cummings name dies out with Estelle’s marriage to Bishop and the Bishop name with their daughter – our grandmother – Lola when she marries Leonard. But the united bloodline is alive and well as follows:
Leroy and Estelle
had three children.
Twin boys Edwin and Albert
were born in 1887.
Edwin died tragically in 1892 and
Albert married but had no children.
So only their sister Lola
(our grandmother)
born in 1890
would carry on the line.
Lola had two children.
Harold born in 1920 and
Bernice born in 1922.
Harold married late in
life and had no children.
So only Bernice would
carry on the line with…
Don born in 1940,
Dick born in 1942, and
Dianne born in 1947.
Here below is Bernice with
Her 3-D’s in the early 1950’s.
Don and Dianne have proudly parented a multitude of feline and canine adoptees.
But only Dick has passed on this particular Bishop-Cummings bloodline
to his three daughters – Michelle, Kristine and Suzanne.
And all three of them of them have passed the line on to their combined seven children –
Emily, Andrew, Ryan, Matthew, Jake, Connor and Chloe.
So it is great fun to note that some ten generations after John Bishop and Isaac Cummings first set foot on American soil,
ONLY the following six humans have had the distinction of possessing and passing on this bloodline,
which unites all three original British colonies. And they are… DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!!
Lola
Bernice
Richard
Michelle
Kristine
Suzanne
OR SO WE THOUGHT!!!!
Talk about surprises. A whole new wing of our family has recently been revealed – Mom clearly busy at work on the other side AGAIN!
And all of our new cousins proudly possesses as well this fascinating bloodline which blends
the DNA of Massachusett Puritans, Mayflower Passengers and Jamestown Planters.
How we found each other will be revealed in Lola’s story.
Click here for an amusing romp into
The MAD MINDS of our
FIRST COLONIAL ANCESTORS
Or choose another story by returning to
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