1677, 1689. Felt

Outline

1. George Felt (1610?–1693) m. Elizabeth Wilkinson (ca. 1615–1694); Charlestown, Mass.; Falmouth, Me.; Malden, Mass.
2. George Felt (bef. 1640–1676) m. 1662 Philippa Andrews (ca. 1636–1709); Falmouth, Me.
3. Mary Felt (ca. 1668–1753) m. 1689 Josiah Wood (ca. 1658–1728); Rowley, Concord, Mendon, Mass.; Enfield, Somers, Conn.

Sources

John E. Morris, The Felt Genealogy: A Record of the Descendants of George Felt of Casco Bay (Hartford, Conn.: Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., 1893), is the basic published source. It is sometimes claimed that the immigrant George was the son of William Felce, baptized on 28 February 1609/10 at Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, and reported absent from a muster of the manor of Leighton on 29 May 1634. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633, 3 vols. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), 1:663, cites Charles Thornton Libby, Sybil Noyes, and Walter Goodwin Davis, Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire (1929–38; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1979), 228, for this information, but adds that it does not prove the immigrant’s origin.

The research was originally performed by Charles E. Banks, who mentions additional circumstantial evidence that is not described by Libby, Noyes, and Davis. Banks argues that the surname, in every spelling, is commonly found only in Bedfordshire or among London families believed to originate in that county. He adds that Woburn, Massachusetts, was named for a parish three miles away from Leighton, and claims that John Sears, one of the early settlers of the Massachusetts town, had originated in Leighton: Felt Family in England, Jan. 1928, bound with Alfred L. Holman, A Register of the Ancestors of Dorr Eugene Felt and Agnes (McNulty) Felt (Chicago: Privately printed, 1921), in DAR Library. Anderson notices two contemporary depositions of George Felt that express an age, and argues that the more reliable of the two suggests a birth date of about 1614 (Great Migration Begins, 1:662-4). Although there has been no evident effort to extend or refute Banks, for the time being we agree that his identification of the immigrant with George Felce has not been fully documented.

Related surnames

3355, 3379. Andrews · 6705, 6757. Wilkinson · 211, 419. Wood