1453. Flint

Outline

1. (poss.) James Flint (d. ca. 1590) m. ____; Matlock, Derbyshire, Eng.
2. Thomas Flint (d. 1623) m. Dorothy Wood (d. aft. 1623); Matlock, Derbyshire, Eng.
3. Thomas Flint (ca. 1603–1653) m. Abigail ____ (ca. 1607–1689); Concord, Mass.
4. Col. John Flint (d. 1686) m. 1667 Mary Oakes (d. 1690); Concord, Mass.
5. Mary Flint (1680–1748) m. 1702 Dea. Timothy Green (1679–1757); Concord, Boston, Mass.; New London, Conn.

Sources

An English origin for this family was proposed by J. Henry Lea, Genealogical Gleanings Among the English Archives, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 56 (1902): 308-18. On the American family, the most comprehensive work I have seen is Edward F. Flint Jr. and Gwendolyn S. Flint, Flint Family History of the Adventuresome Seven, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1984). Much of this is comprised of coarsely organized material from secondary sources of varying quality. Several details can be readily confirmed by reference to Concord, Massachusetts Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1635–1850 (Concord: town, n. d.).

Lea identifies the mother of the immigrants Thomas and Rev. Henry Flint with one Wood family, from Thomas’s reference to my uncle William Wood, of Concord, in his will (pp. 312-3). This document is now printed in Robert H. Rodgers, Middlesex County in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: Records of Probate and Administration, October 1649–December 1660 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1999), 127-8. Dorothy was the name of the elder Thomas’s wife (p. 315), and Dorothy Wood and William Wood each receive a sheep in the will of William Wood the elder of Matlock, made in 1603. However, the phrase immediately following these bequests had enough significance, or obscurity, that Lea decided to quote it:

And my will is that the child’s pt w^ch was left unto the sd George Wood & Willm Wood by their father George Wood, etc. (p. 317)

Lea does not provide further commentary on the wills, but if his placement of Dorothy is correct and William was the son of a George Wood who died before 1603, then Dorothy should be placed as the daughter of the same George. However, Lea did not produce the will or administration of any George Wood, and the Great Migration Study Project, though it allows that Rev. Henry and Thomas originated at Matlock, does not embrace this identification of their parents, let alone their maternal grandfather: Robert Charles Anderson, George F. Sanborn Jr., and Melinde Lutz Sanborn, The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634–1635, 7 vols. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1999–2011), 2:534, 537.

Related surnames

363, 2911. Green · 2907. Oakes

No further information on the Wood family is available at this time.