2831. Gawkroger alias Platts

Outline

1. John Gawkroger (d. ca. 1505) m. Katherine ____ (d. aft. 1487); Halifax, Yorks., Eng.
2. Richard Gawkroger (d. ca. 1509) m. Margaret ____; Halifax, Yorks, Eng.
3. Richard Gawkroger (d. ca. 1544) m. ____ Field; Halifax, Yorks, Eng.
4. Richard Gawkroger alias Platts (bef. 1508–1570) m. (1) Isabella ____ (d. 1560); Halifax, Yorks., Eng.
5. James Gawkroger alias Platts (ca. 1540–1592) m. 1570 Jenet Fairbanks (b. 1552); Halifax, Yorks., Eng.
6. Abram Gawkroger (1574–1625) m. (2) 1604 Martha Riley (1580–1627); Halifax, Yorks, Eng.
7. Mary Gawkroger (1613–aft. 1678) m. 1629 John Prescott (ca. 1604–1681); Halifax, Yorks, Eng.; Watertown, Lancaster, Mass.

Sources

In an early formal description of this family, Almira Larkin White, Genealogy of the Ancestors and Descendants of John White of Wenham and Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1547–1909, 4 vols. (Haverhill, Mass.: Chase Brothers, 1900–9), 4:161-86, identified Mary Gawkroger as the one baptized in 1607, daughter of James and Martha (Ainsworth) Gawkroger. The claim was repeated in Almira Larkin White, comp. and ed., Ancestry of John Barber White and of His Descendants (Kansas City, Mo.: John Barber White, 1913), 130-1.

By 1964, it was noticed that this baptism was not the best fit for the deposition of 1678 in which Mary Prescott gave her age as 66 years: Frances Davis McTeer and Frederick C. Warner, comp., Three John Prescotts of Lancaster, Massachusetts, Detroit Society for Genealogical Research Magazine 28 (1964/5): 95-9, 145-50, at 95; Mary Lovering Holman, Ages from Depositions in Middlesex County, Mass., 1675–1695, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 85 (1931): 453-5, at 455. This evidently prompted an adjustment by Clarence A. Torrey and F. L. W. [probably Frederick Lewis Weis], Gawkroger–Platts, unpublished MS, n. d.; FHL microfilm 1,017,050, item 8, to the lineage shown here. Abram is James’s older brother. An early, tentaive version of this proposal was incorporated into Mary Lovering Holman, Ancestry of Colonel John Stevens Harringon and His Wife Frances Helen Miller, 2 vols. (Concord, N. H.: Rumford Press, 1948–52), 1:61, but without a detailed explanation of the chronological justification.

It is believed that the wife of the second Richard was a daughter of Thomas Field of Hessilhurst, who left a moiety of Hessilhurst to Richard Gawkroger in his will in 1529. At Richard’s death in 1579, the moiety passed to his brother James (White, Ancestry of John Barber White, 129).

Related surnames

1683, 11325. Fairbanks · 1415. Prescott · 5663. Riley

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