5797, 5861. Collier

Outline

1. William Collier (ca. 1583–bef. 1671) m. 1611 Jane (Yates) Clarke (1587–aft. 1666); Southwark, Surrey, England; Plymouth, Duxbury, Mass.
2. Sarah Collier (1616–1691) m. 1634 Love Brewster (ca. 1611–bef. 1651); Plymouth, Duxbury, Mass.

Sources

For many years the standard works on this family were Robert S. Wakefield, The Children of William Collier, American Genealogist 49 (1973): 215-6, and Robert S. Wakefield, More on the Children of William Collier, American Genealogist 51 (1974): 58. Wakefield’s results are now expanded by William E. Cole, Jane Clarke: A Strong Woman: The English Origins of William Collier’s Wife, Mayflower Descendant 69 (2021): 45-60. A companion article by the same author, The English Origins of Job, John, Daniel, and Ruth Cole, Mayflower Descendant 69 (2021): 30-44, gives confirmation that Ruth, wife of Daniel, was also a child of this family. This claim had been supported by Robert Charles Anderson, The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony, 1620–1633 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004), 129, 131, based on a 1659 deed in which William named Daniel as a son-in-law.

Jane Collier entered a petition in 1653 in behalf of her grandchild the wife of the said Nathaniel Warren (quoted in Anderson, Pilgrim Migration, 131). Nathaniel was known to have married one Sarah Walker in 1645. Prior to Cole, it had been proposed that Jane was a widow prior to 1611, and that Sarah could be the daughter of a daughter of Jane and her first husband. Only one infant of the correct name could be placed in the same parish, St. Olave: a daughter of William Walker, draper, baptized 10 November 1622 (John Insley Coddington, Sarah Walker, Wife of Nathaniel Warren, American Genealogist 51 [1974]: 92-3). However, Cole now shows that Jane had first married Thomas Clarke in 1603, and that the only daughter from that marriage who might have borne issue was Joyce, who was still underage and single in 1625/6 (pp. 48, 51-2). The infant baptized in 1622 cannot have been Jane’s grandchild. An alternative proposal—that Sarah was Joyce’s daughter, born later than 1625/6—now appears in William E. Cole and Nicola Waddington, Who Is Sarah Walker? New Findings of the Wife of Plymouth Colony’s Nathaniel Warren, Mayflower Descendant 71 (2023): 27-33.

Related surnames

1449, 1465. Brewster · 11595, 11723. Yates