To continue my look at outdoor spots my family enjoyed this socially distant summer, I now will talk about Appleton Farms in Ipswich and Hamilton, not too far from the Crane Estate. The Trustees website describes Appleton farm as the “gift of Colonel Francis R. Appleton, Jr. and his wife Joan, [and] one of the oldest continuously operating farms in the country, established in 1638 and maintained by nine generations of the Appleton family.”

During our two visits to Appleton Farm this summer, my family and I found three monuments (there are more) to members of the Appleton family, the first to the above Joan Egleston Appleton (1912-2006), and then monuments to Col. Appleton’s parents – Francis R. Appleton (1854-1929) and Fanny L. Appleton (1864-1958).[1]

The Trustees website provides a lengthy description of the Appleton Family Papers, with detail on several of the family members over the nine generations of ownership, back to Samuel Appleton, a native of Little Waldingfield, Suffolk, who arrived in Ipswich in 1636 with his wife Judith Everard, and their five children. Samuel Appleton has a royal descent from Henry I, King of England (who died in 1135), while his wife Judith has a royal descent from Robert I, King of France (who died in 923); Samuel and Judith are ancestors of President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Jane Means (Appleton) Pierce.[2]

Decent treatments of the first generation of the Appleton family in Massachusetts and their origins in England are contained in two mid-20th-century works by Walter Goodwin Davis: The Ancestry of Phoebe Tilton and The Ancestry of Mary Isaac c. 1549-1613, Wife of Thomas Appleton of Little Waldingfield, co. Suffolk and Mother of Samuel Appleton of Ipswich, Massachusetts.

My first “Summer Spots” post highlighted some Rhode Island connections to the Crane family of Ipswich, so I will do the same for the Appleton family. Through Francis Randall Appleton [Sr.]’s mother, this family descends from my ancestor Gov. Roger Williams, as well as religious “heretic” Anne Hutchinson (also of royal descent from King Edward I of England), an ancestor of the Bush presidents and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Six years ago, for our annual benefit dinner, I researched the ancestors of our speaker, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and discovered, among other things, that she descended from Rev. John Wheelwright, Anne’s brother-in-law, and I made a chart showing her kinship to Anne’s three presidential descendants. I have adjusted the chart below to include the last owners of Appleton Farms.

Click on image to expand it.

Concluded here.

Sources for the chart

In addition to the Appleton Family Papers: C.C. Child, Ancestors of Doris Kearns Goodwin; Marston Watson, Royal Families Volume Two, 1-5, 7-8, 16-17, 40-41, 120-21; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College … Vol. V., June 1793-September, 1805, 610-11 (marriages of Nicholas Phillips Randall [Yale 1803]); Early Marriages from Newspapers Published in Central New York, 56 (marriage of Nicholas P. Randall, and Sibil, dau. of Edward Dyer of Rutland, Vt.); Early Families of Rutland, Vermont, 120-21 (family of Edward Dyer); Descendants of Roger Williams Book III, 3-10, 17-18, 44, 135-36. Appleton ancestor Mary Greene (wife of Edward Dyer), was the daughter of William Greene and Mary Sayles, daughter of John Sayles and Mary Williams, daughter of Gov. Roger Williams and Mary Barnard. Mary (Greene) Dyer’s father William Greene was the son of John Greene and Anne Almy, daughter of William Almy and Audrey Barlow (this last of royal descent from King Henry II of England), ancestors of U.S. Presidents Harding, Nixon, and Carter (see Roberts, Ancestors of American Presidents, 346-47).

Notes

[1] These are monuments, not gravestones: the three family members named are buried, along with Col. Francis Randall Appleton, Jr., at Old South Cemetery in Ipswich.

[2] Gary Boyd Roberts, Ancestors of American Presidents, 2009 edition, 354-59.