Surname Saturday ~ SIMMONS of Duxbury, Massachusetts

SIMMONS / SYMONS / SIMONSON / SYMONDS

Moses Simmons or Moyses Simonson, my 9^th great grandfather, came to the Plymouth Colony as a young teenager on November 19, 1621 from Leyden, Holland in the second boat of Pilgrims on the ship Fortune.  He received a grant of land along with Philip Delano, who also arrived with him from Leyden.  He was made a freeman in 1633.  Sometime about 1635 he married his wife Sarah.  Her maiden name is still unknown.  They had seven children.

Moses signed his name with a mark, meaning he was functionally illiterate. He was made the Duxbury town surveyor of highways in 1657 and 1662, and surveyor of highways for Scituate in 1675. He was described as a yeoman, which means he was a farmer.  He has many land transactions in the Plymouth County records, and he deeded all his lands to his children before his death.  In his will he left only money to his children.  The inventory of his estate included no land [Plymouth Probate Records Volume 1, 107]

Moses’s oldest child, Rebecca, is my 8^th great grandmother. She married John Soule, son of Mayflower passenger George Soule.  Her daughter, Rebecca Soule, married Edmund Weston, and had a son, Nathan Weston who married Desire Standish, the granddaughter of two Mayflower passengers – Capt. Myles Standish and Edward Doty.

John Simmons, founder of Simmons Female College in 1899, where my daughter received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Some Simmons resources:

History of the Simmons Family from Moses Simmons, by Lorenzo Albert Simmons, 1930 (available at Ancestry.com)

The Ancestry of John Simmons Founder of Simmons College, by Henry Sherburne Rowe, 1933

Records of the Colony of New Plymouth In New England, edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, 1855

My Simmons Genealogy:

Generation 1:  Moses Simmons, born about 1605 in Leyden, Holland and died 15 September 1691 in Duxbury, Massachusetts; married about 1632 to Sarah Unknown.  Seven children.

Generation 2:  Rebecca Simmons, died before 1678 in Duxbury; married about 1654 in Duxbury to John Soule, son of George Soule and Mary Beckett.  He was born about 1632 in Plymouth and died before 14 November 1707 in Duxbury. Nine children.

Generation 3:  Rebecca Soule m. Edmund Weston

Generation 4:  Nathan Weston m. Desire Standish

Generation 5:  Nathan Weston m. Hannah Everson

Generation 6:  Zadoc Weston m. Mary Clements

Generation 7:  Matilda Weston m. Joseph Edwin Healy

Generation 8:  Mary Etta Healey m. Peter Hoogerzeil

Generation 9: Florence Etta Hoogerzeil m. Arthur Treadwell Hitchings

Generation 10: Gertrude Matilda Hitchings m. Stanley Elmer Allen (my grandparents)

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, “Surname Saturday ~ SIMMONS of Duxbury, Massachusetts”, Nutfield Genealogy, posted October 13, 2018, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/10/surname-saturday-simmons-of-duxbury.html: accessed [access date]).