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The Mayflower Fullers
Samuel was an educated and well-respected man. He was not only a surgeon (physician) to Plymouth Colony, but also apparently a man with some relgious learning, although not a minister himself. He was consulted in 1629 about the founding of Salem Church, and next year assisted also in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He continued to practice medicine until his death in 1633, and in his will he bequeathed to Roger Williams, who was soon to be minister of Salem Church, one of his books on "physic". Samuel left a son Samuel, from whom there are many Fuller descendants. Although I do not have descent from Samuel, Robert Charles Anderson tells us that apparently he made such an impression on the early settlers of Massachusetts Bay that several of them placed their children in his household, presumably for their social and educational improvement, and among these was an ancestor, Elizabeth Cole, daughter of Rice.
"Edward Fuller and his wife died soon after they came ashore" says Governor Bradford in his journal, however "their son Samuel is living and married and hath four children or more." Samuel, the son, was brought up by his Uncle Samuel, but when he came of age seems to have removed from central Plymouth to Barnstable and to have lived a quiet life there. However, he did mary Jane Lothrop, daughter of one of the first ministers of Plymouth, and sired several sons.
Edward also had an older son, Matthew Fuller, who, it appears, came over much later, because the first record for him in the colony is dated 26Oct1640, by which time he was already married and had several children. Matthew followed in his Uncle Samuel's footsteps as a surgeon, and he also had a military bent, serving as Capt. Miles Standish's lieutenant in 1654, and later as Captain of the Plymouth forces in his own right. During the period of King Philip's War, he served on the United Colonies Council of War, and also as Surgeon General of the colonial forces against the Indians.
I have descents from both of Edward's children, Samuel, and Captain Matthew, through 5th generation Mayflower descendant, Roger Fuller, of Hebron, Connecticut.
Most of the Mayflower lines are very thoroughly worked out by now, and the definitive and most up-to-date reference on the first generation of Plymouth colonists is Robert Charles Anderson, The Pilgrim Migration (NEHGS, 2004), while for those interested in learning whether the descend from one of the Plymouth Fullers, the two volumes of the Mayflower Families Through Five Generations series, published by The Mayflower Society (Volume 1: Francis Eaton, Samuel Fuller, and William White; and Volume 4: Edward Fuller) are the works to consult.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Barrett Robb on
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Hi Carldine,
It would be great if you could look up and photocopy pp62-66 of Volume 3, which contains the author's purported reconstruction of the family of the Mayflower immigrants, which was dismissed by Robert Charles Anderson as employing "a style of logic and argumentation not normally found in the genealogical literature, and his conclusions are not adopted here". As a student both of this family of Fullers and of genealogical argumentation, I am intensely curious as to what this is all about.
Ideally, you might scan and post those pages here, as I'm sure others who turn up eventually (when this site is more mature) may be interested. Otherwise, if you can only do photocopies, I would gladly compensate you for your expense. You can contact me otherwise, if necessary, through, my website.
BTW do you have the 1899 Register article on your "John Fuller of Ipswich, Mass., 1634". If not, I do and could send you a copy. How do you establish that he is the right John Fuller for your line?
John -
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Permalink Reply by Melissa Malin on
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Hello,
I am very interested in learning more about the Fuller lineage. The research my family has done thus far has shown a direct line to Samuel Fuller and Edward Fuller. Thank you for the information you have provided. It gives me more to research regarding my family name.
Melissa
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You're welcome, Melissa. If you know of any male cousins of your line surnamed Fuller, you could have them DNA tested and confirm your descent from the Mayflower Fuller line,as the FTDNA Fuller Surname project has accumulated a number of tested Fuller descendants of this patrilineage. Although DNA testing can't by itself prove that you descend specifically from one one or more specific Fullers, it can confirm that your test surrogate is cousins with several other tested males who have traced their lineage back to this family. I don't know how solid their various genealogies are, but if any are accepted members of the Mayflower Society, which has fairly rigorous genealogical criteria, it would strengthen the case for the others.
How do your Fuller lines run? My maternal grandmother was born a Fuller, and my mother's middle name was Fuller, but unfortunately my line "daughtered out", so I have no male Fuller cousins to encourage to test. If you'd like to learn more about DNA testing, you might want to check out my DNA page, and you can contact me directly by e-mail, through my pages.
John
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Hi John,
A few of my male uncle's have been DNA tested, would that suffice? They haven't done anything with the testing but maybe I can encourage them to at this point. My Grandfather was a bit of a womanizer (7 wives) with 3 of them resulting in offspring. The Fuller lines run through my maternal Grandfather, from our calculation and family research it would seem that Edward Fuller is my 11th Great Grandfather. His son Samuel is where our tree was ended, but I am still trying to make sure that information is correct because I understand that he had a brother Samuel so we may have the wrong line. There seem to be quite a few Samuels after that point too. There are only two male Fuller children from a deceased Uncle, unfortunately know one has any contact with them because my Uncle split from the family some time ago. I am not sure how the DNA testing works, I have two sons but they obviously don't carry the Fuller name. I will check out the links, thanks for the help.
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Unfortunately, Melissa, you need to test male Fuller descendants of your Fuller line to find out whether your Fullers belong to the Mayflower Fuller patrilineage. The principal tests for genealogical purposes are the ones which are run on the male Y-chromosome - passed down only in the male line, like the surname. There is, now, another kind of DNA testing called autosomal testing, which is run against the whole genome (all the other chromosomes) but it doesn't work well for very deep lineages. I would suggest that you try to track down those missing descendants of your deceased uncle...
...and get to work on your Fuller genealogy. There are naturally many Samuel Fuller descendants in the Mayflower line, but Samuel was a rather popular Puritan name, and Fuller is by no means uncommon either. Use birth & death certificates, and the census records to make sure that your Fuller line is solid back to 1850 (the first every name census), then look for the volumes of the Fuller Genealogy, compiled by William Hyslop Fuller, and see if you can't find a correspondence there. The Fuller Genealogy is quite a comprehensive work, but it is also full of errors, and quite inadequate by modern scholarly standards. However, with a little luck it should provide you with some guidance as to the places to research; then it's a matter of digging into the actual records of those places: vital records, probate, land, county court or town records, etc.
When I say, the "Fuller Genealogy", I refer to the title on the spine. There are four volumes of this work, published between 1908-1919, and the formal titles of each begin with Genealogy of Some Descendants of..., followed by a list of the Fuller patriarchs covered in each particular volume. I happen to own Volume 3, which covers the descendants of Edward's other son, Captain Matthew Fuller (from whom I also have a descent) along with four other, less well known Fuller patriarchs, as well as supplements to Volumes 1 and 2. You should be able to find these books in a reasonably good genealogical library collection, and since the books are in the public domain you can also access them by subscription to Ancestry.com's "Stories, Memories, and Histories" data base. Google Books also offers these - for a price.
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