from Hall Ancestry by Charles Samuel Hall
John Robbins was the first of his family in Wethersfield and one of the first settlers in that town, the records showing a conveyance of land to him as early as 1638, and his election as Deputy to the General Court in 1643, and again in 1656, 1657, and 1659. Nothing is positively known as to either his parentage or the part of England from which he came. Some have thought that he was a son of John Robbins of Thedingworth, but there is nothing to show that John of Thedingworth had a son John; besides, the inscription on the gravestone of John of Thedingworth in the churchyard of the Parish of All Saints in that town, shows that he was born in 1607, and consequently could have been only thirteen years old at the time John of Wethersfield was born, assuming the latter to have been twenty-one when his daughter Mary was born, January 20, 1641. The marriage of the second John Robbins of Wethersfield with Mary Boreman suggests the possibility of his father having come from the neighborhood of Banbury, in Oxfordshire, where many of the name were living at the time he came to this country.
Mr. Robbins, in 1639, married Mary Welles, eldest daughter of Thomas Welles, Governor of the Colony. This marriage does not appear upon the records, which is not strange, occurring as it did so soon after the settlement of the town; but it is otherwise abundantly proven. Their son, John, Jr., in his will made in 1689, appoints as one of the guardians of his children the grandson of the Governor, the son of John and Sarah (Welles) Chester, whom he describes as "his loving cousin, Mr. John Chester, Jr." ; and one Blaynch Hunt, who died about 1644, in her will leaves bequests to "cossen Mary Robbins," and gives the disposal of her estate to "my uncle Welles," the inevitable conclusion from which is that Mary Robbins was the daughter of Thomas Welles, and that her son, John Robbins, Jr., as well as John Chester, Jr., was his grandson, and that the two were cousins.
The children of John and Mary (Welles) Robbins were:
Mary, born January 20, 1641-2, who, about 1662, married Hon. Eleazer Kimberly;
Hannah, born April 10, 1643, who married Deacon William Warner;
Comfort, born October 12, 1646, who married Theophilus Sherman;
John, our ancestor, born April 20, 1649, who married Mary Boreman;
Samuel, who died in November, 1659; and
Captain Joshua, who married Elizabeth, and died 1738-9.
Mrs. Mary Robbins died about the middle of September, 1659, a few months before her father; and her husband, June 27, 1660, leaving an estate valued at about five hundred and eighty pounds, which he distributed among his children. The record of the distribution of his estate says:
It is granted to Mr. Kimberly that is to match with Mary Robbins, that he shall keep the three younger children till they come of age, and educate them in writing and reading, and instruct them in Christian principles....
