EDWARD FULLER

ORIGIN: Leiden, Holland

MIGRATION: 1620 on Mayflower

FIRST RESIDENCE: Plymouth

ESTATE: In the 1623 Plymouth division of land Samuel Fuller Junior received three acres as a passenger on the Mayflower [PCR 12:4]. (This allocation would be for himself, and for his mother and father who died at Plymouth during the first winter.)

BIRTH: Baptized Redenhall, Norfolk, 4 September 1575, son of Robert Fuller [NEHGR 55:192]. DEATH: Plymouth shortly after 11 January 1620/1 [Bradford 446].

MARRIAGE: By about 1605 ____ ; she d. Plymouth shortly after 11 January 1620/1 [Bradford 446].

CHILDREN:

1. MATTHEW, b. say 1605; m. by about 1630 Frances __ [TAG 61:198-99; MF 4:5-6]. (Although he wrote before the demonstration that Matthew was son of Edward, Paul Prindle prepared an excellent account of Matthew Fuller and his family [Ancestry of Elizabeth Barrett Gillespie ... (n.p. 1976), pp. 157-62].)
2. SAMUEL, b. about 1608; as "Samuell Fuller Junior" he is the third person in the eighth company (and in the household of his uncle Samuel Fuller) in the 1627 Plymouth division of cattle [PCR 12: 11]; "Sammell Fowller" appears in the "1633" list of Plymouth freemen, just ahead of those admitted on 1 January 1634/5 [PCR 1:4]; assessed 9s. in the Plymouth tax list of 27 March 1634 [PCR 1 :28]; m. Scituate 8 April 1635 Jane Lothrop, daughter of Rev. JOHN LOTHROP {1635, Scituate} [NEHGR 9:286].

ASSOCIATIONS: Brother of SAMUEL FULLER of Leiden and Plymouth.

COMMENTS: The evidence that Edward Fuller resided in Leiden prior to coming to New England was published in 1985 by Jeremy D. Bangs [MQ 51:58, citing "R.A. 79, L, folio 172 verso"].

In his list of passengers on the Mayflower Bradford included "Edward Fuller and his wife, and Samuel their son" [Bradford 442]. In the accounting of the Mayflower families made in 1651, Bradford reported that "Edward Fuller and his wife died soon after they came ashore, but their son Samuel is living and married and hath four children or more" [Bradford 446].

The question of the paternity of Matthew Fuller was examined exhaustively by Bruce C. MacGunnigle, Robert M. Sherman and Robert S. Wakefield in 1986, and they came to the conclusion that Matthew was a son of EDWARD FULLER [TAG 61:194-99]. They also noted that the evidence connecting EDWARD FULLER and SAMUEL FULLER to Robert Fuller of Redenhall, Norfolk, is not so strong as might be desired, leaving open the possibility that future research might lead to a different ancestry for the two brothers [TAG 61:194]. Extensive data on the Fullers of Redenhall and vicinity were published in 1901 by Francis H. Fuller [NEHGR 55:192-96, 410-16].

In his third volume treating early settlers on the Penobscot, Philip Howard Gray sets forth a completely new structure for the family of Edward Fuller, including children not previously suspected [Penobscot Pioneers, Volume 3 (Camden, Maine, 1993), pp. 62-66]. Gray employs a style of logic and argumentation not normally found in the genealogical literature, and his conclusions are not adopted here.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE: Bruce C. MacGunnigle has published the definitive treatment of Edward Fuller and his descendants in the fourth volume of the Five Generations Project of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633

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