Thomas Chandler

Our Andover ancestor Thomas Chandler was probably born in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, because that is where his older brother, 6-year-old William, was buried when Thomas was but 5, and that is where his family had been living for generations. He no doubt arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony with his parents and younger siblings as part of the Great Migration in the 1630s. The date was probably 1634 or 1635.

This was a close-knit family. Thomas's younger sister Hannah Chandler, 1630-1711 was the mother of Hannah Abbott, 1650-1741, who married Thomas's son John Chandler I, 1655-1721, her first cousin. This John's younger sister Sarah Chandler, 1661-1757 became the grandmother of the Samuel Phelps III, 1712-1795 who married John's granddaughter Priscilla Chandler, 1713-1778, Samuel's second cousin. Our Thomas's son John and his first-cousin wife had two sons, both of whom are are direct ancestors of ours, so that two of his great-grandchildren (Priscilla Chandler Phelps's son Joshua Phelps I, 1738-1798 and Lois Ballard, 1746-1836) were also married as second cousins. New England apparently had a very restricted gene pool.

Thomas, his siblings and half-siblings, his younger stepsiblings, and his wife were part of the reactive, nomadic Cavalier Generation. His parents, his stepfathers, and his two eldest stepsiblings were part of the idealistic, puritanical Righteous Generation. His children were part of the heroic, civic-minded Glorious Generation.