John Smith “Bland”
Descent: Meghan Jane Leineweber ← Catherine Raye Lobb ← Patricia Jane Loomis ← Beulah Grahm ← Anna Frances Brown ← Isaac Horace Brown ← George Ellison Brown ← John Brown ← Isaiah Brown ← John Brown ← John Brown ← Sarah Barsham ← Anabel Smith “Bland” ← John Smith “Bland”
In brief
Born about 1585/1590. 1635: Came to America.
Family
Children
- Isabel Smith “Bland”b. c. 1612m. Francis Austinm. Thomas Leavittd. Abt. February 1698 [1699]
- Anabel Smith “Bland” · in this linem. Around 1634
Life story
A Watertown Grantee
John Smith, known as “Bland,” emigrated from Colchester, Essex, England, to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1635, where he was made a freeman the following year and steadily accumulated grants of farmland through the early 1640s, eventually holding a seventy-eight-acre farm along with several smaller parcels. Around 1641 he was likely among the six original colonists who settled Martha's Vineyard with Thomas Mayhew, buying additional land in Edgartown through the 1640s and 1660s. In his November 1663 will, John left his wife Johanna his houses, lands, and livestock, with twenty shillings apiece to his daughters Anabel and Isabel; his estate was appraised at over 355 pounds.
Sources (2)
- Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England 1634-1635, 6 vols. (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009), 6:391-394; digital images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2496/images/42521_b158317-00504 : accessed 21 August 2026).
- Robert Charles Anderson, “John Smith of Watertown, Massachusetts,” The American Genealogist 61 (January/April 1985): 18-31; image copy, American Ancestors, (https://www.americanancestors.org/DB283/i/12790/18/144273857 : accessed 24 August 2026).