TLC worked diligently on Carman history and published these from history
books. He held the same beliefs as many of his
contemporaries. It was only in about 1946 that it became
widely accepted that surnames were widely not used until the 14th
century. Contemporary researchers do not believe
there are any links to John Carman of Roxbury, but it is fun to think of
and
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
HSilvey's archives
From Prodigy
More from TLCarman -- this on the Middle Ages.
In the chapter on surnames in the above work, it is shown that John
Carman and John Seaman are recorded in the Domesday records of the County
of Surry (1085-86) as having held lordships in the same county in the
first year of the reign of King Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1042. This
seems to indicate that the John Carman and the John Seaman of 1085-86 were
the same as those of record in 1042. Neither of the names appear in the
Domesday records of any of the other countries. In 1096 we find a John
Seaman and a John Carman in thelist of "Sir Knyghtes Crusaders" of "the
First Holie War," and as neither name is found in the records of any
county but Surrey, we are justified in assumingthese asvdescendants of the
Carman and Seaman holding lordships in 1085-86 and 1042.
This brings us to the beginning of the twelfth century, and by the
middle of which we find both family names in the records of the adjoining
counties, Kent and Sussex. Both are in Battle Abbey charter, as the
quotations elsewhere given show, and in other contemporary rolls, and
records. Then we find both in the Cinque Ports records (and again
illustrations of the remarkable chain of coincidences in the histories of
the Carmans and the Seamans) - and in which we find a John and a Henry
Carman, and several John Seamans in the lists of the historic Cinque
Ports sea captains. At Seafort, County of Sussex, as has been
shown, a family of Seaman resided for three and a half centuries and many
of them of the daring mariners who laid the foundation of England's
pre-eminence as "Ruler of the Seas." p.4
In the thirteenth century the Carmans are found in the
Hertfordshire records. They are not in Kent, nor Sussex, nor Surrey. In
Sussex they, however, reappear in the fifteenth century. This line became
extinct a century later. In the thirteenth century we find the main or
parent line of Carmans in the second historic census of England in the
time of Edward the First - the Rotuli Hundredorum, or Hundred Rolls, A.D.
1273, and recorded as owners of deameanen (domains), manors, and
properties at Hemel Hempstead. Henry Carman is the recorded owner of
these proerties and according to the name records his wife was Matilda.
In the next of following centuries the Carmans are of record as holding
the same domains and manors at Hemel Hempstead. In the adjoining hundred
of Eitchin a branch of the historic Kingsley family acquired land about
the middle of the fourteenth century, and one of the descendants (William)
in the early part of the fifteenth century married Elizabeth Carman of
Hemel Hempstead. The Hemel Hempstead domains and
manors of 1275 descended from Henry and "Matilda, his wife," from
genertion to generation, from sire to son, and then in the fourteenth
century from Henry and Matilda, and 333 years from the cunsus record
of 1273,in the year 1606, an event occurred of pre-eminent interest in the
annals of the Carman family of this country.In this year 1606, as the
official record shows, there was born in Hemel Hempstead John Carman, the
Pilgrim father who came in (Note: there is a ? in the margin) the ship
"Lyon" in 1631, the Puritan ancestor of the American family of the name.
A year prior among those who came in the "Winthrop fleet" was a John
Seaman, a
Captain John Seaman of historic fame, as set forth in the history of the
Seaman family, and with this John Seaman of 1630 and John Carman of 1631
begins another series of remarkable conincidences-the American series, so
to speak. The county histories of various reference authorities named at
the close of this chapter contain more or less extended details of the
Carman lineage from Henry Carman of 1273 and on. He was ancestor of
Thomas Carman, born 1517, in Hemel Hempstead, and of the tenth generation
from Henry Carman, and eighteenth from John Carman of Domesday Book
(1095-96) and time of Edward the Confessor (1042). William, brother of
Thomas (born 1517), was also born in Hemel Hempsted, and both brothers
later on are of the formost of the leaders of the Puritan cause - among
the earliest of the "godly martyrs" who, regardless of cruel and fiendish
threats, stood forth bravely, eloquently and unflinchingly as champions
of human rights, and in consequence were burned at stake. William Carman
was the first of the two brothers subjected to such a revolting death in
1557, and "with God in his heart and a song of praise to God on High, this
saintly man met his end," says an old chronicle of the time(see
Bloomfield's "History of Norfolk" and other authorities elsewhere named).
A year later, says (p. 5) the same old chronicle, "on the 19th of May,
1556 were these three godly martyrs burned at one fire at Norwich, namely:
William Seaman of Mendlesham in Suffolk, Thomas Carman of Herts, and
Thomas Hudson of Aylesham." William Carman, the martyr of 1557, had two
sons and two daughters. Both sons died young and the line became
extinct,surviving in the female line and one of the daughters married a
Seaman of Norwich (of the line of Sir Peter Seaman, who at the close of
the seveteenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries was of much
prominence and wide influence and successively alderman, lord mayor, and
member of Palriament for Norwich, and a descendant of the William Seaman,
the "godly martyr" of 1558.
Thomas Carman, the martyr of 1558 (born 1517), had Thomas, born 1539, died
1548; John, born 1541; Henry, born 1547; and several daughters.
Of these, Henry, born 1547, and Henry, 1571, and he had Henry, born 1597,
who in 1620 was a passenger on the ship "Duty", bound for Virginia. He
is of record in the "Muster of the Liveing in Virginia 1623-4, Att. James
Gittye and the Plantation Thereof," and is in this record as twenty-three
years when he came in the "Duty", 1620, thus showing 1597 as the year of
his birth. Of him we speak more fully on another page.
...