James Bridgman, Hartford Founder

Compiled by Timothy Lester Jacobs, SDFH Genealogist

JAMES¹ BRIDGMAN, HARTFORD FOUNDER was born abt. 1618 in England, and died 17 Mar 1675/76 in Northampton, MA. He married SARAH LYMAN abt. 1642 in Hartford, CT, daughter of RICHARD LYMAN and SARAH ______. She was baptized 08 Feb 1619/20 in High Ongar, Essex, England, and died 31 Aug 1668 in Northampton, MA.

The ancestry, origin, and when and where to in the American colonies James Bridgman, a carpenter, is not known. It is unknown when he arrived in Hartford, but held land in Hartford in 1640. Although a listing of his properties is not to be found in the Hartford land inventory of 1639/40, a note from the secretaries’ records, recorded in the original distribution of the lands in Hartford, states that he held: three acres on which his dwelling house stood located on South side of the highway leading from George Steele’s to the South Meadow, which property he had acquired from Nathaniel Ward that Ward had bought of Hartford founder Fulke Davis, who had left town prior to the land inventory.

In 1643 James Bridgman removed to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he took the Oath of Fidelity in 1648. He remained in Springfield until 1654, when he removed to Northampton, Massachusetts where he died March 1675/6.

Genealogy: “Genealogy of the Bridgman Family: Descendants of James Bridgman”, Burt N. and Joseph C. Bridgman, Hyde Park, MA, 1894 (as is the case with many of the genealogies of this period, few sources are cited with the exception of probate and land records, and which only follows male descendants of the line.)