Thomas Bliss, Sr., Hartford Founder

Compiled by Timothy Lester Jacobs, SDFH Genealogist

THOMAS¹ BLISS, HARTFORD FOUNDER was born abt. 1590 in England, and died bef. 14 Feb 1650/51 in Hartford, CT. He married MARGARET HULINS bef. 1618 in England. She was born abt. 1597 in England, and died 28 Aug 1684 in Springfield, MA.

The ancestry, origin, and when and to where Thomas Bliss, Sr. emigrated to the American colonies is unknown. He was in Hartford by 1638, for his house was already constructed by the time that he was noted as being one of the proprietors “by courtesie of the town” in 1639/40. For some unknown reason his property holdings were not recorded in the Original Distribution of Land, but one piece of it can be extrapolated from the holdings of others: he held six acres of upland in the Forty Acres acres abutting that of John Wilcox, George Hubbard, and Francis Andrews, which he sold to William Bloomfield. His home lot was approximately two roods on the east side of the road to John Barnard’s just north of his son Thomas’s lot, and at the division of the lands on the east side of the river in 1641 he was given six acres. On 4 March 1646 he was fined for being absent from military training.

The inventory of his estate was taken 14 February 1650/1.

Genealogy: “Genealogy of the Bliss Family in America”, Vol. 1 - 3, Aaron T. Bliss, Midland, MI, 1982 (While impressive in its scope, there being three thick volumes, this genealogy suffers from a lack of source citation).