Bridger Family
The earliest location associated with the Bridger family is the town of Godalming, a small village on the River Wye in Surrey County, England, about 40 miles southwest of London. The Godalming Museum holds a collection of local history notes written by town resident Percy Woods (1842-1922) about Godalming and the surrounding area going back 500 years. His notebooks were bound, possibly after his death, into 59 volumes. None of the material is available online or at any other archive. One of Woods’s notes mentions a William Bridger in 1369.(Reference 1)
Henry Brygger
The earliest documented ancestor of Joseph Bridger is Henry Brygger of Godalming, He was probably born around 1480 and died between 23 Oct and 15 Dec 1521. His will shows that he owned several properties that were distributed to his six children. The will’s mention of a “Dy house” suggests that he was associated with the cloth-making industry that prospered in Godalming from around 1300 to the mid-1600s (Reference 2). Historian John S. Lee states:
Clothiers were the entrepreneurs at the heart of the cloth trade which became England’s leading industry in the late Middle Ages. No other industry created more employment or generated more wealth. As many as 1 in 7 of the country’s workforce were probably making cloth and 1 in 4 households were involved in spinning. (Reference 3)
Henry asked to be buried at the parish church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Godalming. His wife’s name is unknown. (Reference 4)
Richard Brygger
Henry’s son Richard was born in Godalming probably by 1510. By 1547 he married Margery Elliott, the daughter of John Elliott and Cecily Peto of Godalming. Richard is on the tax rolls for 1545 and 1551. A document created in 1565 describing bridges in the area lists “Richard Brydger” as a landowner. He signed a letter dated 21 May 1566 as “Rychard Brydgere.” He died intestate and was buried 10 Feb 1593 at the parish church.
In her will dated 8 Oct 1596 and probated in 1602, Margery spelled her last name as “Bridger” and named her four children.
Surrey Muster
Many Bridger men were listed in the Surrey Musters in the years 1558, 1573, 1584, and 1588 as gunners, bow men, and bill men to defend Surrey if necessary:
- John Bridger of Godalming
- Rychard Bridger of Homewood
- Lawrence Bridger of Guildford
- Nycholas Bridger of Eshing
- Rychard Bridger of Dorking
- Richard Bridger of Betchewoorth
- Richarde Bridger of Guildford
- Henry Bridger of Godalming
- John Bridger of Chiddingfold
- John Bridger of Hambledon
- George Bridger of Godalming
Lawrence Bridger
Richard and Margery’s son Lawrence was born in Godalming around 1550. He entered Magdalen College in Oxford in 1568 and received his B.A. in Oct 1570 and his M.A. on 21 Jun 1574.
Within a few years he became the Rector of the parish church of St. John the Evangelist in the village of Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, 130 miles from Godalming. He was invested with the office by Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle on 11 Oct 1577. He married his first wife, Gillian Tanner in Ockham, Surrey, on 13 Jan 1582. They had one son, Samuel. Lawrence had nine other children by two other wives. He died between 24 Sep 1630 and 30 Jun 1631 and was buried at his church.
Samual Bridger & Mary Purchase (Joseph’s parents)
Lawrence and Gillian’s son Samuel was born in 1584. He also attended Magdalen College in Oxford. He married Mary Purchase on 20 Jun 1622. They lived at their home Woodmancote in the parish of Dursley, Gloucestershire, 5 miles from Slimbridge. They had eight children.
Samuel was the Auditor to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral (Reference 5).
During the First English Civil War the cathedral sustained minor damage. Samuel likely witnessed the Siege of Gloucester in 1643. Parliament abolished the Dean and Chapter in 1649.
Samuel Bridger died on 31 Jul 1650 and was interred in the Lady Chapel at Gloucester Cathedral with the epitaph:
Here lyes the body of Samuel Bridger, gent, who
Departed this life upon the 21st day of July, An. 1650
Receiver of this College Rents, he paid,
His Debt to Nature, and beneath he’s laid
To rest until his Summons to remove
At the last Audit to the Choir above. (Reference 6)
Their son Joseph Bridger immigrated to Virginia after his father’s death.
John Bridger
In 1587, John Bridger was one of 117 settlers who arrived on Roanoke Island to establish a permanent English settlement in present-day Dare County, North Carolina. Three years later when a supply ship returned, the settlement was abandoned and came to be known as the Lost Colony. We do not yet know if John Bridger was related to Joseph Bridger.
Elliott Family
Margery Elliott
Joseph Bridger’s great-grandmother was Margery Elliott. (The family name is also spelled Eliot/Eliott/Elliot/Ellyott/Elyott/Elyot in some records.) The Elliotts were a prominent family in Godalming and the county of Surrey. Margery’s great-great-grandfather was Thomas Elyot (1430-1477) of Green Place in Wonersh (Reference 7). Green Place is opposite the Wonersh Church where Thomas Elyot and his son Henry Elyot (father of 23 children) are buried and memorialized with brass plates in the chancel (Reference 8). Sometime before 1553, either King Henry VIII or King Edward VI granted Laurence Eliot of Busbridge the right to establish a parochial chapel named Old Mynster in Busbridge. The building no longer exists. (Reference 9)
Lawrence Elliott, the son of Margery Elliott’s brother Lawrence Elliott, was aboard Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind that sailed around the world from 1577 to 1580. He was identified as a botanist. Although his name does not appear in any written accounts of the voyage, he did testify in a deposition signed by 49 members of Drake’s company on 8 Nov 1580. (References 10 and 11)
An Elliott family pedigree chart is here.
Elliott / Bridger Connection
According to the pedigree chart in Brayton’s book, Joseph Bridger was connected to the Elliott family through both his mother and father.
On Joseph’s father’s side: The elder Laurence Elliott (1519-1582) was the brother of Joseph’s great-grandmother Margery Elliott. The elder Laurence was Joseph’s great-grand uncle, and the younger Laurence was Joseph’s cousin of some degree.
On Joseph’s mother’s side: The elder Laurence was Joseph’s great-great-grandfather, and the younger Laurence was Joseph’s great-great uncle.
There may be another connection between Joseph Bridger and Sir Francis Drake. If the genealogy is correct, Drake’s brother Richard Drake (1535-1603) had a grandson Richard Drake (1611-1689) who immigrated to Virginia in the 1600s. That Richard Drake’s great-great-granddaughter Rebecca Chloe Drake, one of Sir Francis Drake’s distant nieces, married Benjamin Bridger in 1774.
References
- Photocopies of some of the Woods Collection notes are here. Woods used regnal years for dates.
- Henry’s grandson Richard Bridger was the executor of a will probated in 1595 that identified Richard as a “clothier” (cloth-maker).
- Lee, John S. The Medieval Clothier. Suffolk: Boydell Press. 2018.
- Brayton, John A. Colonial Families of Surry and Isle of Wight Counties, Virginia, Volume 10. Bridger of Godalming, Surrey; Slimbridge, Gloucestershire; and Virginia. 2009. Pages 6-8.
- Ibid, 16-22.
- Rudder, Samuel. A New History of Gloucestershire. 1779.
- Brayton, 24-36.
- Rev. Owen Manning and William Bray. The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, Volume 1. London. 1804. Pages 617-622.
- Ibid. P 634-635.
- On page 618 of The History of the County of Surrey, vol. 1, author Rev. Owen Manning states that the elder Lawrence Elliott (1519-1582) was on the voyage. If that birth year is correct, he would have been 58 years old when the ship set sail in 1577. Michael Turner of the Drake Exploration Society in England has stated (March 22, 2021 email): “Drake would not have taken a 58-year-old on the world voyage. One man was over 50 on the voyage to the West Indies in 1570-73; all the others were in their twenties and thirties.” It is more likely that his son Lawrence Elliott was on board. Manning says the son was baptized on 16 Jun 1559, based on information from a Rev. Edward Eliot. Brayton, page 32, footnote 97, says source is “GodalmingPR, p. vi” but there is no “16 Jun 1559” date on p. vi. If born in 1559, the younger Lawrence would have been 18 years old when the voyage departed on 15 December 1577. If his birth year was circa 1550, as some suggest, he would have been 28 years old upon departure.
- Kenneth D. Shultz wrote an historical fiction book titled Drake’s Botanist published in 2022 based on Lawrence Elyot’s adventure.
