Re: related to jacob minors in bermuda
-
In reply to:
Re: related to jacob minors in bermuda
tracy jordan 12/09/04
Richard Minors Higgs of Bermuda is an ancestor of ours. I suspect his mother was Dorothy Minors. I believe Jacob may have been Pequot from his photo.
! A History of The Higges, or Higgs Family of South Stoke, in the County of Oxford and of Thatcham, in the County of Berks and Their Descendants being also a record of one of the Yeoman Families of England by William Miller Higgs, F.S.G. London, Adlard & Son, Ltd. 1933 and copied at NEHGS Library in June 1997 by John Humphrey Walton -p.402-3 From the first colonizaton of the Bermudas, a branch of the Higgs family has been closely connected with the commercial, political and religious life of the islands of Hamilton (or Burmuda) 13 miles long, St. Georges, St. David, Somerset and Ireland. ( A small five acre island is called Higgs Island.) mainly in St. George’s. Some HIggs may have come as British troops in 1612 as well as on the earliest shipwrecked ship in 1609.
Richard Minors HIGGS, son of Jeremiah and Dorothy HIGGS, and grandson of Samuel HIGGS, also of St. George by Rebecca, his wife. BIRTH-
Why he was given the name of “MINORS” has not come to light. It may be that Jeremiah m. Dorothy MINORS. This is the name of an old Herefordshire family living at Treago, in England. The name MYNORS/ MINERS/ de MINERIIS is found on the Roll of Battle Abbey.
p.403- “He carried on a large shipping business at St. George’s Island. He was a man of stong character and fine personality; brought up in the Anglican Church, being a man of force, and accustomed to think for himself, he would not subit to the arrogance of the Bishop of his day, and so broke away from his Mother Church, and became a leader in Methodism. “ He has been described as “the father of Methodism in the West Indies.” His business took him frequently to New York, 600 miles away, where on Sunday he would preach in the “Old John Street Mission”, the same as John Wesley did when he visited New York City. His break with the Anglicans came apparently when a Presbyterian minister ordered him arrested and imprisoned because he dared preach to the slaves (negros (and Indians?) comprised two-thirds of the population. This was more than Richard Minors HIGGS could stand, so he turned Methodist and preached to the slaves himself. [Muriel’s note: Was this because his Minor ancestors had been Pequot slaves??]
At the age of thirty-eight he was elected a Member of the House of Assembly in Bermuda in 1824.
Richard's son, Benjamin "Wilson" HIGGS brought four young children and came to Prince Edward Island, Canada in 1864 when his first wife died of yellow fever. He remarried and had seven more children in Canada.
I am searching for information about the Minor/Minors family too.