Family Trees
Wilkins Family Tree
Bray and Hannah were the founders of the Wilkins family line in Middleton. He and his wife had 6 or 7 children. The Wilkinses who are central to the Wheatley Peters Project documents were some of their great-grandchildren and their immediate descendants.
The Lt. John Wilkins who died in 1778 married his first cousin Naomi, daughter of Benjamin Wilkins (1679-1753). Lt. John’s parents (John and Abigail) were also first cousins.
The main sources for this tree are William Carroll Hill, The Family of Bray Wilkins, “Patriarch of Will’s Hill,” of Salem (Middleton) Mass. (1943) and the Middleton Vital Records.
Francis Brothers
Sources for Frank Francis include Vital Records of Middleton, Danvers, and Salem; Middleton tax records; Middleton Congregational church records; federal censuses of 1790 and 1800; his probated estate, Essex County Probate File 10105; and Frank and Lydia Francis v. Timothy Wynn (July 1782 term), Essex Co. Court of Common Pleas Files, Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston.
The marriage and children of Snow Francis and Violet Fuller are inferred from their enslaver Jacob Fuller’s will and probated estate, EPCF 10375 (1768). Snow Francis appears in the Middleton tax records,), 1790 and 1800 federal censuses, and Middleton town meeting records (1809). For his attestation that the four men featured in this family tree were brothers, see Deposition of Snow Francis, Suffolk File 129933, via familysearch.org (Suffolk County [MA] Court Files, 1629–1797).
Sources for John Peters: these are detailed in Cornelia H. Dayton, “Lost Years Recovered: John Peters and Phillis Wheatley Peters in Middleton,” The New England Quarterly 94 (Sep. 2021): 309-351.
Sources for Charles Francis include the Vital Records of Middleton and Salem; the federal censuses of 1800, 1820, and 1830; Middleton tax records.
The conclusions that appear in the family tree above are based on preliminary research by Mary Blauss Edwards and Cornelia H. Dayton; we expect that further research will point to modifications and additions.