Robert Isbell

Weymouth, Dorsetshire, England

New London, CT

General Notes

Robert Isbell came to New England 1635-36.

He was first noticed at Salem, Mass., where he became a Proprietor. In 1636 his name appears on the list of Grants of Land known as Land Grants A, also on the list made by Roger Conant of the Division of the marsh and meadow, ordered to be assigned and laid out to the families at a Town Meeting, December 25, 1637, known as Land Grants B. The figure 1 before his name indicates the number of persons in his family, and the figure 2, after his name, that he received half an acre. Robert Isbell and wife, Ann, lived in that part of Salem which in 1645 became Manchester. In 1651, before leaving for New London, "Robert Isbell of Manchester, carpenter, for 15 pounds sold his dwellinghouse and 49 acres of land with his partition of meadow which is one half acre allotted to him in 1638 by Richard Norman."

October 19, 1650, grants of land were made by the townsmen of New London to "Mr. Richard Blynman, Obadiah Bruen, Hughe Calkin, Hughe Roberts, John Coite, Andrew Lester, James Averye and Robert Isbell." Mr. Blynman was a minister at Gloucester, Mass., engaged to become the minister at Pequot Plantations as New London was then called. The others were a party of his friends from Gloucester and Salem who purposed to come with him and came on to make preparatory arrangements. Early in 1651, New Street, in rear of the town plot, was opened for the accommodation of the Cape Ann Company, as this little group was known. This was designated as "beyond the brook and the ministry lot." It was made into houselots and called Cape Ann Lane, nine lots on this street of six acres each. Beginning at the lower end Hughe Calkins had the first lot by the Lyme Road, or highway to Nahantic, next him, his son-in-law, Hughe Roberts, then John Coite, Andrew Lester, James Averye, Robert Allyn, William Meads, William Hough and Robert Isbell. Later, lands near New London, were laid out to Robert Isbell, Capt. John Avery and John Pickett, near Jonathan Brewsters in Poquetannock, and those were called the "Poquetannock Grants." December 1659, his house on New Street was sold to William Hough, and in 1665 the farm in the northern part of the town in what is now (1943) Ledyard and on which he had lived, was bought by George Geer.

Edna Warren Mason: THE DESCENDANTS OF ROBERT
ISBELL IN , AMERICA, The Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor Co., New Haven, Conn.; 1944 pp. 257 Robert Isbell came to America from England 1736.
Married Ann Kingman 1639.

Click here for details of Robert's family with Ann Kingman