George Burroughs’ genealogy: Burroughs-Thomas-Crocker line

Mather's book, The Wonders of the Invisible World,
shows his passionate dislike for fellow minister
and Salem witch trials victim George Burroughs

Cotton Mather’s profile in Colonial Collegians concludes by claiming a blood connection between the Puritan Boston minister and George Burroughs, the man Mather vilified in his writings on the 1692 Salem witch trials. In my previous post, however, I showed how the Colonial Collegians writer mistook a Joseph for a Josiah Crocker in Mather's line, which removed a marriage between their descendants. 

But what about the line of descent given for George Burroughs, former minister of Salem Village? It turns out the information in Colonial Collegians was almost correct. It skips one generation—the father of Isaiah Thomas, founder of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS)—but the other details check out.

Burroughs line in Colonial Collegians

George Burroughs (H.U. 1670)

[daughter Burroughs]

Isaiah Thomas, LL.D., founder of AAS

[child of Isaiah Thomas]

[granddaughter of Isaiah Thomas] m. Samuel Leonard Crocker (Brown U. 1822)

Isaiah Thomas Sr. (1749-1831),

descendant of George Burroughs,

printer and founder of AAS

Rev. George Burroughs (1650-1692), the 1670 Harvard graduate hanged as a witch in Salem, married as his first wife, Hannah Fisher (1653-1681). Their daughter Elizabeth Burroughs (1681-1719) married Peter Thomas (1683-1744). Elizabeth and Peter’s son Moses Thomas (1715-1752) married Fidelity Grant (d. 1798). Their son, Isaiah Thomas Sr. (1749-1831), married as his first wife Mary Dill (b. 1750). Isaiah was a printer and founder of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. Their son Isaiah Thomas Jr. (1773-1819) married Mary Weld (1768-1825), and they had Hannah Weld Thomas (d. 1827). So, the granddaughter of the founder of the AAS married Samuel Leonard Crocker (1804-1883) who graduated from Brown University in 1822. That makes George Burroughs the third great-grandfather of Hannah (Thomas) Crocker.

For more information on Isaiah Thomas Sr., see the AAS prototype website, Isaiah Thomas: Patriot-Printer.