Adam BLAKEMAN

                   He was a minister of some note. A Puritan. Adam evtered Oxford University on
May 28, 1617, at the age of 19, for training to become a clergyman.  He was
ordained as a minister of the Church of England, serving in  Leicestershire and
Derbyshire.  In Leidestershire, his name appears on the parish register as
Curate of Bowden Magna [Great Bowden] for the years 1624-1627.  The family was
still there in 1628, as the son, James, was christened there that year,
although a new Curate had taken charge.
Adam had serious disagreement with his church superiors concerning certain
chruch beliefs and portions of the chruch service, and was suspended from
serving as a clergyman [perhaps this was widespread in England at that time,
the obuectors being known as Puritans, some of whom were the Puritans, or
Pilgrims, who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Om 1638, Rev. Blakeman, his
lwife and children, together with other Puritans, left England for America.  In
1639, the Blakeman family and sixteen other families settled at what is
nowStratford, Conn..  The First Congregational Church was organized there in
1639; and Rev. Blakeman served as its minister for twenty-six years untilhis
death in 1665, at the age of 67.  According to Cotton Mather, eminent colonial
Puritan clergyman and author, Adam was  " A man of learning, prudence and
fervent piety, and was greatly loved by his people."  His only known existing
papers are his will in the Fairfield County, Conn., porbate records, and a
church doculment dated in early 1665, which is in the Connecticut Historical
Society's collections.