Henry Samson or Sampson (β 1604-01-15 – 1685) was my double 9th-great-grandfather and a passenger on the famous Mayflower voyage of 1620. Born in Henlow, England to James Sampson and Martha Cooper, he married Ann Plummer, of unknown parents, 1636-02-06 in Duxbury, Massachusetts, where he lived the rest of his life. His will is dated 1684-12-24 and was probated 1685-03-05, which places his death between those dates, probably closer to the latter.
Although I have several Mayflower and other Great Migration ancestors, four factors make Henry stand out among them:
Abraham Samson, believed to be Henry’s first cousin, also immigrated, to Duxbury, some time before 1638.
Henry and Ann had nine known children: Stephen, John, Elizabeth, James, Hannah, Sarah(?), Mary, Dorcas, and Caleb.
Henry’s daughter Hannah and her husband Josiah Holmes were great-great-great-grandparents of my great-great-grandmother Lucinda (née Holmes) Martell, while his son Caleb and his first wife Mercy Standish were the great-great-great-grandparents of my great-great-great-grandfather Gibbs Henry Gesner.
These lines converge at Caleb Huntington and Emily Frances Gesner.
The Pineo X segment can be convincingly traced from my mother and aunt to as far back as David Sampson, Henry’s grandson. David got it from his mother, so the segment provides no further steps to Henry, although it corroborates 9 of my 11 generations to him on one of the lines, the one through Caleb Samson. (It also corroborates other Mayflower ancestors.)
There is a Mayflower DNA project, which (as of 2023-03-22) includes 13 Y chromosome tests of Samson descendantsref, who all match each other. Henry is inferred to be of haplogroup I2-FTB708, with the final mutation being recent enough that Abraham does not share it. Unfortunately, details are not provided as to the actual descents, so precise inferences cannot be drawn. It may be that one is a descendant of David, thus confirming the generations to Henry, and beyond, or at least a descendant of David’s father Caleb. Several are from descendants of Abraham, which validates some of Henry’s ancestry in England. This smattering of results at least generally supports the integrity of the Samson family.