MY SEA-FARING FAMILY by
NANCY GRANT ADAMS INTRODUCTION Since we are now halfway through Nancy Story Grant Adams's My Sea-Faring Family, we thought it might be well to reintroduce our readers to the family and how this story had its beginning. Tristram Coffin was one of the early settlers of the Town of Sher burne on the island of Nantucket, located thirty miles off the coast of Massachusetts. He was born in 1605 in Brixton, Devon Co., England, and came to America in 1642. He was the son of Peter, son of Nicholas, all of Brixton. In about 1630, Tristram married Dionis Stevens of Brixton and had nine children. He moved to Nantucket in 1659. In direct line from Tristram and Dionis through their first child, Peter, who married Abagail Starhuck, came the maternal line of the Grant family. Jethro and Mary; Robert and Susanna; Ephraim and Sarah; Hepsabeth Coffin and John Ellis, whose daughter Elizabeth married James Grant, the Scotsman, the first of the line of Grants in Nantucket. The Wyer branch of the sea-faring family got its start through another Scotsman named Edward Wyer, who was born in 1622 in Scotland and who came to America as early as 1646. He was a tailor and settled in Charlestown, Mass., in 1658. In 1659 he married Elizabeth Johnson. They had eleven children and the Nantucket branch came from Robert, the third child, born in 1664. He was also a tailor and an inn-holder. In 1688 he married Elizabeth Fowle who died without issue. Then he married his second wife, Ruth Johnson,in 1692. Through their son, Robert, Jr., who was born in Charlestown in 1695 and moved to Nantucket when he married Katherine Swain in 1720, the line of Nantucket Wyers originated. Zachariah and Abagail; Obed Wyer and Polly; Ohed,Jr., and Pol ly Gorham; Benjamin and Eliza Ann Hull. Benjamin Wyer was born in 1797 and married Eliza Ann Hull in 1821. They were married by Seth Swift in the Second Congregational Meeting House - now Unitarian. They had children: Benjamin, Charlotte M, Ann Eliza, William, and Nancy Jay. Grandmother Nancy Jay was born in 1823 and married Charles
