*Obadiah Holmes
born 18 March 1609 Reddish, Manchester, Lancashire, England
christened 18 March 1609 Didsbury, Manchester, Lancashire, England
died 15 October 1683 Newport, Newport County, Rhode Island

father:
*Robert Holmes (Jr.)
born 18 Aug 1578 Reddish, Manchester, Lancheshire, England
died 24 Nov 1649 Stockport, Cheshire, England

mother:
*Katherine Johnson
born 1584 Stockport, Cheshire, England
died 8 September 1630 Stockport, Cheshire, England

siblings:
Robert Holmes born 25 Mar 1621 Stockport, Cheshire, England buried 17 Nov 1697
Joseph Holmes born Abt 1624 Of, Reddish, Lancashire, England
buried 13 Jun 1623 Stockport, Lancashire, England
John Holmes born 1607 Stockport, Lancashire , England
christened 3 May 1607 Stockport, Manchester, Lancaster, England died before 1640 England
Joan Holmes born 2 Feb 1610/1611 Didsbury, Lancaster, Lancashire, England
christened 2 Feb 1610 Didsbury, Manchester, Lancaster, England
died 5 Nov 1612 Stockport, Lancashire, England buried 5 Nov 1612 Stockport, Cheshire, England
Samuel Holmes born 1613 Didsbury, Lancaster, Lancashire, England
christened 23 Feb 1616/1617 Didsbury, Lancshire, England
died 2 Nov 1613 Stockport, Lancashire, England
buried 2 Nov 1613 Stockport, Manchester, Lancashire, England
Samuel Holmes born 23 Feb 1616/1617 Didsbury, Lancaster, Lancashire, England
christened 23 Feb 1616 Didsbury, Manchester, Lancaster, England
died 17 May 1636 buried 17 May 1636
Nathaniel Holmes born 12 Jul 1618 Didsbury, Lancaster, Lancashire, England
christened 12 Jul 1618 Didsbury, Manchester, Lancaster, England
died 10 Sep 1631 Stockport, England buried 10 Sep 1631 Stockport, Manchester, Lancaster, England
Robert Holmes born 25 Mar 1621 Stockport, Manchester, Cheshire, England
christened 25 Mar 1621 Stockport, Manchester, Lancaster, England
died 17 Nov 1697 buried 17 Nov 1697 Gorton, Manchester, Lancashire, England
Joseph Holmes born 1623 Stockport, Manchester, Cheshire, England
christened Abt 1623 Stockport, Cheshire, England
died 13 Jun 1623 Stockport, Cheshire, England
buried 13 Jun 1623 Stockport, Manchester, Cheshire, England
Joseph Holmes born Abt 1625 Stockport, Manchester, Cheshire, England

spouse:
*Katherine Hyde
born 27 October 1608 Reddish, Manchester, Lancashire, England
died 15 October 1682 Newport, Newport County, Rhode Island
married 20 November 1630 Collegiate Church, Manchester, Lancashire, England

children:
John Holmes born 1631 Reddish, Manchester, Lancashire, England
died 27 June 1633 Stockport, Manchester, Lancashire, England
buried 27 June 1633 Stockport, Manchester, Lancashire, England
Jonathan Holmes born 1634 Stockport, Manchester, Lancaster, England
died 22 Nov 1713 Newport, Rhode Island buried Middletown, Newport, Rhode Island
Lydia Holmes born 1637 Stockport, Lancashire, England
christened 1646 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts died 1663 Gravesend, Kings, New York
*Mary Holmes born 1638 Stockport, Manchester, England died 1690 Providence, Rhode Island
*Martha Holmes born 13 May 1640 Newport, Newport County, Rhode Island
christened 13 May 1640 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
died 30 December 1711 Newport, Rhode Island buried 1682 Newport, Rhode Island
Samuel Holmes born 20 March 1642 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
christened 20 March 1642 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
died 29 May 1679 Gravesend, Richmond, New York
Obadiah Holmes born 9 June 1644 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
christened 9 June 1644 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
died 1728 Cohansey, Creek County, New Jersey buried Cohansey, West Jersey
Joseph Holmes born January 1648 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts christened Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
Hopestill Holmes born 1648 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
Sarah Holmes born 1651 Salem, Essex, Massachusetts

biographical and/or anecdotal:
OBADIAH HOLMES
From "Baptist Piety: The Last Will and Testament of Obadiah Holmes", Edwin S. Gaustad Arno Press 1980.
D. Testimony to his Children
VERY PROBABLY OBADIAH HOLMES' POSTERITY WAS HIS GREATEST LEGACY.
His nine children presented him with some forty-one grandchildren. If that rate of productivity continued to the end of the colonial period, Obadiah and Catherine Holmes would have been responsible by that time for a progeny of more than twenty thousand persons! It is, of course, impossible to follow more than a couple of lines. Of the immediate children, four migrated south, either to Gravesend on Long Island or across Lower New York Bay into New Jersey, forming there a settlement named Middletown in honor of the Rhode Island home. Among the twelve original patentees of Monmouth County, New Jersey were Obadiah Holmes, Jr. and John Bowne, the husband of Lydia Holmes. Obadiah, Jr. later settled in Cohansey (West Jersey), which became a major Baptist center; he served as a lay preacher as well as "at the time of his death in 1723 a judge of common pleas for Salem County."[*] Jonathan Holmes also settled in Middletown, where he was elected deputy to the New Jersey assembly in 1668. A decade later he and John Bowne served on the Middletown-Shrewsbury court. Bowne, in fact, later became "a great figure in East Jersey"[1] And it is through Lydia and John Bowne that the senior Obadiah Holmes stands as an ancestor of Abraham Lincoln."**"
Mary Holmes, the eldest daughter, married John Browne, son of Chad Brown, the Baptist minister in Providence, Rhode Island. From this union emerged the remarkable "Browns of Providence Plantations," that family so central to the economic, cultural, and educational life of the colony-state from that day to this.[***] The second daughter, Martha, married a man named Odlin, a fact known only through the reference to her in her father's will. The same minimal information is available for the youngest daughter, Hopestill, who married a Taylor and died sometime before her father made out last final will in 1681. Samuel Holmes, who also died before his father did (in 1679), was, along with his wife, among those migrating to Gravesend. John Holmes apparently remained in the Rhode Island region, for he witnessed a land sale by John and Mary Browne in 1669;[2] he was twice married and the father of nine children. Jonathan Holmes, also the father of nine children, purchased the family farm (see Section G, below), returned to Newport and joined his father"s church. He was not the eldest son, but was probably chosen because he could make the desired financial settlement. Jonathan in turn left the farm to his son, Joseph, who expanded the holdings considerably, leaving an estate valued at nearly £8000 (compared with the estate of his grandfather, valued at about £130).[3] In Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey, and ultimately in the nation that Obadiah Holmes never knew, his children"and their children's children "came to constitute an imposing monument.
In colonial New England, among Puritans and Baptists alike, a parent was expected to offer counsel and wisdom to his children before his death. Richard Mather, for example, wrote of his "be loved sons" near the end of his life:
. . . I think it not amiss, for the furtherance of their spiritual good, to lay
upon them this serious and solemn charge of a dying Father, that none
of them presume, after my decease, to walk in any other way of sin or
wickedness, in one kind or in another, or in a careless neglect of God or
of the things of God and of their own salvation by Christ....[4]
Roger Clap began his memoirs in this fashion: "I thought good, my dear children, to leave with you some account of God's remarkable providences to me.... The Scripture requires us to tell God's wondrous works to our children that they may tell them to their children, that God may have glory throughout all ages."[5] And it was far better for a father to speak the words too early "in Holmes" case, seven years before his death"than to wait until it was too late. John Barnard's father delayed too long, and his son noted in his diary: "He spake but a few words which is a very great aggravation of my sorrow; had it pleased God to have given him the use of his tongue, he might have spoken something that might have had a great and lasting impression upon my heart...."[6]
Obadiah Holmes thus followed a respected and pervasive tradition as he faithfully discharged this serious paternal duty. In writing to his children, some of whom were "in Christ" and some of whom (judging from external appearances) were not, Holmes reminds them of the biblical models for whom they are named. Biblical names were bestowed not just because they were familiar or conveniently "at hand," but because they held forth a standard anda goal by which one's growth in "wisdom and in stature" might be measured. The family enjoyed a closeness which Holmes hoped would not be shattered by his death; he enjoined that their love, one to another," continue and increase...visit one another...take counsel one of another...advise...reprove...and take it well."
As was the case in the Puritan tradition generally, Holmes does not counsel a withdrawal from the world or a monastic sort of asceticism. What God has given, enjoy--and "be you content with your present condition." Meat is good, gluttony is not; drink is good, drunkenness is not; living in and with the world is good, yet attachment to and reliance upon the world is a costly and eternally damning sin. But the pervading mood of Holmes' letter to his children is that it is now up to them--and to God. "Although my care and counsel has been extended to you," now it is beyond my ken and control. Let your life be "squared" with the Scriptures; and be prepared, as courageous sons and daughters, to part with all else "for truth's sake."
*John E. Pomfret, The Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702 (Princeton, 1962), pp. 42-44; Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey, 1609-1702 (Princeton, 1956), p. 274; Norman H. Maring, Baptists in New Jersey (Valley Forge, Pa.,1964), pp.14f.,23,38, 41,74.
The following listing is drawn largely"though not exclusively " from J. O. Austin, Geneological Dictionary, pp. 103-104.
(John?, "infant of Obadiah Hulmes of Redish" buried at Stockport June 27, 1633)
1. Mary (?-1690+); married John Browne; 7 children
2. Martha (1640-1682+); married ____ Odlin
3. Samuel (1642-1679); married Alice Stillwell; 6 children
4. Obadiah (1644-1723); married ____Cole; 5 children
5. Lydia (?-1682 +); married John Bowne; 5 children
6. Jonathan (?-1713); married Sarah Borden; 9 children
7. John (1649-1712);married, Frances Holden; M. Greene; 9 children
8. Hopestill (?-between 1675 and 1681), married Taylor
9. Joseph (?- 1682 + ); mentioned in will; no other record

*Martha Holmes married John Audley brother of *Hannah Audley.
This links the Fergusons and the Whites.

notes or source:
ancestry.com