Roots James Bere

James Bere
(1530-1560)

Family Links

John Bere+

James Bere

Born: 1530, Rochester, Kent, England
Marriage: Dorothy Kingswood ⁹²⁹
Died: 1560, Rochester, Kent, England at age 30

Noted events in his life were:

• Background Information. ⁹²⁹
James Bere, son of John and Faith Bere, lived in the city of Rochester, and married Dorothy Kingswood, daughter of John Kingswood, Gentleman, by whom he had two sons, James and John, who both settled at Gravesend, Kent. The elder son, James Bere, of Gravesend, was master of a ship under Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1577, had five sons and five daughters, and died in 1609. On the south wall of the Gravesend Church, on a mural tablet of Black and white marble, are effigies of a man and wife and five sons and five daughters, also a coat of arms. The inscription is on two compartments. On the right is legible only:

. . . James Beer, . . . obit . . . 1609

On the other is the following:

After much weary sayling, Worthy Bere
Arrived this quiet port, and harbers here.
As skillfully in honestie he brought
His humaine vessell home, as he was thought
Equal with any that by Card or Starr
Took out and brought again his Barke from farr.
So let him rest in quiet till he hear
The trumpet sound, when all must rise with Bere,
And for his fame and honest memorie,
This is his frail and brief eternity.

The church was burned in 1727, but the above is preserved in a manuscript collection of Kentish epitaths of 1724, in the Library of the British Museum.

~The Englaish Ancestry of the Beers Family, pp. 85-86

James married Dorothy Kingswood, daughter of John Kingswood and Unknown.⁹²⁹ (Dorothy Kingswood was born in 1539 in Rochester, Kent, England.)