Robert Dibbell of Glastonbury, Somersetshire, England had a son named John who was baptized in 1605. Nothing else is definitively known about this person.

However, Van Buren Lamb apparently believed that he came to New England and settled in the area of Stamford, CT. The book History of Stamford, Connecticut, 1641 - 1868, including Darien until 1820, by Elijah Baldwin Huntington, published in 1868, contains information about a John Dibble who was in Stamford in the first half of the 17th. century.

According to Huntington, who transcribed his information from hand-written town records, this John Dibble died in Stamford in September 1646. Nothing is given about his age at the time, or how he came to be in Stamford, or when. To date, no one has found a ship passenger list showing that John of Glastonbury ever came to North America. So we don't know why Lamb thought John of Stamford was Robert of Glastonbury's eldest son. But lots of people have picked up this notion and run with it; many extensive genealogies of this John's descendants have his father as Robert.

This is, of course, of specific interest to the Lt. Jonathan Dibble line, because Stamford is, broadly speaking, the area where he lived as an adult. Huntington, without explanation or attribution, states that the John who died in Stamford in 1646 had "two sons, Samuel and Zachariah Dibble [who] probably came with their father". There is a "Zacharia" Dibble listed in the town records, and according to Huntington this Zacharia had a son "Zachary" who he apparently believed was the "Zachariah" Dibble also listed in the records. (The spelling differences are probably not important, except as a way for us to distinguish these people from each other for purposes of discussion.) "Zachary" was supposed to have been born in 1667, and he then supposedly had a son named John, born October 22, 1701.

Some researchers believe that Lt. Jonathan's father was a man named John who lived in Stamford. This John, son of Zachary, is obviously not him; he would have been ten years old when Jonathan was born. No other John of an appropriate age at the time appears in Huntington's book, which is riddled with information about other Dibbles in this line. Nor does anything in his book indicate anything about the lineage of the George Dibble whom he mentions as a resident of nearby Chestnut Ridge in 1722. As George was clearly an adult in that year, John born in 1701 also could not be his father. (This could have been the George who was involved in founding the Stanwich Church and whom we have identified as a possible second cousin of Jonathan.)

However, assuming it is true that the John who died in 1646 also had a son named Samuel, nothing is reported in the book about that line. Although I haven't made a concerted effort to investigate this, so far in all of the published genealogies and documents I've looked at, I haven't found anything about this Samuel or his descendants. So it remains an open question as to whether he could be an ancestor of Lt. Jonathan.

Carrie Dibble's Bible

NOTE: This page may not be the final resting place for this story, but it's possible that Carrie is in the line of John Dibble of Stamford discussed above, so I'm putting it here for now.

Origin

To the best of my recollection, my mother and I were poking through an antique shop somewhere in the neighborhood of Richfield Springs or Cooperstown, NY one summer in the early 1970s. We found a small old leather-bound bible there. It was inscribed with the name of "Dibble", and had some other names as well. One of us bought it. I gave it to my older brother David as a gift.

I had forgotten about it until I began looking into the "Kortright Dibbles" in the spring of 2023. Then I remembered that the Dibble name was in it, and since Richfield Springs/Cooperstown aren't very far from Delaware County, I wondered if there might be a connection. I asked Dave to send me photos of the pages with the handwriting and he obliged.

The photos were indistinct and did not accurately render the color of the pages. So he sent me the bible itself, which is now in my possession.

Description

This is a small "pocket" bible (3.5 inches wide, 5 inches tall, and 1.75 inches thick), bound in paperboard coated with a dark brown embossed material that is probably not leather. It had a metal clasp to hold it closed; the metal pieces are still on the covers but the folding piece that would have connected them is gone. The covers are embossed with an oval pattern and the spine has a repeating diamond-in-rectangle motif. The condition overall is fair, with some water damage and deterioration of the spine and corners of the cover. The pages are sewed to the binding and nearly all of them are well-secured; none are completely loose. This is different from most images I have seen of this particular edition of the Bible, which have a fold-over cover enclosure. The text appears to be that of the King James Version. The title page reads:

The page has significant water damage.

Someone has hand-lettered "THE" under the first word above, and "HOLY BIBLE" under those words, with incomplete efforts to copy the characteristics of the serif typeface.

On the facing flyleaf, the following appears, in cursive script:

"??rrre Dibble
Meredith
Delaware
County"

And below that, "1862" is written in, perhaps, a different handwriting.

Two of the back flyleaves are also inscribed.

The first inscribed back flyleaf has three names:

Jay
Orval J Willsy
Della M Willsy

They are in a different person's handwriting from that of the front leaf.

Another flyleaf has a poem, some of which is not legible:

"Remember me w ???
Dow of day rember
Me for this you ??
And think that S??
remeber You

A. J. Bernard.
1862" [sic]

This poem seems to be a variation on a common inscription found in 19th century autograph books.

I have not inspected all of the pages but there is no other handwriting on the flyleaves.

Who are These People?

As of June 2024, the best bet is that Carrie was Caroline Aldrich Dibble, born between 1857 and 1859 (1857 according to her cemetery monument in Evergreen Cemetery, Otego, Otsego County, NY) in Delaware County, New York, and her father was a man named Simon Dibble, who was born in 1822, according to his cemetery monument in Pine Grove Cemetery, Meredith, Delaware County, NY.

Carrie married Winfield Sheldon and they had several children together. She died in 1935 and is buried in Otego, Otsego County, NY, just over the line from Delaware County.

Van Buren Lamb gave Carrie's ancestry as:

Robert Deeble->John Dibble of Stamford->Zachariah->Zachary->John->John->Daniel->John->Simon

I have not verified that lineage to my satisfaction. Huntington's History of Stamford, Connecticut, gives:

"Dibble, John, d. Sept. 1646.
Dibble, Zacharia, and Sarah Waterbury, m. May 10, '66 and had Zachariah, b. Dec. 19, '67.
Dibble, Zachariah and Sarah Clements, m. August 13, 1698, and had Zachariah, b. July 16, 1699; John, Oct. 22, 1701; Daniel, Feb. 19, '03/'04; Ebenezer, July 18, '06; and Eeuben, Oct. 2, '08.
Dibble, John, was pensioned. He died in Darien, in April 1852, aged 93." (He would have been born around 1759, so if he's in that lineage he could have been Simon's father or his great-grandfather; men in those days often fathered children with multiple wives, well into their old age.)

Huntington has some later Dibbles but doesn't give their lineage so he's of no further help here.

I do have more information on Carrie but since I'm not very certain about any of it I'm not publishing any more details at this time. Stay tuned, though, as I'm actively working on this line.

In August 2024, I visited the Evergreen Cemetery in Otego, Otsego County, NY, and found Carrie Dibble Sheldon's gravesite. There is a central "Sheldon" monument with the names of Carrie and her husband on it, and nearby are two small stones that have "MOTHER" and "FATHER" carved on their tops. These stones likely mark their actual graves. (There are several other Sheldon monuments in this cemetery but I don't know if they are related to this family.) I took photos of the stones, and when I decide on a permanent web location for this information I'll probably include them there.