The immigrant John Balch receives a comprehensive treatment in Anderson’s GMB.864 According to Anderson (with square brackets in the original): “Various sources give one or another parish in Somersetshire as the place of origin of John Balch, but these are unsupported by evidence and are little more than guesses [EIHC 1:151, 66:319-20]. Balch was certainly one of the men sent over by the Dorchester Company in the early 1620s to settle a fishing colony in New England, and so he is properly known as one of the Old Planters; the best account of this group of men remains Frances Rose-Troup, John White, the Patriarch of Dorchester [Dorset] and The Founder of Massachusetts... (New York 1930).”865