Uncovering
Personalities of the Great Migration
by
Robert Charles Anderson
An
unexpected benefit of the Great Migration Study Project has been
the light thrown on the full range of personalities of the immigrants
to New England. By studying exhaustively and systematically every
immigrant during the years from 1620 to 1640, we begin to see
patterns, and we establish a norm, from which there are the expected
deviations.
Along
one axis, we have the usual socioeconomic distribution. At one
end of the spectrum were a few men and women with exceptional
wealth, and, for the men, along with that wealth usually came
high political position. We have already published sketches for
men such as John Winthrop, Richard Bellingham, John Haynes, and
William Coddington. At this same level would also be the ministers,
given their central position in New England culture. Here we have
treated men such as John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and Roger Williams.
At
the other end of the scale we find immigrants such as Matthew
Abdy and Webb Adey, men who lived on the margins of society, with
a bare minimum of the economic essentials. Even these poorest
men of the first New England generation were not, however, so
forlorn as those on the lowest rungs of society in old England.
Nor were the wealthiest and most powerful anywhere near as potent
as those at the higher end of the scale in the society they had
left behind. Those who chose to move to New England in the 1620s
and 1630s were from a relatively narrow band in the middle of
the full range of English social strata.
The
vast majority of these immigrants were, of course, from the middle
of this middle range. Many practiced trades, and most who did
not were styled yeomen or husbandmen, reflecting their status
in England as comfortable farmers who tilled a substantial amount
of land.
When
these husbandmen and tradesmen made their settlement in New England,
they distributed themselves along a second axis. Most fell into
a standard pattern. They married and had a number of children.
They were given substantial grants of land, in most instances
far more than they had held in old England. They joined the church,
and were made freemen. They were frequently called to hold
office, whether as jurymen or constables or selectmen. They were
occasionally before the courts as plaintiffs or defendants in
civil suits, or as perpetrators of minor infractions in criminal
cases.
Hundreds
of the immigrant families which we have already investigated fall
near the center of this second axis of socioeconomic distribution.
The backbone of every settlement consisted of dozens of families,
and dozens of heads of families, who fell in the middle range
of this middle class.
Having
now seen so many immigrants in great detail, the few who do not
adhere to this central pattern stand out from the norm, and demand
our attention. As examples, we will here look closely at two men
who fall on either side of this central distribution, William
Hatch and William Hannum. Both arrived in New England in 1635
and obtained land grants in the middle range in their respective
towns. Both men married and had families, seven children for Hatch
and six for Hannum. But here the similarities end. What interests
us here is the manner in which these two men differed from the
norm in other aspects of their lives.
William
Hatch
William
Hatch, a resident of Sandwich, Kent, sailed for New England in
1635 on the Hercules. Upon arrival he settled in Scituate,
where he resided until his death in 1651. He brought with him
his second wife and five children, two other children having died
in England prior to the family’s migration. The town of Scituate
granted him the usual course of land distributions.
Beyond
these basics, William Hatch in some respects seemed to reflect
the norm of the middle of the middle stratum. He became a freeman
soon after arrival and served in several offices, including participation
on grand and petit juries. He was, in fact, a little above the
norm, in that he was in 1642 and again in 1645 Deputy from Scituate
to the Plymouth Colony General Court, and in 1643 he was appointed
Lieutenant of the Scituate trainband.
Were
this the totality of what the surviving records had to tell us
about William Hatch, we would account him a solid but unremarkable
New England immigrant. But in addition to the details of his life
which have been outlined above, we find also a steady stream of
other notices of this man which tell us a different story.
The
very first entry in the volume of “Judicial Acts of the General
Court and Court of Assistants” of Plymouth Colony, dated January
3, 1636/7, was a law suit against William Hatch, instituted by
Comfort Starr in a case of debt, the jury finding for the plaintiff.
This judgment in itself was not remarkable, but, as will
be seen, was a portent of things to come. Barely six months later,
on June 7, 1637, “whereas William Hatch, of Scituate, is presented
for an incroachment upon a piece of ground on this side the river
without license of this Court, it is therefore enacted by this
Court that the said William Hatch shall reap the crop this year
only, and leave the land, which is the mulct laid upon him for
his presumption therein.”
Not
long after these events, Hatch returned to England, and then sailed
again for New England on the Castle, bringing with him
his brother Thomas and his family. While on this voyage, William
Hatch formed a partnership with Thomas Ruck and Joseph Merriam
to handle the affairs of the voyage. In August 1639, a year after
this transatlantic passage, Ruck and Merriam sued Hatch, claimed
he did “overreckon, misreckon, account short & mischarge”
various items in the accounts.
Two
years later, on September 7, 1641, William Hatch was accused of
stating publicly that “the warrants sent from the governor were
nothing but stinking commissary warrants.” Finally, on March 5,
1643/4, the Court took notice of a dispute between Hatch and his
servant Hercules, regarding the length of service of the latter.
Very
few men were so frequently recorded in so many forms of disagreeable
behavior. Even so, throughout this period, William Hatch continued
to hold offices at the colony and town level. His peers and neighbors
clearly valued his skills and abilities highly enough to set aside
his apparent antisocial behavior, but he may have been skating
very close to the edge.
William
Hannum
We
do not have a passenger ship list entry for William Hannum, but
he first appears at Dorchester late in 1635, when he was granted
an acre of meadow. This grant would suggest that he had purchased
the houselot, and the attached proprietorial privileges, from
one of the earlier Dorchester settlers who by that date had migrated
to Windsor. Just two years later, on September 10, 1637, Hannum
sold all his Dorchester land to Jonas Humphrey, and himself removed
to Windsor.
William
Hannum was a younger man than William Hatch by a decade or more,
and had apparently arrived in New England as a single man. Soon,
however, he married Honor Capen, daughter of Bernard Capen, who
had come to Dorchester in 1633. With this wife, William Hannum
had six children in the decade from 1637 to 1647. In 1654 the
family moved to Northampton, where William died on June 1, 1677.
Beyond
this history, however, any similarity to the career of William
Hatch ceases. No record has been found that William Hannum ever
held any public office. He did come before the Court on one occasion,
on March 26, 1661, when he presented a “petition to the Court
for freedom from training, watching and warding by reason of his
age and the weakness of his body, the Court considering his weakness
of body, his age and mean estate, have freed him from training,
watching and warding.”
There
is no record that William Hannum was a freeman during his residence
at Dorchester, Windsor, or Northampton. Based on the baptism of
one of his children at Windsor in 1640, he may have been a member
of that church, but this baptism could just as well have been
performed on the strength of his wife’s membership.
Hannum
emerges from obscurity on only one occasion. In 1656 Sarah, the
wife of James Bridgman of Northampton, made some accusations against
Mary (Bliss) Parsons, wife of Joseph Parsons, as a result of which
the Parsonses sued Sarah Bridgman for slander. On August 11, 1656,
both William Hannum and his wife made depositions in support of
the Bridgman side of the controversy.[1]
William
Hannum recounted his version of three incidents in which Mary
(Bliss) Parsons was involved, which might at that time have been
accounted instances of witchcraft. Hannum did not himself accuse
Parsons of being responsible for the death of his sow and ox.
At the end of his deposition, he tried to have it both ways: “These
things do something run in my mind that I cannot have my mind
from this woman that if she be not right this way she may be a
cause of these things, though I desire to look at the overruling
hand of God in all.”
A
week later, on August 18, William Hannum and his wife made a second,
very revealing, deposition: “James Bridgman hired them to [go]
down to Springfield to give in their testimony or else they would
not have gone but that he was very importunate with them.”[2]
William
Hannum was not himself motivated to become involved in the dispute
between the Parsonses and the Bridgmans, and when he was pressured
to do so, could not bring himself to speak strongly against Mary
Parsons. He even reproached himself for making a mild joke, saying
that this “manner of jesting I do not approve or allow of in myself.”[3]
William
Hatch and William Hannum were in many respects typical New England
immigrants of the Great Migration, but their personalities could
not have been more different. Hatch apparently missed no opportunity
to take a strong position on any issue, be he right or wrong.
Hannum apparently made every effort to avoid conflict with his
neighbors, and, on the one occasion when he did become involved
in a dispute, made it very clear that he would rather not be.
The
immigrants of the Great Migration were individuals, and we are
assisted in teasing out some details of their personalities, and
how those personalities fitted into their communities, by studying
all the immigrants, and taking note of what constituted normal
behavior, and what behavior fell outside those norms.
Complete
biographical and genealogical details on these two families will
be available in the next volume of the Great Migration series.
Watch New England Ancestors and NewEnglandAncestors.org
for details.
Notes
Robert
Charles Anderson, FASG, is director of the NEHGS Great
Migration Study Project.
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