♂Edmond Hawes

Edmond Hawes (living 1600–1653) was an English gentleman of Hillfield in the parish of Solihull, Warwickshire, who for a time held the lordship of Solihull. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Edmond Hawes (1612–1693), who emigrated to New England.

Family and position

A family history published in 1914 gives his descent as the son of William Hawes, from a line of Thomas Haweses of Solihull, all of them styled gentlemen in the records of their time. Those earlier generations rest on that compilation alone. He married Jane Porter before 1600; the same history names her father as Richard Porter of Bayham, Sussex.

By a deed of 16 May 1604, Edmond and his cousin Humphrey Colles of the Middle Temple bought the lordship of Solihull for 1,080 pounds from Thomas Throckmorton, grandson of Sir George Throckmorton. A lordship of the manor was a property, not a title of nobility: it carried the manor’s rents and dues and the right to hold its court, and it could be bought and sold like land. He later sold it to Samuel Marrow. The 1914 history states that he was still living in 1653. No record of his death has been found.

Children

Edmond and Jane had twelve children, born between 1600 and 1618. The Solihull parish register records their baptisms, and in almost every entry the child, even as an infant, is given the courtesy title “Mr” or “Mrs”, as befitted a gentleman’s family; the titles marked rank, not marriage, and a clerk gave them only to families of standing. The register also shows the family’s movements. From 1600 to 1604 the entries describe the household as “of Hillfeildes”. Between 1607 and 1611 they give “Shellie”. By 1612 the family is again “de Hillfeeldes”. At least two of the children died young: a daughter Ursula, baptized in January 1601/02, was buried that April, and a son Thomas died in infancy.

The son who carried the line was Edmond, baptized at Solihull on 15 October 1612. He was apprenticed as a cutler in London, crossed to New England in 1635 on the James of Southampton, and settled at Yarmouth, Massachusetts, where he died in 1693.

Notes

Several of the baptism dates printed in the 1914 history differ from the register itself. Ursula, the second of that name, was baptized on 28 October 1606, not the 26th. John was baptized on 23 April 1611, not the 13th. Ruth was baptized on 28 June 1618; the history gives only June, and a modern index reads the day as the 18th. The history also prints a burial year of 1695 for the infant Thomas, which cannot be right for a child born around 1605. Online family trees often give Edmond a death in 1693. That date belongs to his son, the emigrant.