♀Hannah Merryman

Hannah Merryman (11 May 1783 – 7 December 1862) was a woman of Harpswell and Brunswick, Maine, who in 1805 married Walter Merriman, a Harpswell man who shared her surname. She was the third great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son John Merryman (1808–1891).

Early life

She was born at Harpswell, Cumberland County, in what was then the District of Maine, part of Massachusetts; Maine became a separate state in 1820. Her parents were James Merryman (1756–1825) and Hannah Blake (1757–1821), who had married in 1777. An index of the Harpswell town birth register names James Merryman and Hannah Blake as the parents of Hannah and of seven others born between 1780 and 1793; the register’s image has not been seen. The 1905 genealogy, Walter Merryman of Harpswell, Maine, and His Descendants by the Rev. Charles Nelson Sinnett, lists the same eight children, makes her the third of them, and names her mother’s parents as Jacob Blake and Jenny Webber; the Harpswell records name Jacob Blake’s wife as Mercy (Webber). The federal census of 1790 found James’s household at Harpswell with himself, two boys under sixteen and six females, a count of sons that matches the book’s list exactly.

Marriage and family

On 1 October 1805, aged twenty-two, she married Walter Merriman (1785–1867), also of Harpswell and two years younger. The surname is spelled both ways in the records. The 1905 genealogy explains why bride and groom shared it: her father James and Walter’s father Michael Merryman were brothers, both sons of Walter Merryman, the first of the family at Harpswell, so the couple were first cousins, each a grandchild of the same man. The book records this in two separate chapters, but both are the work of one compiler, and apart from christening index entries naming a Walter Merriman as the father of both brothers, no town record of their descent has been found.

The couple settled at Brunswick, the next town north, where their son John was born in 1808. The Brunswick birth records name six children of Walter and Hannah, born between 1807 and 1825: Enos, John, Galen, Mary Jane, Fanny and Robert S. The 1905 genealogy lists the same six. The 1850 census, as indexed, shows them at Brunswick in a household that also held their son Robert, then 25; in 1860 the couple were alone, and the index reads their ages as 75 for Walter and 78 for Hannah.

Death

Hannah Merryman died at Brunswick on 7 December 1862, in her eightieth year, and was buried in the Growstown Cemetery there. Her death was announced on 16 December 1862 in two Maine newspapers: the Lewiston paper gave her age as 79, and the Portland Daily Press as “79 years 1 month”. Walter outlived her by more than four years.

Notes

Her birth on 11 May 1783 rests on the index of the Harpswell town birth register, whose image has not been seen, and on the 1905 genealogy, which prints the date on two pages. Counted from that date she was 79 years and 7 months old at her death; the Lewiston age of 79 agrees, and the Portland Daily Press figure of 1 month does not.

The 1905 genealogy dates the birth of her elder sister Molly to 11 December 1782, and the register index, which writes the name Mary, gives 25 December 1782. Hannah’s birth less than five months later cannot be right for two children of one mother, so one of the years is wrong, in the register or in the book. The register’s image has not been seen.