♀Hannah Palmer

Hannah Palmer (30 December 1719 – 9 March 1792) was the first wife of Gideon Walker of Arundel (now Kennebunkport), in the District of Maine^W, whom she married at Rowley, Massachusetts, on 23 February 1741. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Gideon Walker (1751–1828).

Marriage

A history of Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell published in 1878 calls her “Hannah Palmer of Rowley”, the Massachusetts town where Gideon had been apprenticed to a tanner. The Rowley records date the marriage 23 February 1741, as does Charles Bradbury’s History of Kennebunk Port (1837); the 1878 history gives 3 February. By the 1878 account the couple moved to Arundel in 1745, the year Bradbury says Gideon built his house in what later became the village.

Children

Bradbury’s register names ten children of Gideon Walker, one of whom, Hannah, died young. He adds that Gideon’s second wife had no children by him, so all ten were most likely Hannah’s, and the family tree now carries all ten. A genealogy published in 1939 calls the daughter Mary, who married Jeremiah Miller about 1763, a “daughter of Gideon and Hannah (Palmer) Walker of Arundel”, and the printed Topsham records confirm Andrew’s marriage there in 1786. The son Gideon, born at Arundel on 8 July 1751 by the 1878 history, married Mary Perkins and later moved to Topsham.

No register of the children’s births survives online: Bradbury’s list of ten is the only one, and the dates for Eliphalet, Mehitable and Andrew come from index and cemetery entries that name no parents, so that they belong to this family is probable rather than proved. Eliphalet was born at Wells in September 1747 and died on 28 March 1824; Mehitable was born on 7 May 1753 and died on 10 November 1845 as Mehitable Day; Andrew was born on 2 April 1760 and died on 15 May 1842, and was buried at Kennebunkport. Each is matched to Bradbury’s list by name and by the marriages he names.

Death

Hannah was buried in Evergreen Cemetery at Kennebunk. Her gravestone, which calls her Mrs Hannah Walker, gives her death as 9 March 1792, her birth year as 1719 and the year of her marriage as 1741, so she was Gideon’s first wife and not the widow Hannah Lassell, whom Bradbury names as his second. Gideon’s first wife, Hannah Palmer, died on 9 March 1792, so his second marriage, to Hannah, widow of Matthew Lassell, came after that, when he was past seventy. A genealogy published in 1939 had placed the second marriage after January 1778, the last date on which Lassell is found alive.

Notes

The birth, her parents’ marriage and the eight other births are from the printed Vital Records of Rowley, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (1928-31), which also enters her marriage as “Hannah, and Gidian Walker of Arundel”. The date of her death is from her gravestone as photographed for Find a Grave; Kennebunk was then part of Wells. The dates for Eliphalet, Mehitable and Andrew come from FamilySearch index entries (a Wells birth entry for Eliphalet, a Kennebunkport one for Mehitable, a cemetery index for Andrew) and from cemetery records, none naming a parent. The Kennebunkport town book never entered the family, and the Kittery town book, which holds Gideon’s own parents’ family, stops before his.

Birth and parents

The printed vital records of Rowley record the marriage of John Palmer and Mary Stickney on 18 November 1709 and nine children born to them between 1710 and 1729. The fifth, Hannah, was born on 30 December 1719, and she is probably the Hannah who married Gideon Walker. The only other Hannah Palmer of the right age in Rowley was a daughter of Francis Palmer, baptized on 3 June 1718 and also recorded as Ann, and she was probably the Anne who married Nathan Brocklebank in February 1739/40. That leaves John and Mary’s daughter as the probable bride, though no record found so far names Gideon Walker’s wife as John Palmer’s daughter. The names Bradbury gives her children fit the choice: Daniel and Mehitable match a Palmer brother born in 1712 and a sister born in 1727, and neither appears among Gideon’s own brothers and sisters.