♀Hannah (surname unknown)

Hannah was the wife of William Ames, an early settler of Braintree, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, and was left his widow in the winter of 1653/4, five weeks before the birth of their youngest child, Deliverance. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through Hannah Ames (born 1641), who was most likely her daughter.

Life

William Ames and his wife Hannah had six children: three daughters, Hannah, Rebecca and Lydia, probably born between 1641 and 1645, and then John in 1647, Sarah in 1650 and Deliverance, the youngest. William Ames died at Braintree on 1 January 1653/4, and Deliverance was born there on 6 February, five weeks later. His goods were valued at £45. On 6 March 1654/5, at Boston, administration of his estate was granted to his widow, Hannah, “for her selfe and Children”.

About 1656 or 1657 she is said to have married John Niles of Braintree, whose first wife, Jane, had died there on 15 May 1654.

The family

Their son John moved to Bridgewater, in the Plymouth Colony^W, by 1672 and married Sarah Willis, according to a history of the town published in 1840. The same history records that William’s brother, John Ames, one of Bridgewater’s original proprietors, had no children and gave his large estate by deeds in 1697 to this nephew and to the nephew’s sons.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through Hannah Ames, who married John Hayden at Braintree in 1660, her daughter Hannah Hayden and Hannah Hayden’s son Hezekiah Thayer, whose son Noah Thayer (born 1745) was the father of Mary Thayer (1770–1827). Two of Mary’s grandchildren, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), married each other, so their son Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908) descended from her through both parents.

Notes

Her name

The records call her only Hannah, the wife and then the widow of William Ames; her surname and her parents are not known.

Her children

The Braintree town records enter the births of John, Sarah and Deliverance, each as a child of William Ames and Hannah his wife. The three elder daughters come from a history of Bridgewater published in 1840, which gives the family “according to Boston records”, and from an Ames genealogy printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1862, which follows it; the same history makes the eldest, Hannah, the bride of John Hayden in 1660.

Her second marriage

Her marriage to John Niles comes from Clarence Torrey’s compiled index of New England marriages, which in one place dates it 1660 and in another queries 6 April 1660 and gives about 1656 or 1657 instead. The Hannah Ames who married John Hayden at Braintree on 6 April 1660 was not the widow but, most likely, her daughter: John Hayden’s wife bore him a son, Josiah, in 1669, almost thirty years after the birth of the widow’s eldest child.