♀Jane Porter

Jane Porter (baptised 8 April 1577) was an Englishwoman from the Sussex Weald, the daughter of an ironmaster of Bayham whose will left her a portion of two hundred pounds when she was seven. She married Edmond Hawes, a gentleman of Hillfield in Solihull, Warwickshire. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Edmond Hawes (1612–1693), who emigrated to New England.

Early life

Jane was baptized at Frant, Sussex, on 8 April 1577, a daughter of Richard Porter. The Frant register records six children of Richard baptized there between January 1575/76 and June 1583: John, Jane, Martha, Thomas, Richard and Elizabeth. An elder sister, Mary, appears in the family’s wills but not in the Frant baptisms.

Her father was buried at Frant on 27 August 1584, entered in the register as “Richard Porter, gentleman at Bayham”. Bayham lies near Frant on the Sussex–Kent border, and his leases there covered “the Landes woodes and workes”. Five days before his burial he had made his will, “beinge sicke in bodye”. It shows that he ran “my Iron workes” at Bayham. The Weald was then England’s chief iron-making district, and his will names his hammer man and a nailer at Wadhurst. His brother Thomas Porter was to serve for four or five years as clerk or bailiff of the works. The will left his wife, also named Jane, household goods, cattle, corn and two hundred pounds. Jane and each of her sisters received two hundred pounds, and a further share was set aside for a child not yet born. Richard asked that his children “shalbe well and vertuouslye brought upp in learninge”.

Her mother, also named Jane, was probably a daughter of Robert Whitfield of Wadhurst, Sussex. After Richard’s death she married Edward Quinby of Titchfield, Hampshire, and in her own will, dated 6 August 1618, she left twenty pounds to her daughter Jane.

An uncle, Stephen Porter of Wadhurst, made his will in March 1581 and left twenty shillings to “Jane Porter my neece”. He then named four other children of his brother Richard separately. The will does not say whose daughter this Jane was, so it may or may not refer to her.

Marriage and family

Jane married Edmond Hawes of Hillfield, Solihull, before 1600. The marriage is not in the Frant register, and no record of it has been found. A family history published in 1914 names her as “Jane Porter, daughter of Richard of Bayham, co. Sussex”, and gives the marriage as before 1600. The records do not explain how a Sussex ironmaster’s daughter came to marry a Warwickshire gentleman. Her first child, a daughter named Jane, was baptized at Solihull on 5 October 1600. The couple had twelve children, baptized between 1600 and 1618. At least two died young. The son who carried the line was Edmond, baptized at Solihull on 15 October 1612. He became a cutler in London and crossed to New England in 1635.

Notes

No record of her death is known. Online family trees give her a birth in 1582, which the 1577 baptism rules out, and a death either in 1636 in Dorset or in 1644 at Solihull, with no source for either.

Her mother

The 1619 Visitation of Kent (Harleian Society vol. 42, 1898), p.155, a heraldic pedigree compiled from the family’s own report, gives Richard Porter of Bayham as married to “Jana filia Rob’ti Whitfeild de Wadhurst” and lists “Jana vx’ Edmundi Hawes de Solihull” among his children. Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England, vol. 2, pp.1353-4 and 1436-7, gives the same identification and states that Richard’s widow married Edward Quinby. Edward Quinby’s will, dated 3 February 1612/13 and proved on 28 February 1613/14, names his wife Jane. The will of Jane Quinby, widow, dated 6 August 1618 and proved in 1624 in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PROB 11/144), leaves twenty pounds to “Jeane Hawes my daughter”. The 1618 date comes from the abstract in Quinby, Genealogical History of the Quinby (Quimby) Family (1915), pp.58-9. No single record says in so many words that Jane Quinby was Richard’s widow, but her will names his children as her own.