♂John Hawes

John Hawes (16 July 1640 – 11 November 1701) was a colonist of Yarmouth, on Cape Cod, the son and sole executor of the emigrant Edmond Hawes, who was styled Ensign in 1693 and Captain by the time of his death. When his father made his will in 1692, John’s son Edmond was away, and the family did not know whether he would come back. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Benjamin Hawes (1683–1722).

Early life and marriage

John was born at Duxbury, in Plymouth Colony, on 16 July 1640, a son of Edmond Hawes (1612–1693). A history of the Barnstable families describes his father as “Mr. Edmond Hawes, called a cutler, who came from London in 1635”, and the family settled at Yarmouth. A study of the English ancestry of the Hawes family, published in the 1910s, calls John the emigrant’s only son.

On 7 October 1661 he married Desire Gorham (1644–1700), a daughter of Captain John Gorham. The same Barnstable history, drawing on the Barnstable and Yarmouth town records, calls the groom “Capt. John Hawes of Yarmouth”, and it corrects an earlier compiler who had married her instead to a Samuel Hinckley. Robert Charles Anderson’s study of the Great Migration identifies her as a daughter of John and Desire (Howland) Gorham and a granddaughter of John Howland, a passenger on the Mayflower; the Howland descent rests on that compiled work. A compiled account of the family gives the couple eleven children, born between 1662 and 1683, and every one of the eleven is named in one or other of the two family wills: Elizabeth, who married a Dogget; Mary, who married a Baron; Experience; Edmond; John; Joseph; Jabez; Ebenezer; Isaac; Desire; and Benjamin.

His father’s estate

Edmond Hawes made his will at Yarmouth on 5 May 1692, “being aged and under much bodily decay”. He left to “my Naturall son John Hawes” all his uplands, meadows and marshes in the township, named him sole executor, and gave a cow and calf, the great brass kettle, the brass mortar and pestle and the household stuff to John’s wife. He left something to each of John’s children. One bequest shows that a grandson was missing: John’s son John was to have a two-year-old and a young horse, “if his brother Edmond dont come again: But if Edmond his Brother do come again I do give ye young horse to him”. The will does not say where the younger Edmond had gone, and he is not named in his father’s will nine years later. A codicil of 31 March 1693 gave John the choice of settling six acres on his son Joseph somewhere else, “to ye sd Josephs Liking”, in place of the land the will had set aside for him. Edmond died on 9 June 1693, and on 20 July the will was proved and administration granted to “Ensign John Hawes of sd yarmouth son of ye deceased, Executor”.

Last years and will

Desire died at Yarmouth on 30 June 1700, aged 56. John made his own will on 15 October 1701, “being by the hand of God brought very low and weak in body”. He left the dwelling house and barn with one acre to his son Isaac, eight acres to Ebenezer, and the rest of his land and meadow to Joseph and Isaac equally. His “two unmarried daughters” Desire and Experience were given the right to live in the easternmost end of the house, and Desire had his second-best bed. His guns went to Joseph, Ebenezer and Isaac, with a gold ring to Joseph and a small gold ring to Mary Baron. The rest of his movable estate was to be divided in equal shares “unto my two sons John and Benjamin and my foure daughters Elizabeth Dogget and Mary Baron, Desire and Experience”. Joseph and Isaac were made executors, and the overseers named were his “loving brothers” Major John Gorham, his wife’s brother, and John Thacher.

John Hawes died at Yarmouth on 11 November 1701, by then part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. On 19 November the witnesses swore before Barnabas Lothrop, judge of probate, that they had seen “Capt John Hawes who is now Deceased” sign and seal the will. The inventory, taken in November by John Thacher and Josiah Thacher, begins room by room with his apparel, plate and arms, six beds with their furniture, pewter, brass and spinning wheels, and still lists “his wives apparell” among his goods. A compiled account of the family states that the inventory also listed “two Negro boys and an Indian girl”, valued together at £46; they are not named. The first page of the inventory holds only household goods, as the register copy gives it, and no entry for these three people is known in the original.

Notes

The birth date of 16 July 1640 at Duxbury rests on a memorial index and a lineage-society application; no record of the birth has been found. Anderson gives “say 1636”, his marker for an estimate reasoned back from the 1661 marriage, and several compiled indexes repeat 1635 or 1636. The marriage is placed at Yarmouth in one account, while Anderson and a lineage-society application place it at Barnstable. A probate index gives the date of his will, 15 October 1701, as the probate date as well; the will was in fact proved after his death, in November 1701.