♀Sarah Soole

Sarah Soole (died 18 August 1656) was the wife of Samuel Hinckley of Tenterden, in Kent, with whom she crossed to New England in 1635, and the mother of a large family raised at Scituate and Barnstable, in Plymouth Colony^W. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Susanna Hinckley (baptized 1625).

In Kent

Samuel and his wife Sarah were most likely the “Samuell Hinckley and Sarah Soole” who married at Hawkhurst, in Kent, on 7 May 1617; a son Thomas, “sonne of Samuell Hincle”, was baptized there on 19 March 1619/20. That son, Thomas Hinckley^W, became the last governor of Plymouth Colony. By 1625 the family was at Tenterden, where their daughter Susanna was baptized at St Mildred’s church on 6 November 1625.

New England

In April 1635 the family took passage in the Hercules of Sandwich, listed as “Samuel Hinckley of Tenterden and Sara his wife”, with their daughters Susan, Sara and Mary and a kinswoman named Elizabeth. They settled first at Scituate. Sarah is said to have joined the church there on 30 August 1635, and a daughter, Elizabeth, was baptized the following Sunday. A servant of the household, Jervice Large, was buried at Scituate on 9 August 1636. Several of the children born in New England reportedly died as babies, among them two sons named Samuel, born a year apart at Scituate, and twins in 1641.

By July 1640 the family had moved to Barnstable, on Cape Cod, and on 8 July 1640 a daughter was buried there unbaptised, the church record noting that it was “uppon their comeing hither”. A son Samuel was born there on 24 July 1642 and a son John on 24 May 1644. On 22 May 1643 Susanna was contracted in marriage to John Smith, and the Barnstable pastor John Lothrop^W wrote that the contract was made “at o[ur] Syster Hinckleyes house”. Members of his church called one another brother and sister, and the house was presumably Sarah’s own.

Sarah died at Barnstable on 18 August 1656. Samuel married again the next year, and his will names seven children: Thomas, Susanna, Sarah, Mary, Elizabeth, Samuel and John.

Notes

Her maiden name

The Hawkhurst register records the marriage of “Samuell Hinckley and Sarah Soole” on 7 May 1617, but it names no residence for them. A later online family tree gives the marriage as 12 May 1617. Elizabeth French, writing in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1914, identified the couple with the emigrants of 1635, and the baptism of Thomas at Hawkhurst on 19 March 1619/20 supports her identification. Her pedigree of the family lists thirteen named children, all of them Sarah’s. A later family history writes the name Soule.

Dates

The Barnstable town records give her death as 18 August 1656, and James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England gives the same day; George Thomas Little’s Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine gives 16 August. An online index of Massachusetts town records gives her death at Sandwich, probably an indexing slip for Barnstable. Her joining the church at Scituate, Elizabeth’s baptism and the deaths of the infants come from Savage.

“Syster Hinckley”

Lothrop’s entry is printed from his church records in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (volume 10, page 39). Her son Thomas had married Mary Richards in December 1641, so the “Syster Hinckley” of 1643 could also have been his wife; taking “Syster Hinckley” to mean Sarah is an inference.