♂Thomas Hull

Thomas Hull (buried 29 December 1636) was a man of Crewkerne, in Somerset, England, and the father of eleven children, two of whom, George and Joseph, settled in New England. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Joseph Hull (1596–1665). His youngest son, Joseph Hull^W, was the clergyman who led a company of West Country families to Massachusetts in 1635, while Thomas was still alive.

Early life and marriage

Thomas was born about 1552, a son of Richard Hull of Crewkerne, a miller and husbandman, and his wife Alice. His father was buried at Crewkerne in February 1558/9, when Thomas was about six.

Thomas Hull married Joan Pyssing at Crewkerne on 11 January 1572/3. The couple lived at Winsham, in Somerset, where their first two children were baptized in 1574 and 1576, and at Crewkerne.

Children

Eleven children were born to Thomas and Joan between 1574 and 1596. Several died young: Agnes in 1579, Mary in 1584, and a first Joseph in April 1595, a year after his baptism. A year later, on 24 April 1596, another son was baptized at Crewkerne and given the name Joseph again. In the spring of 1597 two more sons, Richard, baptized in 1579, and Robert, baptized in 1584, were buried nine days apart.

Of the sons who grew up, William became a clergyman and was buried at Colyton, in Devon, in 1627, and John died the same year. George married at Crewkerne in 1614 and went to New England, as Joseph did in 1635.

Last years

Joan was buried at Crewkerne on 30 October 1629. Thomas outlived her by seven years, and was still living when Joseph sailed for Massachusetts in the spring of 1635. He made his will on 17 December 1636 and was buried at Crewkerne twelve days later, on 29 December. The will, proved on 10 February 1636/7, remembered the four children of his daughter-in-law Edith Hull, most likely the widow of his son John.

Notes

Sources for the family

His marriage, will and burial, Joan’s burial and the children’s baptisms and burials come from a Hull family-society typescript, “The Hull Line”, which follows John Insley Coddington’s article “The Pyssing Ancestry of the Hulls of New England” (in the Evans Festschrift, pages 44 to 51). The typescript calls him “Thomas Hull, the Younger” and places his birth about 1552; the records do not explain whom the name distinguished him from. Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Newsletter calls him “Thomas Hull of Crewkerne, co. Somerset”, and his Great Migration Begins (page 1042) agrees that George Hull was a son of Thomas and Joan (Pyssing) Hull.

His parents

Richard Hull’s trade and burial come from a second Hull family history, citing Holway’s Holway-Rich Heritage, which calls him “the first Hull of whom we have a record” and says that Alice was his second wife. The typescript makes Thomas a son of Richard and Alice.

The date of the marriage

The second family history gives the marriage as 1 November 1572, against the typescript’s 11 January 1572/3.

Edith Hull

The typescript gives the son John, buried on 10 October 1627, a wife named Edith. That she is the Edith Hull of the will is an inference.