Elizabeth HOYT

Samuel married Mary JAGGER on 29 Mar 1704 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. Mary (daughter of Jeremiah JAGGER and Sarah FERRIS) was born about 1683 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA; died about 1748 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Benjamin married Hannah WEED on 05 Jan 1670 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. Hannah (daughter of Jonas WEED and Mary ?) was born about 1650 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA; died on 09 Nov 1711 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Jeremiah married Sarah FERRIS about 1676 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. Sarah (daughter of Peter FERRIS and Elizabeth REYNOLDS) was born about 1655 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA; died before 1690 in Connecticut, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Fact: Son of John Hoyt and Ruth
• Occupation: Planter
• Birth: 20 Jan 1590, Upway, Dorchester, co. Dorset, England
• Immigration: 1629, Ship "Lyons Whelp"
• Fact: 18 May 1631, Freeman

Notes:

"The Hoyt and Haight Families in America": It appears, therefore, that Simon Hoyt landed in Salem in 1628 or 1629, perhaps by the ABIGAIL or the GEORGE, and very soon, in 1628 or 1629, probably the latter year, went to Charlestown as one of its first settlers. He could not have remained there more than a year or two, however, if he was one of the first settlers of Dorchester, in 1630. ....
It seems that Simon Hoyt left a widow named Susanna, who married a Bates, and died before Feb. 1674. From the fact that a Smith at Scituate is called his brother, it appears that either Simon, or a sister of his, married a Smith. It is probable that Simon had two wives, and that Walter, Nicholas, and John were the sons of the first wife, as will appear from the following agreement, found on the Stamford records: "Witnes these presents an agreement made & concluded between vs viz; Moses Hoyt, Joshua Hoyt, Samuell Hoyt, Benjamin Hoyt, Thomas Lyon, Samuel Flinch,Samuel Firman conserving yye distribution of ye Estate of our deceased mother Susana Bates, ye contents followeth
That Moses hoyt receive of Joshua Hoyt ye Just sum of four pounds, thirteen shillings & sixpence which ye said Joshua doth agree to pay. & Samuel Hoyt to have ye beding in his hands & ye horse & wels is in his hands. Benjamin Hoyt to have ye ten pounds left in his hands by our mother Susana afresaid. Thomas Lyon & Samuel Flinch to have ye horses & mares young and old running in ye woods of norwake equally between us, & twenty shillings to each of vs, paid by our brother Joshua Hoyt which ye said Joshua agrees unto.
Samuel Firman to have ye horses & mares runing in fairfeeld limits, & twenty shillings more paid by our brother Joshua Hoyt unto me. The Residue of ye Estate of our forsaid mother remaining in ye hands of our brother Joshua Hoyt being four pounds thirteen shillings & six pence, which ye said Joshua to hae as his pie in ye distribution of ye forsaid Estate mutually agreed unto. -- The distribution as above of ye Estate of our mother Amongst us to our mutuall satisfaction, in consideration whereof we the above named doe hereby Joyntly & severally release, discharge & aquit our borther Joshua Hoyt, & one another from all & any further demands of any right, title or interest in ye Estate aforesaid, & from all & any trouble or molestation in & about ye same.
Joyntly desiring ye this our agreement may be comited to publique record for the further establishment of ye same, further more it is agreed by us fore-named ye if ye shall arise any Just debts due fro our mother in her widdow-hood ye wee or any of us now not of, ye we ye forenamed will contrybute equally to ye payment of ye said debt. In witness of thrugh unto ye premises we ye piyes forenamed doe binds our selues firmly, as witnes our hands this 1st 12: Anno: 1674. Signed thus
Moses Hoyt
Joshua Hoyt
Samuell Hoyt
Benjamin Hoyt
thomas Lyon
Samuell Flinch
Samuell Firman

Witness - Abram Finch
Jonas Seely

From all that has been learned about Simon Hoyt, it is evident that he must have been born before 1600, probably as early as 1595. Hence he was probably thirty or thirty-five years of age at the time of coming to America, and sixty or sixty-five at the time of his death.
The chronicles of the time give us some idea of the hardships endured by the first settlers at Charlestown and Dorchester, - the sufferings of the winter; the conspiracy of the Indians t cut off th eEnglish, when "all hands, of men, women, and children wrought t digging and building," until a fort was completed; and the perils of pestilence and famine, when they were compelled to live on "clams, and muscles, and fish." In all these Simon Hoyt must have participated.
It also appears that he was an early settler of seven different towns in New England; and in most of them he was one of the first white residents. What an experience of pioneer life he must have had!! Scarcely was he settled in one place before he gave up his home, with all its comforts, and started to subdue a new portion of the wilderness. Most of his children seem to have shared the spirit of their father; for in twenty years after his death no one bearing the name of Hoyt was left in either of these seven towns, except Stamford. the hardy and courageous character of the family is shown, not only by their frequent changes of residence, but by the fact that they lived, in Windsor, at least, away from the other settlers...

Simon married Susannah SMITH about 1632 in (Prob) Scituate, Massachusetts. Susannah was born about 1597; died before 1 Feb 1674. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Name:
"Connecticut Ancestry": the authoritative account of his life that appears in the book, "Ancestry of Elizabeth Barrett Gillespie", by Paul W. Prindle, F.A.S.G., may be relied upon with confidence. As reported by Prindle and others, Jonas Weed was a passenger in the Winthrop Fleet that sailed to the Massachusetts By in 1630, although the exact name of the ship he sailed on within that fleet cannot be determined. His residences in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Wethersfield, Connecticut prior o Stamford are already well documented by others including Paul W. Prindle and Robert C. Anderson and need not be duplicated here.

No birth records appear to have survived for any of his 10 children, but they are all evident from other surviving records, and they were almost certainly all born in Connecticut. the list given by Prindle has recently been updated by Anderson (the Great Migration Begins) and is used here in preference to the Prindle list. All except the first three were probably born at Stamford.

Jonas married Mary ? about 1637 in Wethersfield, Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Mary was born about 1604; died between 1689 and 1690 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Jeremiah married Elizabeth ?. Elizabeth was born about 1619; died after 1670. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Name:
"Connecticut Ancestry": Peter Ferris and his brother Joseph and brother-in-law Jonathan Reynolds were among the 12 Greenwich residents who decided to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the New Haven Colony on 6 October 1656. The exact nature of this transaction is not clear, since the Colony noted that "They are to fall in with Stamford, and be accepted a part thereof." Apparently there was some kind of a split within the Greenwich community, and it may be presumed that there wre others still resident in that town who preferred to remain under the prevailing Dutch control. No boundary changes seem to have resulted from this event.

It does appear, however, that Peter Ferris was a resident of Stamford for most of his career. He held several positions of responsibility in that town over the years, including being named deputy (representative) to Connecticut General Court (Assembly) in 1667. All other references to Peter Ferris in Greenwich appear to relate to his son, Peter Ferris Jr.

The names of the children in this family have been confusing for researchers, at least partly because of incompleteness in the records. One of the boundaries in determining Peter's children has been his father Jeffrey's mention in his will, made on 6 January 1664, of "my sonn Peter Fferris his three children." On the surface, this seems to include Joseph, Peter Jr., and either Mary or the second Elizabeth, who was only 4 years old when Jeffrey made his will. The first Elizabeth is known to have died in infancy.

Another boundary on the identification of Peter's children is his making of two deeds of gift to his loving grandson Jeremiah Jagger on 24 May 1698 and 27 September 1706 (the latter was on the day before Peter died.) this Jeremiah Jagger was not yet 21 years old in 1698, and was therefore the third generation Jeremiah Jagger, born to Jeremiah Jagger and a daughter of Peter Ferris. Peter Ferris and Abraham Ambler administered the estate of Jeremiah Jagger in 1690, and Elisha Holly, Daniel Scofield and Peter Ferris took the inventory. The estate's largest debt (L30) was to Peter Ferris, and Jagger's heirs were named as (his children) Sarah age 13, Elizabeth age 11, Mary age 7 and Jeremiah age 5. Therefore the grandson Jeremiah had been born in about 1684, and his oldest sister Sarah had been born in about 1676. Their mother must have been born before say 1656 or so, assuming she was at 20 when her first child was born. This means (on the basis of age) she could not have been either Mary, born in 1662 or the second Elizabeth, born in 1664. Paul Prindle could only resolve this situation by postulating an earlier, first child for Peter Ferris, born perhaps as early as 1655, and perhaps called Sarah, since she gave her eldest child that name. This daughter would have been living at least as late as 1684 (when Jeremiah Jagger was born) and was therefore very much alive when Jeffrey Ferris made his will (in 1664) numbering only 3 children for his son Peter. Prindle solved THIS problem by supposing that Elizabeth (b. 1664) was not the third child named in her grandfather's will after all, and that the discrepancy could be explained either by Jeffrey's being unaware of a new grandchild born just 4 days before he made his will, or more likely, that it was due to a specific effect of old style dating, and that Elizabeth had not yet been born. This compilation accepts that arrangement, since this specific case was in the direct line of Prindle's client's ancestry, and he would have been sure to place the highest importance on getting it right. Capt. Jim Ferris was apparently unaware of this line of reasoning, and did not consider a possible additional daughter for Peter Ferris, born say bout 1655. His solution was to place the second Elizabeth as the wife of Jeremiah jagger and make her the mother of the four jagger grandchildren, and in the process he actually telescoped the first two Jeremiah Jaggers into one person. In addition to its misunderstanding of the Jagger family, this proposal is not viable since it requires the improbable situation that Elizabeth (b. 1664/65) was only about 12 years old when the oldest Jagger grandchild was born.

We now turn to the Hannah Ferris who married Capt. John Knapp at Stamford on 10 June 1692. She must have been born before about 1674, assuming she was at least 18 years old when married. She was the subject of queries to the "Hartford Times" and the "Boston Transcript", but apparently no one has yet conclusively proven her identity. In the only positive answer to these newspaper inquiries, H.S.C. gave the following statement," Hannah Ferris, daughter of Peter and Elizabeth (Reynolds) Ferris, married John Knapp June 10, 1692. She died afterwards, leaving two children, Samuel and John." Actually she left at least 7 children, Samuel, John, Hannah, Peter, charles, Deborah, and Moses. But the real problem here is that S.P Mead's History does not give this identity for Hannah at all, and as a matter of fact does not even list a Hannah Ferris as a daughter of Peter and Elizabeth.

Other writers have also included Hannah as a daughter of Peter Ferris, but without any real support. Nevertheless, it does seem reasonable to place Hannah here in this family, probably born sometime after Jeffrey Ferris died in 1666/67. In another "Boston Transcript" query, M.S.R.S. put the issue quite clearly as follows," She (Hannah) must have been of the third generation of Jeffrey Ferris' family. Was she the daughter of Peter or of Joseph Ferris? Mead's "Greenwich" gives Joseph a daughter Hannah, but as wife of Jonathan Austin. John Ferris and his family lived too far fro Stamford, and James Ferris was married too late. This seems to leave Peter Ferris as the only possible father for (the) above Hannah." Capt. Jim Ferris also placed Hannah in this family, but again without any supporting documentation.

There is some important additional evidence that tends to confirm that Hannah Ferris, wife of John Knapp, belongs in this family. First, it is probably significant that they named a child Peter, since the name Peter does not appear earlier in the Knapp line and this may therefore have been in honor of her father. Secondly, on 2 April 1712, the brothers Joseph and Peter Ferris, "sons of Peter Ferris late of Stamford deceased" ( and therefore Hannah's brothers if she were indeed a part of this family) sold a three-acre home lot in Stamford to John Knapp. it is significant that this land was described as "...whereon Standeth ye new Dwelling house and barn of sd John Knap." the fact that John Knapp had built his new house and barn on this land while it was still owned by this branch of the Ferris family is strong circumstantial evidence that he had indeed married a daughter of Peter Ferris Sr.

A letter in the Edich Vicks Papers at the Stamford Historical Society claims that the late Virginia Olson (co-author of "Stamford's Soldiers" and former genealogist of the Stamford Genealogical Society) had told the writer that "Peter and Elizabeth were the parents of Hannah. She (Mrs Olson) states, 'Hannah proved by deeds as the daughter of Peter but birth not recorded; married John Knapp 10 June 1692. She died 27 Sep 1724.' Mrs. Olson also quotes the "Hartford Times 12/28/1940 as giving reference to the relationship."

Although an excellent circumstantial case may be made for Hannah's placement in this family, it is not yet felt to be conclusive, and she must be paced here in this present compilation want the qualifier, "probably".

Peter married Elizabeth REYNOLDS on 15 Jul 1654 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. Elizabeth (daughter of John REYNOLDS and Sarah CHESTERFIELD) was born about 1636; died in 1703 in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]