Category Archives: A Word about the Wives

Lydia Leonard (1721/22-1763), Hannah Keith (1721-1796), wives of Jonathan4 Hall, Jr.

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Jonathan’s4 first wife, Lydia Leonard, died 26 June 1763 in Raynham, Bristol, Massachusetts, at the age of 42 years. She is buried in the Hall plot in what is now known as the Pleasant Street Cemetery in Raynham Center. Based on her age at death, her birth year would have been 1721-22. Lydia would have been about 17 years old when she married Jonathan on 28 December 1738 (Raynham Town Records).

Photo Courtesy of Brady Fitts

Photo Courtesy of Brady Fitts

Early female ancestors are difficult enough to trace when primary sources are available, and are made much more difficult to find when the original records have been destroyed. In 1838 the original records of Taunton, Bristol County, Massachusetts were destroyed by a fire and town officials set about to restore those records to the best of their ability using sources such as family bibles, church records and headstone inscriptions. Because the original records were destroyed, there is no record of Lydia’s birth identifying her parents or when she was born.

In researching Lydia over the years, some genealogies gave her parents as Ensign Seth Leonard and his wife, Dorcas White, while other documents presumed that she must have been of another Leonard family. While most of those genealogies contained no sources at all, some did use secondary sources as their evidence. In the reconstruction of the birth records of the children of Seth and Dorcas White Leonard, Lydia was not mentioned. Anyone who has researched the early Taunton, Massachusetts records, while the town officials did a commendable job in attempting to reconstruct the early records the best that they could, knows that many gaps were left never to be filled in. It takes finding other types of primary documents to take the place of vital records.

Without the benefit of primary vital records, we initially looked to the naming patterns of the first few male children to try to help identify Lydia’s parents. The first son born to Jonathan and Lydia was named Jonathan, which would fit in naming the first born son after Jonathan Hall, Sr. The second born son was named Seth. It also fits the naming pattern of the 1700’s that the second born son might be named after the wife’s father. There were no Seth’s in Jonathan’s ancestry. The third born son was named Silas. No one in Jonathan’s family was named Silas, so we looked deeper into the Leonard family and found that Lydia had a first cousin born in 1708, the Reverend Silas Leonard. It is therefore conceivable that Jonathan and Lydia named their third born son after Lydia’s cousin. And even though the recorded birth in the Raynham Town Records shows him listed merely as Silas Hall, in various documents and records of later years he is identified as either Silas L. Hall or more often as Silas Leonard Hall. Since it was highly unusual for a child to be given a middle name in the early- to mid-1700’s, this extended name provided us with valuable information.

During email conversations with a Leonard researcher in the continued attempt to document Lydia’s birth date and parents, it was learned that a document existed in the Seth Leonard Estate papers whereby “children and near relations” signed a petition to have Seth Leonard declared incompetent and placed under guardianship. Learning about these sorts of documents is like finding a huge nugget of gold, estate papers being wonderful primary sources. I ordered the estate papers from Bristol County and the packet did indeed contain the Petition to have Seth Leonard declared Non Compos Mentis and in need of a guardian, dated Raynham, September 15, 1761. The Petition was signed by those described in the document as “children and near relations”. Jonathan4 Hall, Jr. was one of the 18 signers of the Petition. Jonathan Hall also signed the obligation bond, dated October 3, 1761. In addition, the Petition was signed by Seth Hall, probably the grandson of Seth Leonard and son of Jonathan and Lydia Leonard Hall, and by Amariah Hall, a first cousin of Jonathan Hall. This document, coupled with the naming patterns of Jonathan and Lydia’s first three sons gave us both the primary and strong circumstantial evidence we needed to declare Lydia the daughter of Ensign Seth Leonard and his wife, Dorcas White, when no vital records were available.

In addition, although Seth Leonard’s headstone has never been found, the headstone of his wife, Dorcas White Leonard, is found in the row next to the Jonathan Hall family in the Pleasant Street Cemetery in Raynham Center, Massachusetts.

Dorcas White, wife of Ensign Seth Leonard

Dorcas White, wife of Ensign Seth Leonard

Not quite a year after Lydia’s death, Jonathan married Hannah Keith Leach Hall on 25 April 1764 (Raynham Town Records). At the time of Lydia’s death, Jonathan was left with 7 children under the age of 20 years in his home. Jonathan was Hannah’s third husband. She was born 7 April 1721 in Bridgewater, Plymouth, Massachusetts to John Keith and his wife, Hannah Washburn. Hannah married first Benjamin Leach, 10 January 1739/40, second to Philip Hall (a great-grandson of George Hall of Taunton [not related to the subject Hall family]), and third to Jonathan Hall. After Jonathan died on 25 February 1789, she married Israel Washburn on 14 June 1790. Hannah died 4 January 1796 and is buried in the Pleasant Street Cemetery in Raynham Center, Bristol, Massachusetts.

Sarah Ockington (1691-1726), Sarah Smith (1691-1753), wives of Jonathan3 Hall, Sr.

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As with the previous posts on Esther Hall, wife of Edward Hall of Rehoboth, and Abigail Pratt, wife of Samuel Hall, there is, again,  very little to tell about Sarah Ockington and Sarah Smith, wives of Jonathan Hall, Sr.  It is truly regrettable that so little can be discovered about our early female ancestors. It would so enrich our ancestral history to know something about them but the lack of written documentation on the wives is, well, just history.

Jonathan’s first wife, Sarah Ockington, was born in Dedham, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on August 28, 1691 (Vital Records of Dedham, Mass. 1635-1845, Revised and Expanded Edition, compiled by Robert Brand Hanson, Picton Press, Camden, Maine, 1997), to Thomas Ockington and Rebecca Mason. The original Dedham Vital Records have her as having been born in 1690 but I prefer to use the revised edition of the Dedham vital records as my primary source.

There is no record of the marriage date, or place, of Jonathan and Sarah, so an approximate year of 1714 is used. It is likely that they were married in Dedham. According to the First Book of Raynham Records, their first child, Jonathan Jr. was born in May of 1716 and their sixth child, Mason, in January of 1725/26. If Mason’s birth year was actually 1726, perhaps there were medical issues with the birth that caused Sarah to die three months later on March 28, 1726, at the age of 35 years, five months short of her 36th birthday. Sarah is buried next to her husband, Jonathan, in one of the several Hall plots in the Pleasant Street Cemetery in Raynham Center, MA.

Headstone photo courtesy of Brady Fitts

A year after the death of his first wife, Sarah Ockington, Jonathan married second, Sarah Smith, born August 7, 1691 in Dedham, Massachusetts Bay Colony to Asahel and Elizabeth Smith. Their April 11, 1727 marriage in Dedham, MA is recorded in the revised Dedham Vital Records (see cite above). Sarah was the mother of two children, Elizabeth Hall, born 1728 and Hannah Hall, born in 1734.

Sarah (Smith) Hall was one of the original members of the First Congregational Church in Raynham, and her death is recorded in the Raynham Church Records as having occurred on July 15, 1753. Her headstone has not yet been located, though it is likely that she is buried in the Hall plot in the Pleasant Street Cemetery in Raynham Center, Massachusetts.

Abigail Pratt, 1665-1734

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Abigail Pratt, wife of Samuel2 Hall, was born June 16, 1665 in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts to Jonathan Pratt and Abigail Wood. Abigail was the eldest of seven children, having four younger sisters, Bathsheba, Hannah, Meletiah, and Bethiah, and two brothers, Jonathan and Jabez (Plymouth Colony Records 8:32,35).

Jonathan Pratt was the son of Joshua Pratt, the immigrant ancestor, who came to the Colony on either the Ann(e) or the Little James in 1623. In 1667 Jonathan was in Eastham, and in 1673 in Plymouth. After his wife, Abigail’s death in Plymouth in 1684, he removed to Taunton where he married abt. 1690, Elizabeth (White) Hall, daughter of Nicholas White, and the widow of Samuel Hall, son of George Hall of Taunton (the other, unrelated, Hall family); for those interested in the George Hall of Taunton family, please see Kathryn Hall’s Halls of Bristol County).

Abigail married Samuel Hall on January 3, 1683, a few months short of her eighteenth birthday and had her first known child, Jonathan3 Hall, in 1686, when she was 21 years of age. Abigail was 51 years old when her husband, Samuel, died in 1716. She is found on an Assessment List for Raynham, circa 1731/2 (Raynham Town Records), assessed 15 shillings. She was listed as Abigail Hall, Widow.

Ebenezer Pratt and Elizabeth Pratt, both minors at the time, were named in her husband, Samuel Hall’s Will. There is no documentation as to who the Pratt children were, but it is believed that they were the children of Abigail’s brother, Jabez (a witness to Samuel Hall’s will) and his wife, Elizabeth Cobb, thereby being Abigail’s nephew and niece. Ebenezer was to receive 20 acres of land if he were to live with Abigail until he reached 21 years of age. A deed written March 11, 1726/27 shows that Ebenezer Pratt was deceased by that date as in the deed, Samuel Hall, son of Samuel Hall, deeds to his daughter, Hannah Hall, “all my part in the twenty acres of land that my Honoured father did in his last will give to Ebenezer Pratt deceased…”.

Elizabeth Pratt is thought to have married Joseph Jones, son of Joseph Jones and Lydia Neale (Jones Genealogy) abt. 1723. Her first born son was named Ebenezer, possibly being named after her deceased brother. In 1729/30 Samuel Hall, son of Samuel, sells his portion of land that had been willed jointly to him and his brother Jonathan, by their father, to his brother Jonathan and Joseph Jones Second, possibly documenting a familial relationship of the Halls to the Jones family through Elizabeth Pratt.

Abigail lived for 18 years after her husband’s death. She remained a widow and died in Raynham on July 6, 1734 (First Book of Raynham Records). She must certainly be buried next to her husband, however, her headstone has not been found in the Town Cemetery in Raynham Center, Massachusetts (Pleasant Street Cemetery).

Esther Hall, wife of Edward Hall

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Esther Hall will most likely forever remain a mystery.  We have not been able to discover any documentation that gives her maiden name, birth or death dates, where she was born or where she died and is buried; nor the names of her parents.  No marriage records exists in those early records that are available.

I recently read a small book on early Duxbury.  The author made the comment that the search for love did not seem to travel far as most men in the Plymouth Colony married the daughters of their neighbors.  Is it possible that Esther’s family was of Plymouth Colony and a near neighbor of Edward Hall?  But then we have the fact that Edward, for no apparent reason that can be found, leaves Plymouth Colony for Braintree and remains there for about 5 years, where his first two children are born and recorded in the Braintree Vital Records.  I suspect that Esther was considerably younger than Edward and base this only on the fact that their last child, Benjamin, was born in 1668 when Edward was about 57 years of age.  Could it be possible that Esther’s family was of Braintree and that Edward and Esther lived with them the first few years of their marriage so that a very young wife might have the assistance of her mother as she bore her first two children?  We’ll probably never know the answers to these questions.

The only documentation on Esther Hall or the Widow Hall in Rehoboth follows.  There is no way to know for sure if the first entry from PCR pertains to Esther.

  • October 7, 1651, Grand Enquest presented Samuel Eaton and Goodwife Halle, of the towne of Duxborrow, for mixed dansing. Released with admonition (PCR 2:174).
  • Widow Hall appears on the earliest extant tax list in the town of Rehoboth, 1671 (Early Rehoboth, Vol. 1, by Bowen, p. 39).
  • Ester Hall is shown with one share of the Rehoboth North Purchase on 28 May 1672, Rehoboth town records (Early Rehoboth, p. 41).
  • Widow Hall appears on the Rehoboth 1674 tax list (Early Rehoboth, p. 16).

There are no further entries in the Rehoboth town records for either the Widow Hall or Esther Hall.

The Rehoboth Vital records contain the marriage of an Esther Hall to Thomas Jordan in Rehoboth on 24 December 1674.  There has been much speculation in published genealogies and histories that it was the Widow Esther Hall who married Thomas Jordan.  Other published genealogies and histories claim that it was Edward and Esther’s daughter, Esther, who married Thomas Jordan.  The only thing that is for certain is that there is absolutely no proof for either speculation.

The last document that mentions Esther Hall is a 1715 Quit Claim deed in which the siblings, Samuel, Thomas, Andrew, and Benjamin convey land in favor of their brothers, John and Preserved, described as:

…the lands which our father Edward Hall and our mother Esther Hall had in said Rehoboth in the Town of Attleborough in said county of Bristol….

The deed was recorded May 21, 1715 (Bristol Co. Deeds, 9:279-280).