Deacon Stephen Hart - Historical Issues #2

by David l. Hart

St.Nicholas Church

Straining my eyes to catch the name "Stephen Hart," I sat clutching a worn volume in the stacks of the University of Michigan Graduate Library. Suddenly there it was! In the middle of the will of Judith Morris, Dedham, Essex, I read the entire sentence and thought, "Wow, here is the connection with England! I've got to show this to Uncle Hildred!" This exciting moment of many years ago remains vivid as I try to connect this entry in the New England Historical and Genealogical Record (v. 48, p. 118) to other English records and thereby discover the forefathers of Deacon Stephen Hart.

Having begun this series of articles by discussing the date when Deacon Stephen Hart arrived in New England, we will now traverse the Atlantic to trace him through English records and see what we can learn of his life and ancestry in England.

The classic work on Deacon Stephen is the book written by Alfred Andrews in 1875, Genealogical History of Deacon Stephen Hart and His Descendants, 1632 - 1875. In this book, Mr. Andrews states that Deacon Stephen was "...born about 1605, at Braintree, in Essex County, Eng." (p. 39). Andrews assembled the best information he had available, and he presumably used American sources for this birthdate and place. Since Deacon Stephen was a member of the Braintree Company, it is not difficult to assume that he was born in Braintree. However, when a search is made of Braintree (England) parish records, no entry for a Stephen Hart can be found. I was told by a staff member at the Braintree City Hall that there is a gap in the Braintree parish records for a period of time including 1605. They were destroyed in a fire or some other disaster.

If Deacon Stephen was really born in Braintree, we may never know his actual birthdate and birthplace due to the reported absence of the parish records for that period. However, since it is not certain that he was a Braintree native, we are justified to look in other parts of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk for Stephen Harts of the right age. For several years Sue Rodwell, the persistent Ipswich genealogist, has been searching to see if there is a Stephen Hart who fits what we know about Deacon Stephen. The information shared in these articles is the results of seven years of collaboration with Sue in uncovering what is in the records.

The starting place for such a search is the Judith Morris will that I excitedly read for the first time that day in the library. (Of course, I am not the first to discover it; A. B. Hart, Professor of History at Harvard, knew of it years ago.) The sentences in the Morris will which caught my attention referred to Deacon Stephen Hart and his first four children. Her will, dated 25 January 1645, states, "To the major children of Stephen Hart, that is to say, John, Steven, Sarah, and the youngest that went with her father to New England, five pounds apiece." Further on in the will there is another statement: "...but all the rest of my estate unbequeathed I do give and bequeath unto my cousin Stephen Harte's children in New England, to be equally divided between them, ..."

This definitely refers to Deacon Stephen, since the three names mentioned are the same as three of his children recorded in his will in Connecticut dated March 16, 1682-3. The Hart will mentions in the following order: John, Steven, Thomas, Sarah, and Mary. Thus, we have concurrence of the names of three children on both sides of the Atlantic. "The youngest" mentioned in the Morris will was possibly Mary. The 1643 birth of Thomas, may have not been known to Judith Morris given the slow speed of mail in those days.

Not only were Deacon Stephen Hart and his children mentioned in Judith Morris' will, but they were very handsomely endowed by the bequest. She was evidently quite wealthy - she owned one sixteenth of a ship and loaned money to Parliament! Each Hart child was given £5, which was a large sum of money, equivalent to hundreds of dollars today. On top of that, the proceeds from the 1/16 part ownership she had in the ship and the profits from her loans to Parliament were to be sent to the Hart children in New England. They must have made out quite well (if the executors were honest).

I have been trying to establish the identity of Judith Morris for several years. I believe that if we can understand who she is and who her husband and relatives are, we may be able to find the link to Deacon Stephen Hart in the records. We do not have enough information to make a definite link yet, but Sue Rodwell is currently following leads into the Morris and Warren families which may provide the answers we seek.

As an interim report, I will share what Sue has found out about Judith Morris. Judith and a twin sister, Alice, were born in Stoke-by-Nayland, Essex, on February 27, 1603, to a couple with the surname Warin (surname spelling tended to vary quite a bit in those days depending upon who the scribe was). The record omitted her father's first name. However, with a little detective work we are rather sure his name was John Warren. Judith's will states that she had a brother named Joshua. The Nayland christening records contain a Joshua Warren who was baptized there on April 2, 1594, as son of John and Elizabeth Warren (John Warren and Elizabeth Scarlett were married in March 1584 in Nayland). Nayland is only two miles from Stoke-by-Nayland, so this is probably the same family. It is almost certain that this is the right Judith Warren as the brother's name matches and Stoke is merely five miles up the lovely Stour River valley from Dedham where Judith settled later in life.

Unfortunately, we do not know the name of Judith's husband. We have not yet found a record of Judith's marriage to Morris nor have we identified a will that could possibly be his. All we do have is a record of Judith's brother, Joshua, marrying Sarah Morris on May 7, 1618, in Colchester. It is possible that Sarah was related in some way to Judith's husband. This is an area for more searching.

The sailing ship mentioned in her will is another possible way of finding out who Judith's husband was. If we could find records stating who the owners of the ship were, Judith's husband may be included in the list. Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the ship; the will states only that John Hayward was the master (captain).

In her will, Judith called Stephen Hart, "my cousin." (Sue informs me that the word cousin was used for a wide variety of family relationships in those days.) If their relationship is as first cousins, then her father, John Warren, and Deacon Stephen's mother could have been brother and sister. One other possibility is that Elizabeth Scarlett Warren and Deacon Stephen's mother were sisters. We have not found a record of a Hart marrying either a Warren or a Scarlett, but are keeping our eyes open for this. These gaps in the records are maddening, but the tantalizing possibility of bridging them with other information motivates us to continue the search.

Another historian who was aware of the Morris will, was Mr. N.P.C. Tyack. He wrote a university thesis, Emigrants to New England from East Anglia 1630 to 1640, in which he lists Deacon Stephen as leaving Dedham for New England in 1632. This is probably a guess on his part, as neither Dedham parish records nor wills of Dedham residents contain any references to a Stephen Hart. It is possible that Deacon Stephen lodged with his cousin, Judith Morris, just prior to the departure of the Hart family to New England, but that is going beyond what is in the records.

Would any Hart of sound mind name their son Valentine? For whatever reason, a William Hart christened his son as Vallynstone (or Valentine--spelling varied quite a bit in those days) in 1564 in the St. Mary Elms parish church, Ipswich, England. This fellow is important to our story since Valentine shows up in Nayland to marry Catherine Jey in 1591. The couple had a daughter Mary in 1592 and we next hear of Valentine when, probably as a widower, he marries widow Margaret Lawson in Nayland in 1612. We are not certain about the end of his life, but there is a will for a Valentine Hart probated in South Lopham in 1633. However, the will is currently missing and copies are not yet located! So what is the point of this story? Valentine may establish a Hart social connection between Ipswich and the Nayland area and his will may contain other clues and facts.

Before we leave Valentine, it is useful to realize that the distances among these villages is not far. Nayland is about twelve miles southeast of Ipswich, both in Suffolk county. South Lopham is about 26 miles northeast of Ipswich in Norfolk. All are within about a day's walking journey from one another at a reasonable 3 to 4 mile per hour pace. We have not discovered another Valentine Hart in any records, so the compact area where the name Valentine shows up makes us believe these records are all for the same person.

Judith Morris' will reveals a social connection between her and a "preacher of the Word," Mr. Stanton of Ipswich. That phrase was used for Puritan clergyman. Judith was probably a Puritan as she willed money to Puritan clergy in several Essex villages. The large bequest to Stephen Hart's children also indicates her approval of their emigration to the New World to seek religious freedom and spread the Gospel. These two social connections between Nayland and Ipswich compel us to look in Ipswich records for Stephen Harts.

Stephen Hart's name is found in Ipswich records. The St. Nicholas church christening records contain entries for several children by a Stephen Hart starting in 1594. These records are listed below, the most interesting of which is the christening of a son, Stephen Hart, in 1602/3.

John Graham, the genealogist that Professor A.B. Hart engaged in the 1920's, found this entry and concluded that it was Deacon Stephen. The date is about right, but does this prove that this is the christening of Deacon Stephen? Unfortunately, no. We need more direct evidence to bridge the gap between maybe and probably.

To provide an idea of what the original record entry looks like, the accompanying figure is a reproduction of the St. Nicholas christening record for Steven, son of Steven. Note the old English script; some of the letters are quite different from the way they are written today, but there is no mistaking the name "Hart." Reading the old script is in itself a good reason to have an expert like Sue Rodwell searching the records. An amateur like myself is liable to miss a key entry because the letters are not recognized! It is true that many records have already been transcribed into modern handwriting or type and surname lists have been assembled, but there are many records still only found in the original handwriting. Also, it is sometimes useful to double check transcribed entries--to be human is to err!

Having found the christening record of the Ipswich Steven Hart, Jr., what about a marriage record for him and the christening of his children? I have a letter from Mr. Chester A. Foss of Demarest, NJ, who reports that the International Genealogical Index (IGI) for Suffolk contains some entries that are very mysterious. They are the births of three children to Steven and Elizabeth Hart in the parish of St. Nicholas, Ipswich: John in 1622, Sarah in 1626, and Mary in 1627. They are mysterious because they do not exist in the St. Nicholas records!! Sue Rodwell has patiently set up the microfiche reader and allowed me to pour through the records myself. Even with my halting reading of the old script, there was not one entry in this date range that came close to matching these three names. The unmistakable name "Hart" did not appear at all from 1622 to 1627 in St. Nicholas christening records.

Indeed, there are several other odd things about the three birth records. First, births were rarely recorded; it was the christening date that was written down by parish clerks. Second, all St. Nicholas parish christening records for that period list only the father's name, so the presence of the mother's name in this case does not match the rest of the records. Third, scribes normally included a day and month in their entries. Fourth, supposing that the parish name is wrong, when we look in the index for all Ipswich parishes the three names do not appear! Sue again informs me that there are cases where fictitious records have been entered into the IGI by less than scrupulous persons. We wonder if this is the situation here. Finally, a good Puritan couple in those troubled times normally did not take their children to an established church for christening. That ceremony would have been performed in one of the "underground" house churches and not recorded in official records.

It is unfortunate that we can't rely on these birth records in the IGI, since they would be enough to establish that the Ipswich Stephen Jr. is our Deacon Stephen. However, before we leave the topic of christening records, there are two in the Ipswich parish of St. Margaret that are very interesting. There is an entry for Sarah, daughter of Stephen Hart, on September 29, 1616, and one for Mary, daughter of Stephen Hart, on February 7, 1619. These could not be the children of the Ipswich Stephen, Jr. (he would be only 13), but could be his sisters if his father moved from St. Nicholas parish after the birth of Richard in 1605. Interestingly, the two names are the same as two of Deacon Stephen's daughters, but that may just be coincidence.

Though we are not sure we are digging into Deacon Stephen's family, it is still worth the while to uncover all the information available on the Ipswich Harts. We anticipate making a definite link between them and Judith Morris someday and then the work will be done! In the next article I will lay out the fascinating details of the Ipswich Harts and our discovery of another generation taking the Ipswich Hart family back into the 1500's!