HART MEMORIAL.



FIRST GENERATION.

DEACON STEPHEN HART,

BRAINTREE, ENG.; CAMBRIDGE, MASS.; HARTFORD AND TUNXIS, CONN.

1.
Cambridge, Hartford, and Farmington.

DEACON STEPHEN HART, son of                           , and his wife,                 born about 1605, at Braintree, in Essex County, Eng. He came from there to Massachusetts Bay about 1632, and located for a time at (Newtown,) Cambridge, Mass; married                            . She died, when second he married Margaret, the widow of Arthur Smith, and daughter of               . She survived Deacon Hart, and was admitted to the church in Farmington, March 17th, 1690-1. She died in 1693.

Deacon Hart and his first wife were constituent members of the church in Farmington, organized November, 1652, with Rev. Roger Newton pastor. Mr. Hart had been deacon of Rev. Thomas Hooker's church, at Cambridge, Mass., and at Hartford, Conn. He was one of the fifty-four settlers at Cambridge, Mass., was a proprietor at Hartford in 1639, and became one of the eighty-four proprietors of Farmington in 1672. In 1647 he was one of the "deputyes" of the General Court of Connecticut, at their May session. In 1653 he was appointed a Commissioner, by the General Court, for the town of Farmington, to aid the constable in impressing men into the army, then being raised.

Stephen Hart is supposed to have come from Braintree, Essex County, England, with the company that settled Braintree, Mass., and subsequently removed to Newtown, since called Cambridge, and constituted the church of which Rev. Thomas Hooker was invited from England to become their pastor. He was in Cambridge in 1632, and admitted a freeman there, May 14th, 1634. He came to Hartford with Mr. Hooker's company in 1635, and was one of the original proprie-