I was recently contacted by a cousin from the "Kansas line" (Dr. Willard Parker Naramore - Ezra - Alpheus - Samuel - Samuel - Samuel - Thomas) who is interested in the early colonial history of the family. She prefers discussing family history over the phone, while I make "Silent Cal" seem loquacious by comparison. On top of that, it occurred to me that it's been quite a while since I've given much thought to any of it, and as a result was simply not prepared to extemporize on the early generations of the family in North America. What follows, in pseudo-conversational style, is my attempt at getting back up to speed on all this.
Q. When was Thomas born?
A. We
don’t know. We do know that he was
admitted as an inhabitant in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1664 and so was
likely of legal age by then. We also
know that he got married in about 1670 and had at least seven children over the next sixteen years. Taken
together, these suggest that he was born before 1644, but probably not too much
before.
Q. Where was Thomas born?
A. Also unknown – but he almost certainly came
from Devonshire. Devon is the ancestral
home of the Narramores, and apart from a handful of 14th and very early 15th-century mentions in neighboring Somerset, there is
absolutely no record of any member of the family outside of Devon - save for a single maritime parish marriage
record in London in 1628 - until Thomas shows up in Massachusetts in the 1660s.
This
interactive map shows the geographic
distribution of the Bynorthemore/Northmore/Narramore surname from 1290 to 1660.
Q. But what about all those family history sites
on the internet that say Thomas was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1640? Many of them also give his parents as Samuel W. and Margaret (Sims) Narramore.
A. You know, the Weymouth bit at least has a kernel of truth to it: Thomas’ wife, Hannah
Smith, was the daughter of James Smith Sr., who was an early settler of
Weymouth. Beyond that, it comes down to pure carelessness in indiscriminately pulling in data from other online family trees. Yes - there was a Thomas Narramore who was the son of Samuel W. Narramore and Margaret Sims, but that Thomas was born in Tennessee shortly after the American Civil War. We're talking here about the Thomas Narramore who was born about the time of the English Civil War, not the American one.
Q. If he wasn’t born in the Massachusetts
colony, then when did he emigrate?
A. There is no record of his passage. Prior to becoming a resident of Dorchester,
Massachusetts in 1664, he may have been in the area for at least a couple
years. There is an abstract of a
Middlesex County court proceeding from 1674, in which Samuel Ward of
Charlestown secured a judgment for debt against Thomas. A witness in the case testified that in 1662,
Thomas Narramore, a weaver of Boston, had bought a loom from Ward (absent a
transcribing error in the extract, it would seem that Ward was a very patient
man and/or the loom was purchased on a very long installment plan).
Q. So Thomas was a weaver?
A. Among other things, yes. A 1681 deed refers to him as “Thomas Narramore of
Boston in New England Fisherman . . .”
For a string of years in the 1680s, he was also regularly elected to the
minor town office of “corder of wood”, the duties of which were to inspect and
certify the proper size of cords prior to their sale. Whatever his financial difficulties in 1674,
he seems to have been among the ranks of respectable, middling tradesmen, a
property owner with sufficient standing in the community to be chosen for an
office of public trust.
Q. If there’s a deed, does that mean we know
where Thomas lived in Boston?
A. We most certainly do. The Narramore home was on what is now the
southeast corner of Hanover and Prince Streets in Boston’s North End. Or rather, given the significant widening of the streets in the intervening centuries, it would be more accurate to say that a good part of the home site now lies under the pavement and sidewalks there. The remaining portion of the Narramore property not swallowed up by the street expansion seem to correspond pretty well to the sliver of a building now occupying the corner address of 331 Hanover Street. The original property bounds would have extended several yards from the current building in both the Hanover and Prince Street directions.
As an aside, determining location from late
17th-century Boston deeds can be a fearful and wonderful thing. The naming and regularization of street names
was still a generation in the future, and so we read in Thomas’ deed that the
front edge of the property being sold was “next the narrow lane that runneth
along by the dwelling house of Mrs. Winslow” (who, thanks to that century’s
irregular spellings of just about everything, appears in other records as
“Winsley”, “Wensley” etc.)
I once spent far more time than I should
have researching the history of Boston street names and digging into all deeds
relating to the adjacent property owners referenced in Thomas’ deed (frequently
extending through several outwardly expanding layers of such “adjacent to’s”).
The end result of all this labor was a reasonably
coherent map of the neighborhood in Boston where Thomas lived and which could
pinpoint the location of his corner property.
Well-pleased with my efforts, I then almost immediately discovered that the work had
already been done about a century earlier by a dedicated Boston civil servant
named Samuel Chester Clough.
Have a look
at what he put together
here.
The image, a snapshot of Boston property
owners and boundaries in 1676, is divided into six squares; focus on the bottom
right and expland by clicking until you can clearly see the rectangle marked “2
nd
Meeting House”.
Then look at the
properties just above that, specifically the ones numbered 35, 36, 38, 39, 42,
43 and 46.
Q. I’m looking, but I don’t see Thomas Narramore’s
name anywhere.
A. Clough’s work is fantastic, if not downright
fanatic, in its detail, but he wasn’t perfect.
John Snell, a Boston shipwright, did indeed own property #38 on the map,
but Clough was clearly focused on property deeds and failed to note from
probate records that Snell had died late in 1668. The property then passed to his widow, the
former Hannah Smith and soon-to-be Hannah Narramore and was thus in Thomas’
hands in 1676.
That it is the same property as
referenced in the 1681 deed is beyond doubt.
To the right of #38 on the map there is a narrow, unnamed alley, the
other side of which (#46) is marked “J. Winsley”.
John Winsley’s widow, Elizabeth Paddy
Winsley, is the “Mrs. Winslow” of Thomas’s deed, whose “dwelling house” was
“next the narrow lane”.
You can even see
a portrait of her
here.
In the deed, Thomas sold a strip of land
(possibly the unattributed parcel #39 on Clough’s map) at the back of his
property to Arthur Kind, and the deed identifies Kind (#42) and land of
“Goodman Barker” (#43) as bordering Thomas’ on that side.
A “Mr. William Rowse” (#s 35 and 36) completes
the list of Thomas’ neighbors identified on the deed.
An early Boston silversmith, you can see some
of Rouse’s work
here.
He was married to neighbor Arthur Kind’s
daughter Sarah.
Q. You mentioned earlier that Thomas was married
in “about 1670”, which makes it sound as though no marriage record exists. So how is it that we know so much about his
wife’s family and previous marriage to John Snell?
A. The will of John Snell of Boston, ship
carpenter, made two days before his death in November 1668, gives custody of
his son John to his “Father in Lawe and mother in Lawe James Smith and Jone
Smith” and states that his wife Hannah “shall haue one third part” of “my
Estate in Land, House and household stuff”.
The will of James Smith, Sr. of Weymouth,
proved in 1676, mentions his wife Joane and his daughter Hannah Narramore. By the way - although not a direct descendant of James, it appears that Abigail Smith Adams was a member of this same extended clan of Weymouth Smiths.
Q. Who were Thomas and Hannah’s children, and
what do we know about them?
A. There are birth records (all in Boston) for
four and baptism records (all from Boston’s 2nd Church – see
Clough’s map) for three more:
- Hannah, born September 23, 1671. Probably the same Hannah Narramore who was
baptized on May 29, 1681.
- Sarah, born September 26, 1672. Probably died young.
- James, born May 4, 1674. Probably died young.
- John, baptized May 29, 1681. Possibly the same John Narramore who was a
shipwright’s apprentice in Boston in 1697 and in London the following year.
- Samuel, baptized May 29, 1681. Our direct ancestor.
- Nathaniel, baptized February 11, 1682. Probably died young.
- Sarah, born August 10, 1686 and baptized August
15, 1686. Probably the Sarah Narramore
who married John Not (or Nutt) on April 17, 1718. The ceremony was officiated by the Reverend
Cotton Mather (yes, that Cotton Mather).
Q. I see that three of the children were baptized on the same date: May 29, 1681. What’s the significance there?
A. Records of the Second Church show that Hannah
Narramore (Thomas’ wife) was admitted to membership on that date. In keeping with her newly-expressed faith (church
membership required public testimony of a conversion experience), it’s not
surprising that she would have had her surviving children baptized. Son Samuel was admitted to the church on January 30, 1703.
Q. Was Thomas a Puritan?
A. Unlike his wife and son, there is no record
that Thomas ever made the required public profession of faith and became a
member of any Massachusetts congregation.
That said, going to church wasn’t exactly optional in those days –
member or not, you were expected to attend and support the colony’s established
Congregational church and its pastors.
For the Narramores, living in Boston’s
North End, that meant attendance at Boston’s Second Church, helmed successively
from 1664 until 1728 by the father-son duo of Increase and Cotton Mather. In fact, the Narramores and Mathers were practically
next-door neighbors, as the Mather home was located just around the corner (see
parcels 26 and 27 on the Clough map).
That changed in 1676, when the Great Fire
of Boston swept through and devastated the area. The Narramore home was on the edge of the
destruction zone and survived, but both the Mather parsonage and the church
were destroyed. The church was rebuilt
the following year (it lasted until the Revolution, when the besieged British garrison
made firewood out of it) and the Mathers relocated within the same general
area, to Hanover Street. The former
parsonage site remained empty until 1680, when a spacious new townhouse was
built there for the well-to-do merchant Robert Howard. That house still stands today and is the oldest building in Boston. In the ninety-ninth year after the Great Fire, the then-owner of this house collected his boots and overcoat one April evening and headed out the door, on his way to begin a famous midnight ride.
The Narramore connection with the Mathers
actually goes back a generation earlier, to Increase’s father, the Reverend
Richard Mather. Richard was the pastor
of the church in Dorchester, and shortly after Thomas’ arrival there in 1664, Mather
drafted up a petition to the Massachusetts General Court which was signed by
virtually all of the men in town, including Thomas. The reason for the petition was Puritan
angst: the short-lived Cromwell dynasty
had come to an end, a Stuart was restored to the throne, and a royal commission
was on its way to New England. In the
short run, their apprehensions were misplaced, as the commission was given a
hearty welcome and then stonewalled at every turn. But while the commission was stymied diplomatically,
four warships it had brought in tow sailed off and engaged in diplomacy of a
more direct kind, capturing a little Dutch port then known as New Amsterdam.
Q. What became of Thomas and Hannah? I read somewhere that Thomas moved to New
Hampshire.
A. Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the
First Settlers of New England states of Thomas that “prob. he rem. to N.H.
and early in 1690 pray. for the jurisdict. of Mass.” Savage based this on the purported signature
of “Thomas Naramo” on a “General Petition of Inhabitants and train soldiers” from
New Hampshire to Massachusetts to set up a temporary government. The petition was dated February 28, 1690.
There are two problems with Savage’s
assertion:
1.
There is other documentary evidence showing that
Thomas was still in Boston at this time.
2.
Subsequent examinations of the petition led to
several corrections of the transcriptions of the signatories’ names. Of interest to us is the note in Libby’s Genealogical
Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire that “Thomas Naramo” was in fact a
misreading of “Thomas Wacomb”.
In other words, Savage was wrong. Thomas never moved to New Hampshire. He remained in Boston.
Q. OK, so what became of Thomas and Hannah? When did they die? Where are they buried?
A. By now, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear
that we just don’t know. No death, probate or gravestone records have been found.
However, we can make some reasonably educated guesses as to what might
have happened and when.
What with deeds, baptisms, tax assessments,
and town meetings, there is virtually unbroken testimony as to the Narramores’
presence in Boston throughout the entire decade of the 1680s. The very last record we have of Hannah is the
birth of daughter Sarah in 1686, by which point Hannah was likely in her early
forties and had probably borne close to a dozen children from her two marriages. The very last record of Thomas is his
election (for the sixth time) at a March 11, 1690 town meeting to the office of
“corder of wood”.
Beyond this, silence. A 1695 census of Boston heads of household has
no Narramores on it. That the children
were still around is evident from several references already cited above, but
the parents were clearly no more. The
most likely place of interment would have been the Copp’s Hill Burial Ground in Boston's North End.
Postscript (adapted from a genealogical message-board post I made many years ago)
It may only be coincidence, but it seems
worth mentioning that 1690 saw a terrible outbreak of smallpox in
Boston. As related in the first (and
only) edition of the newspaper Publick Occurrences, published in
September of that year:
The Small-pox which has been raging
in Boston, after a manner very Extraordinary, is now very much abated. It is
thought that far more have been sick of it than were visited with it, when it
raged so much twelve years ago, nevertheless it has not been so Mortal, The number
of them that have died in Boston by this last Visitation is about three hundred
and twenty, which is not perhaps half so many as fell by the former. The Time
of its being most General, was in the Months June, July, and August, then 'twas
that sometimes in some one Congregation on a Lord’s-day there would be Bills
desiring prayers for above an hundred Sick: It seized upon all sorts of people
that came in the way of it, it infected even Children in the bellies of Mothers
that had themselves undergone the Disease many years ago; for some such were now
born full of the Distemper. 'Tis not easy to relate the Trouble and Sorrow that
poor Boston has felt by this Epidemical Contagion. But we hope it will be
pretty nigh Extinguished, by that time twelve month when it first began to
Spread.
The epidemic was brought to Boston
with the arrival of a slave ship from Barbados.
Although quarantined on arrival in October 1689, the quarantine was
ineffective. Shortly before Thomas’ election
as corder of wood early the following year, Boston held its first public fast;
a second would follow in July.
In any event, whether through
complications of late-life childbirth, epidemics, or other means, it is all but certain that both parents were out of the picture by 1695 at the very latest, and most likely five years earlier than that. This would have left the young family
in a precarious situation. In 1690, none of the
children could have been older than nineteen, with the youngest only four. The likely outcome, as had already happened
with the children of Hannah’s earlier marriage to John Snell on his death in
1668, would have been the breaking up of the family, with the children parceled
out among relatives and friends where possible, taken in as servants in more
fortunate households, or perhaps, if old enough, apprenticed to a trade. The house and land would probably have been
sold to pay off any debts due from the estate, as well as to provide for the
upbringing of the children.
There is no known record of such a
sale, but that it must have taken place is evidenced by a deed of August 11,
1697 in which John Goodwin, mason, and Martha his wife sold property in the
North End of Boston (the boundary descriptions of which make it clear that it
was the former Narramore property) to Joseph Wadsworth, mariner. In itself, there is nothing remarkable in
this transaction, but there is an interesting story connected with the sellers.
John Goodwin was a prosperous mason who likely would have gone completely unremarked by history
had it not happened that in 1688 four of his children began suffering from
terrible and agonizing fits, “beyond those that attend an Epilepsy, or a Catalepsy”. With the doctors unable to discover a
physical cause, the sensibilities of the time demanded that a spiritual one be
found instead – and, in due course, one was.
It was remembered that the eldest Goodwin daughter, Martha, had
questioned their Irish laundress over the matter of some missing linen that it
was thought might have been stolen, and had in consequence been given a
tongue-lashing by the laundress’s mother, Goody Glover. When young Martha’s fits began shortly
thereafter, the opinion rapidly developed that Goody Glover was a witch. The “Hag”, as Cotton Mather referred to
her, was soon taken into custody, accused of witchcraft, tried, found guilty
and hanged on November 16, 1688 to the jeers of a Boston crowd. Her death did not immediately bring an end to
the children’s fits, but in time the situation returned substantially to
normal.
All of Boston’s ministers had been called in to do battle with these manifestations of Satan at the afflicted Goodwin household, but it was Cotton Mather who took a special interest in the case, at one point even bringing young Martha Goodwin to live in his household for a time, during which he made a careful study of her condition. The Goodwin case figured prominently in a book he published the following year, entitled "Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions", to which John Goodwin added his own account (Mather: “'Tis in his own Style; but I suppose a Pen hath not commonly been managed with more cleanly Discourse by an Hand used only to the Trowel ; and his Condition hath been such, that he may fairly have Leave to speak”). In any event, the Goodwins clearly gave substantial credit to Mather for the deliverance of their children. They became members of his church in 1690, as did their children after them. Their son Nathaniel was later an administrator of Mather’s estate.
This article notes that there was some confusion about where the Goodwins lived; in Mather's telling, they resided in the South End of Boston, but according to Hutchinson's later account, it was the North End. The answer may well have been both. The Clough map shows a "J. Goodwin" property on Blott's Lane in the South End, but if my hunch about the effects of the 1690 smallpox epidemic is correct, then the desire of the Goodwins to beome members of Mather's North End church and live in proximity to their spiritual guide may have been resolved in seemingly providential fashion by the sudden availability of the Narramore property and the need to provide for the orphaned children of Thomas and Hannah.
