Sunday, September 8, 2019

Conversations with a Cousin, Part Four: Family Group Sheet for Samuel Narramore (1706 - 1789)

Father:  Samuel Narramore
  • Born:  October 9, 1706 at Lynn, Massachusetts.  
  • Parents:  Samuel Narramore and Rachel Paul.
  • Married:  August 20, 1727 at Boston, Massachusetts to Lydia Davis.  The Rev. Thomas Cheever, pastor of the church at Rumney Marsh (now Chelsea) performed the ceremony.  Cheever's father, Ezekiel, had for nearly four decades been the master of the country's first public school, Boston Latin, founded in 1635 and still in operation today.  Ezekiel's son of the same name was immortalized in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
  • Died:  February 1789 at Thompson, Connecticut.  On January 1, 1789, Edward Joslin was paid for "keeping Samuel Narramore" for 52 weeks (to the first of January 1789) and for clothing.  At the close of that year, he was paid for keeping Samuel Narramore for five weeks, in addition to being reimbursed for funeral expenses.
Mother:  Lydia Davis
  • Born:  unknown.  
  • Parents:  unknown.
  • Married:  August 20, 1727 at Boston, Massachusetts to Samuel Narramore Jr.
  • Died:  early 1781, at Killingly, Connecticut.  On January 10, 1781, Daniel Russell was paid for "keeping Samuel Narramore & wife" from March 6, 1780 to January 8, 1781.  In town records for the following January, Lt. Jacob Converse was paid only for keeping Samuel from March 5, 1781 to January 7, 1782, while Israel Richards was reimbursed for "making a coffin for Samuel Narramore's wife".
 Children
  1. Samuel, born April 10, 1730 at Killingly, Connecticut
  2. Joseph, born June 18, 1732 at Killingly, Connecticut.  Married at Woodstock, Connecticut on April 23, 1761 Sarah, daughter of Joseph Wright and Abigail Chaffee.  Died at Winchester, New Hampshire on February 20, 1802.
  3. John, born May 26, 1735 at Killingly, Connecticut.  Married at Dudley, Massachusetts on April 23, 1760 Tabitha, daughter of Deacon Jonathan Newell and Millicent Mason.  Probably died between 1810 and 1820 at Coeymans, New York.
  4. Lydia, born May 3, 1739 at Killingly, Connecticut
  5. Joshua Davis, baptized September 4, 1743 at the Congregational Church in the North Society of Killingly (now Thompson).  Probably born at Killingly.  Married at Northampton, Massachusetts on March 4, 1765 Hannah, daughter of Noah Bridgman and Mehitabel Warner.  While "employed in cutting timber, he was unfortunately killed by the falling of a tree" at Pittsfield, Massachusetts on April 1, 1783.
  6. Mehitabel, baptized September 16, 1744 per Thompson Congregational Church records.  Probably born at Killingly.  Married (intentions filed) at Pittsfield, Massachusetts on August 6, 1769 Joseph Wright.
Notes & Comments
  • Thompson, Connecticut was originally part of Killingly, only becoming a separate town in 1785.
  • The Barbour Collection of transcribed Connecticut vital records lists Samuel and "Jason" as sons of "Thomas, Jr & Lydia" while John and Lydia are recorded as children of "Samuel, Jr & Lydia".  No birth records are known to exist for the last two children, Joshua and Mehitabel. 
  • "Jason" would have been an extremely unusual name for that time and place.  I am making the assumption that it is a misreading of "Joseph".  Feel free to disagree; not having seen the original record, this is mostly speculation on my part, bolstered only by the lack of correspondence between birth and baptism records of the first four children.
  • That "Thomas, Jr" is listed as the father in the birth records for the first two children is interesting.  The notion that there were two different Narramore families - both with the husband a "junior" and the wife named Lydia - living in this area and having children at the same time is simply absurd; moreover, the baptismal records of the Thompson Congregational church make it clear that these are all the same family.  This leaves two possibilities:  (1) that it was a simple transcribing error by Barbour, or (2) that we have evidence here of something that was supposedly very uncommon in those days:  a middle name.  Historians tell us that that middle names were rare among the ordinary sort until the 19th century, and yet we can see from the baptismal record that Samuel and Lydia gave their youngest son Joshua the middle name Davis.  It's possible that the custom wasn't quite as unusual as we might think, but that it was informal and only sparsely documented.  If so, it could well be that both père and fils were Samuel Thomas Narramore.
  • Lydia, "wife of S[] Narramore junr" was admitted into full communion in the Thompson Congregational church on January 7, 1739.  The same record indicates a dismissal from the church in Malden.  Given that her first child had been born at Killingly nearly nine years earlier, this seems to be indicative more of a delay in the bookkeeping than anything else.
  • I remember at one time coming across a published study of early Windham county court cases and noting that Samuel Narramore (presumably junior, although I don't recall for certain) appeared several times on the receiving end of suits for unpaid debts.  Unfortunately, I can no longer find that work.
  • There is no record that Samuel, Jr ever joined the church in Thompson of which his father, sister and wife were members.
  • It is curious, to say the least, that Samuel and Rachel left all their property to their daughter and son-in-law, to the complete exclusion of their only son and eldest child.  It is also rather curious that Samuel Jr. and Lydia were left as wards of the town, while the next generation of the family had all departed from Connecticut to New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York.  Doubtless there is an interesting story here, but one that can't be unraveled at this long remove.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Conversations with a Cousin, Part Three: Family Group Sheet for Samuel Narramore (c. 1680 - c. 1754)

Another "Family Group Sheet" style of post, this time for Samuel Narramore (c. 1680 - c. 1754).

Father:  Samuel Narramore
  • No birth record.  Baptized on May 29, 1681 at Boston's Second Church.  Son of Thomas and Hannah (Smith) Narramore.
  • No marriage record.  Vital records of Lynn, Massachusetts show that intentions were filed between Samuel "Narremore" of Charlestown and Rachel "Paull" on April 7, 1705. 
  • Occupation:  weaver / farmer 
  • No death record.  Died in Killingly, Connecticut between February 9, 1751 and October 15, 1754.  In fulfillment of the 1746 "Artakels of Agreement", he sold his farm to his son-in-law James Dike in December 1750, and the deed was recorded on February 9, 1751 with the note that it was "to be keept on file til ye Grantors Deseas".  The deed was officially recorded on October 15, 1754.  
  • Burial at Dike Family Cemetery, corner of Gawron and Brandy Hill roads in Thompson, Connecticut (Thompson was set off from Killingly in 1785).  In a letter dated August 13, 1897 from descendant Samuel Dike of Auburndale, Massachusetts to Walter Sperry, Samuel states:  "Samuel and Rachel Narramore were undoubtedly buried in or just outside of the present family burying ground on this farm 75 rods north of the house, now at the corner of two roads.  But the graves of a few of the earliest burials were not marked, except by rough field stones and cannot now be identified.  But that of James Dike and his wife Mary Narramore had been fixed and some years ago their descendants placed a stone with lettering etc.  The burying ground, about 60 x 125 ft., is now well kept".
 Mother:  Rachel Paul
  • No birth record.  Probably born at Malden, Massachusetts, where her parents, John Paul and Lydia Jenkins, were married and where the births of some of her siblings were recorded.  Rachel's parentage has been established through later deeds that show her to be the sister of known children of John and Lydia Paul.  According to the book Lost Lives, New Voices:  Unlocking the Stories of the Scottish Soldiers at the Battle of Dunbar 1650, John Paul was a Dunbar prisoner of war who was transported to the colonies on board the Unity.  More on that episode here.
  • Married (intentions filed) at Lynn, Massachusetts on April 9, 1705 to Samuel Narramore.
  • Died after November 5, 1746, and likely before December 14, 1750.  The "x" mark of "Rachel Narrowmore" is on the 1746 Artakels, but only Samuel signed the 1750 deed.  In this light, it may be significant that daughter Mary Naramore Dike gave birth to a daughter of her own on December 30, 1749 and named the child Rachel.
Chidren:  the first four are from Lynn, Massachusetts vital records, with the rest in Boston vital records.  Although possible that the family moved during this time, the Narramore property seems to have straddled what was then the Lynn/Boston line, in what is now the town of Saugus.
  1. Samuel, b. October 9, 1706
  2. Hannah, b. March 13, 1710.  She married Joseph Downing, son of John Downing and Joan Dispaw (and grandson of Malcolm Downing, another Dunbar prisoner of war), at Lynn, Massachusetts on January 31, 1738.  A Joseph Downing "of Lynn" sold land bordering the old Narramore property in Thompson, Connectictut to James Dike in 1788.
  3. Sarah, b. February 19, 1712.  Married on December 8, 1730 at Boston, Massachusetts to Samuel Breeden (the ceremony was performed by Samuel Checkley, JP, whose granddaughter Elizabeth was the wife of Revolutionary War firebrand Samuel Adams).  Their family remained in the area for generations.  The road on which they once lived, now in the town of Revere, is named Breeden's Lane.
  4. Lydia, b. May 6, 1714.  She moved with her parents to Killingly, Connecticut and records of the North Parish show that she and her younger sister Mary were received into fellowship there on January 1, 1738.  This is the last record of Lydia.
  5. Mary, b. July 6, 1716.  She married James Dike at Killingly, Connecticut on May 21, 1741 and they had six children.  Smallpox broke out in the town in late 1760 and James Dike's house was selected as a hospital, both because of its isolation and because he had already had the disease.  Accounts of the time speak of the floor of the farm's great kitchen being covered with patients.  Unfortunately, Mary Narramore Dike soon became one of those patients, dying there on February 17, 1761.  Her husband made her coffin and buried her alone. 
  6. Rachel, b. June 22, 1720.  Probably died young.
  7. John, b. August 20, 1722.  Probably died young. 

Various deeds from the late 1710s and early 1720s suggest that Samuel and Rachel lived on property inherited from her parents. At some point, I hope to look into it more closely, but at a very rough guess, I'd say their land may have been along the current Essex Street in Saugus, Massachusetts, somewhere in the vicinity of what is now (2019) the Square One Mall. 

On September 18, 1725, Samuel Narramore "from Boston, Old North" was received into communion in the "old church on Putnam Heights" in Killingly, Connecticut.  In 1729, he bought 60 acres in the north part of the town from Philip McIntyre - who, like Rachel, was also a child of one of the Dunbar prisoners.  On January 28, 1730, Samuel became one of the founding members of a new church in the "North Society" of Killingly (now Thompson).

At that time, the northern part of Killingly was a complete wilderness, quite different from the relative civilization of the Boston area, which had been settled by English colonists for nearly a century.  The experiences of the Munyan family, who left Salem for the same area just a few years earlier, may give some indication of both the reasons behind Samuel's move and the hardships he and his family would have encountered:

"Mr. Munyan was a weaver by trade, who had emigrated from England about 1700, but finding little demand for his labors, removed with wife, son and two daughters to this remote wilderness.  The journey was long and laborious; roads very poor; streams seldom bridged.  Six cows, ten sheep and four hogs, to stock the farm, shared the perils of the way.  Oxen were hired at the different villages to convey the cart of household goods from one settlement to another.  The old oak tree under which they encamped the night of their arrival, was found covered with wild turkeys in the morning . . . Wolves chased and worried the cattle; pine-knots were burned through the night to scare away wild beasts and Indians."
 - from a History of Windham County Connecticut:  1600 - 1760, by Ellen D. Larned

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Conversations with a Cousin, Part Two: Family Group Sheet for Thomas Narramore

A "bare bones" post on the key dates in the lives of Thomas and Hannah (Smith) Narramore and their children.  There is no birth or baptism record for Ruth, the last child in the list, so it is not certain that she was in fact the daughter of Thomas and Hannah, although the participation of Rev. Cotton Mather in her marriage ceremony makes it seem likely.  Assuming this to be the case, the lack of a baptism record could be significant, as it is evident that Hannah had her surviving children baptized upon her entrance into membership at the Mather church, and had her two known children after that date baptized there as well.  One possible explanation for the lack of a baptism record for Ruth is that Hannah did not (or did not long) survive the pregnancy.  For this reason, I have put "possibly c. 1688" below as the date of Hannah's death.

Father:  Thomas Narramore
  • parents unknown
  • born c. 1640, probably in Devon, England
  • married c. 1670, probably in Boston, Massachusetts to Hannah (Smith) Snell
  • died c. 1690, probably in Boston, Massachusetts 
Mother:  Hannah (Smith) Snell
  • Parents:  James and Joan Smith
  • born c. 1643, probably in Weymouth, Massachusetts
  • married (1) John Snell, who died November 27, 1668
  • married (2) c. 1670 Thomas Narramore, probably in Boston, Massachusetts
  • died unknown, but possibly c. 1688 in Boston, Massachusetts
 Children (some birth orders uncertain, all likely born in Boston, Massachusetts)
  1. Hannah.  Born 9/23/1671.  Baptized 5/29/1681.
  2. Sarah.  Born 9/26/1672.  Died before 1681.
  3. James.  Born 5/4/1674.  Died before 1681.
  4. John.  Born 1676 0r 1677.  Baptized 5/29/1681.  Probably in London in 1698.
  5. Samuel.  Born circa 1680.  Baptized 5/29/1681.  Married (int.) Rachel Paul, daughter of John and Lydia (Jenkins) Paul, 4/7/1705 in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Died between 1750 and 1754 in Thompson, Connecticut.
  6. Nathaniel.  Baptized 2/11/1682.  Probably died young.
  7. Sarah.  Born 8/10/1686.  Baptized 8/15/1686.  Married John Nutt on 4/17/1718 in Boston, Massachusetts.
  8. Ruth.  No birth or baptism record, but probably a daughter of Thomas and Hannah since she was married at Boston's Second Church on 6/17/1714 to Simon Mason. 

Friday, July 5, 2019

Conversation with a Cousin, Part One: Thomas Narramore (c. 1640 - c. 1690)


      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 “2nd 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.