Articles of Agreement (1746)

(For more information on this Samuel Narramore and his family, see this post).

Samuel Narramore was born about 1680, probably at Boston, although no birth record exists.  He was the son of Thomas and Hannah Narramore, as evidenced by records of Boston's Second Church, which show his baptism there on May 29, 1681, the same day on which his mother Hannah became a member of the church.  He joined the church himself in January 1703 and in 1705 intentions of marriage were filed at Lynn, Massachusetts between Samuel, then "of Charlestown" and Rachel Paul, daughter of John and Lydia (Jenkins) Paul.  John Paul was a former Scots prisoner of war, who had been captured at the Battle of Dunbar and transported to indentured servitude in the Massachusetts colony, which needed laborers for its economic projects, most notably the Saugus iron works.  Samuel and Rachel settled on land that Rachel had inherited from her parents, land that is now in Saugus but at the time straddled the Lynn/Boston line. 

In 1725, Samuel was received into fellowship in the church at Killingly, Connecticut.  His move was part of a "mini-mass migration" from the Malden, Massachusetts area into what was then an undeveloped wilderness in the northeastern corner of Connecticut.  Both familial and "Dunbar POWs" connections played a part in the migration.  James Coates, husband of Rachel's niece Martha, was also an earlier settler of Killingly, and the nearby town of Danielson was founded by former Dunbar prisoner James Danielson.  In 1729, Samuel purchased land in Killingly from Philip McIntyre, whose father of the same name had likewise been one of the Dunbar transportees.
  
The couple's two oldest daughters, Hannah and Sarah, remained behind, with Hannah marrying Joseph Downing (grandson of yet another Dunbar POW) at Lynn in 1738 and Sarah marrying a former neighbor of the Narramores, Samuel Breeden, in 1730.  The road on which they lived still bears the family's name - Breedens Lane, in the town of Revere - and three generations of their descendants, the last of whom died in 1877, bore the name Samuel Narramore Breeden.

The oldest son, also named Samuel, soon followed his parents to Killingly, after first marrying Lydia Davis in Boston in 1727.  Samuel and Rachel had four younger children, the last (John) born in 1722, but only two of them are known to have survived to adulthood:  Lydia and Mary, who were both admitted to fellowship in 1738 in the Congregational Church that their father had helped to organize in Killingly's North Society (later to become the town of Thompson) in 1730.  This is the last known record of Lydia, but Mary married James Dike, of neighboring Dudley, Massachusetts, in 1741.

Getting on in years, Samuel and Rachel made an agreement in 1746 with their new son-in-law to rent him their house and farm, and to give him all their personal property at their deaths, on the condition that he would care for them at their home for the remainder of their lives.  Samuel, his signature noticeably shakier than in 1746, sold his land to James Dike in December of 1750; there is no mention of Rachel, who had likely pre-deceased him by this point.  A note on the deed indicates that it was received for record on February 9, 1751, but was "to be keept on file till ye Grantors Deseas".  On October 15, 1754, the deed was officially recorded.  According to Dike family tradition, Samuel and Rachel were buried in the little family burying ground on the farm, although the earliest burials were marked only by rough fieldstones.  The cemetery today is at the intersection of Gawron and Brandy Hill Roads in Thompson, and is well kept, with a gated fieldstone wall surrounding it.

The former Narramore farm remained in the Dike family for several generations.  The original document by which Samuel and Rachel rented their property to James Dike in return for his promise of care and maintenance was preserved among the Dike family papers, and the text of it is reproduced below.

Artakels of a Greement and a Covenant made and agreed apon by and with Samuel Narrowmore of Killingsley in the Count(y) of Windham In the Colloney of Connectticut In New England Weaver and Rachal his wife and James Dick of said Killingsley husbandman do by these presents agree and  Covenant togather to wet the sd Samuel Narrowmore Douth Let farme Let and Demise and Devise unto the said James Dick his house and all his Lands In the sd Killingsley with all the preveledges and appurtainances thereto belonging for the full time that is of his natuerel Life here apon Earth and the Life of Rachale his wife Even tel it shall please God to Take them Both out of the Land of the Liveing to have and to hold the same free and Clereley so Long with all the Benefets thereof and the sd Samuell Narrowmore Douth and Rachal his wife Douth agree and Covenant with the said James Dick he being thare Loveing Son In Law that marid there daughter Mary that he the said James Dick shall have all his Moveable Estate that he the sd Samuel Narrowmore now hath and Rachal his wife at there Decease that is to Say one feather Bed and all the Bed Close with all the furnetuer thereto Belonging tow plain Chestes and an Iron pot and hucks that hold about two pails full two Sider Barels a fier Lice and tongs a Lombe and all the weaveing gears a Cow and a Calfe a mare and Colt and five sheep and what So Ever other Estate that the said Samuel Narrowmor hath that is moveable then or now In possession or Revartion or Rachel his wife to be the said James Dicks and his heires forever and the sd James Dick to have the use of all the moveables for the maintainance of the sd Samuel Narrowmore and Rachel his wife as here after mentioned and the sd James Dick to have all the In Crese of the stock he keeping them winter and sumer and furtheare more the sd James Dick Douth In Consideration for the Rent of the sd house and Lande and the moveables above mentioned Douth agree and Covenant by these presents to and with the sd Samuel Narrowmore and Rachel his wife his Honoured Fathare and Mothere In law to Maintaine them Dureing there naturel Lives with meet Drink washing and Loging and all Close and all Nessasaris of Life he the sd Samuel Narrowmore Remaining In the House with the said James Dick seutable a Cording to there age and Degree and to the fullfilment of the above written agreement and Covenant the sd James Dick Douth In gage and promise him selfe and heires Executors and administrators by these presents to fullfil. In Confarmation of this agreement and Covenant made by these presents and in witness hereof the sd Samuell Narrowmore and Rachel Narrowmore his wife and the sd James Dick have set to our hands and seales this fifth Day of November anno Dom:  1746

Samuell Neremoer

Rachel her x mark Narrowmore

James Dike

Signed sealed and Delivered
In presents of us witnesses

Henery Pollok

Joseph Cady

The Scattering of the Family

Samuel and Lydia (Davis) Naramore, who had come from Boston to what is now the town of Thompson in northeastern Connecticut, were the parents of six children (five survived to adulthood) who were born there between 1730 and 1744.  None of them remained in Connecticut.  One son, Joseph, settled in New Hampshire, while the remaining children - Samuel, John, Joshua and Mehitable - set off one by one for western Massachusetts.  By the time of Samuel's death in 1789, his grandchildren were in four states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and what would soon become Vermont) and were poised to take their part in the great westward migrations that were about to be unleashed by the opening up of the frontiers.

John (b. 1735) was the first to leave the nest, followed closely by his younger brother Joshua (b. 1743), the two of them playing a sort of game of leapfrog through the Connecticut River Valley and the Berkshires.  Although listed as being "of Woodstock" at the time of his marriage in 1760, John was in Northampton the following year and in what would later become the town of Goshen by 1764.  By this time, it seems, younger brother Joshua was in Pittsfield, although he had probably spent some time in Northampton as well, since records of the First Church in Northampton show that returned there to marry Hannah Bridgman in March of 1765.  In any event, the brothers were soon reunited:  after a short stopover in Lanesboro, John purchased land adjacent to his brother's in Pittsfield in 1772.  Their sister Mehitable was there also, although it is uncertain whether she had come with her brother Joshua or had joined him there later.  In fact, it is uncertain whether she was still alive in 1772, since there is no known record of her after intentions of marriage between her and Joseph Wright were published in Pittsfield in 1769.

The two oldest children, Samuel (b. 1730) and Joseph (b. ca. 1732) remained in Connecticut the longest.  Joseph purchased a farm of fifty-seven acres in Winchester, New Hampshire in 1772, although evidently not moving there right away, since his last child was born in Pomfret, Connecticut in 1773.  Samuel, meanwhile, had purchased land in what would become the town of Goshen, Massachusetts as early as 1765, but was likewise slow in leaving Connecticut.  He was put in charge of the roads in West Woodstock in 1773, and an early 1775 deed in which he purchased additional land in Goshen still shows him as being "of Woodstock".  He was clearly in Goshen by 1777, however, since it is from there that he enlisted in the Massachusetts militia as part of the Saratoga campaign.

As the Revolutionary War drew to a close, there were thus three vibrant new colonies of Naramores:  at Winchester, New Hampshire, and at Goshen and Pittsfield in Massachusetts.  The Pittsfield colony would soon dissipate, however, as most of John Naramore's family had crossed over the border into Columbia County, New York by 1784 (as has been recounted elsewhere, John's oldest son Asa settled in Charlotte, Vermont at aboout the same time).  Meanwhile, Joshua Naramore was killed in 1784 while cutting timber and his oldest two sons, Joel and Justin, soon headed north, first to Hampton, New York, and then from there into Vermont, Joel to Benson in Rutland County and Justin to Underhill in Chittenden County.  In the very early years of the new century, his third and last son, Elias, left Pittsfield for Chenango County, New York.  By 1805, the Naramore family had left Pittsfield.

The Goshen settlement thrived until brought to a sudden and tragic end in 1854.  Although Samuel's oldest son, Nathaniel, soon left for Vermont and then for the Genesee Country in western New York, his three younger sons, Thaddeus, Alpheus and Joseph all remained and raised large families.  But emigration and early mortality eventually whittled the Naramores in Goshen down to a single family, that of Alpheus' son, Franklin Naramore.  Still, it was a large family and he was a leading citizen of the town, and in 1850 it would have seemed to all observers that the Naramores had a long and prosperous future ahead of them in Goshen.  But it was not to be.  Within the space of a few weeks, Franklin and four of his children were wiped out by dysentery.

• Note:  there are several websites that incorrectly list the elder Samuel's deathdate as 1773, possibly through confusing him with his son of the same name and because the last known record of the younger Samuel in Connecticut was of his being put in charge of the roads in West Woodstock in 1773.  But the Killingly and Thompson Town Records (Thompson was officially set off from Killingly in 1785) tell the true story.  Although exact death dates are not given, the records show that Samuel and Lydia Narramore became wards of the town in 1778, and the last record of money paid "for keeping Samuel Naramore & wife" ends at January 8, 1781, which is then followed by a record of payment "for making a coffin for Samuel Narramore's wife".  Similarly, a record of payment "for keeping Samuel Naramore to 1st of Jan. 1789" is followed by one "for keeping Samuel Naramore 5 weeks - funeral charges also".

The Curse of the Naramores - Part 4

Joshua Naramore, the last child of John and Tabitha (Newell) Naramore, was born on September 18, 1784 in the little hamlet of New Britain in the town of Chatham, Columbia County, New York.  Although by then living in New Baltimore, Joshua returned to Chatham to marry Anna Carpenter, daughter of Oliver and Joanna Carpenter, on December 26, 1823.  Not long after their marriage, they moved to the town of Lee, in Oneida county, where they remained for nearly thirty years and where their four children, Mary, Samuel, David and Elizabeth were born.  In the 1860s, they moved to the nearby town of Westmoreland.  Anna died there on January 11, 1866, while Joshua, conspicuously escaping the Curse of the Naramores, lasted another seventeen years, dying in Westmoreland on April 4, 1883 in the ninety-ninth year of his age.

His eldest son, Samuel, was not so fortunate.  Like his uncle of the same name, he took up the miller's trade, but with more success, and worked for many years at the Ridge Mills in Rome, New York.  In 1868, he headed west and became the foreman of a flour mill in Owasso, Michigan.  On the evening of October 24th, 1877, after all the workers had gone home for the day, he took a lantern in hand and went up to the second floor to investigate  what appeared to be a clogged spout.  On his way back, he attempted to shortcut a path between an elevator spout and a gear-wheel that was running about four feet off the floor.  The space between them was very narrow, and his clothing became caught in the gears.  He soon found himself inextricably wedged there, with the wheel revolving against his side, grinding off the flesh from his hipbone and over the abdomen.

Alerted by the strange sound of the machinery, the owners, who were in the office, soon shut everything down and extricated Samuel from where he had been trapped, but they were too late.  Samuel was horribly lacerated across his midsection and had been partially disembowelled.  He lingered for only a week, dying on the 31st of October, 1877.  He left a widow and five children, the youngest of whom was only nine.

• Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> John (1735 - ca. 1815) -> Joshua (1784 - 1883) -> Samuel (1827 - 1877)

The Curse of the Naramores - Part 3

Some twenty years separated the births of Asa Naramore and his younger brother Samuel, who was only a young boy when Asa struck off on his own for Vermont.  The rest of the family, meanwhile, headed west over the border into New York state, eventually landing in the town of Coeymans in Albany County.  Here, Samuel was apprenticed to a prominent local miller by the name of Archibald Stephens, but the relationship between master and apprentice evidently was not a happy one.  Samuel expressed his dissatisfaction with the arrangement by running away in the summer of 1800, while the miller's disdain for his errant apprentice was eloquently expressed in the short advertisement he took out in the Albany Gazette, forbidding all persons from harboring or trading with the runaway.  Offering all of a one cent reward, it advised that anyone returning him would "have the above reward, but no charges nor thanks". 
 
The facts are lacking, but it appears that it was at this time that Samuel left Coeymans behind forever and joined his long-sundered brother Asa in Charlotte, Vermont.  There, he married (his wife's name is unknown, although it may have been Catherine) and found work as a hired hand on the Pierson place in Shelburne.  The Piersons had been among the earliest settlers in the area, and it was the fortified farmhouse of the family patriarch, Moses Pierson, that had been the focus of what is sometimes called the Battle of the Shelburne Block-house in 1778.  Moses and his two older sons, Ziba and Uzal, all took part in the fight, helping to successfully defend the farmhouse and the local settlers it sheltered against a large raiding party of Tories and Indians.  Later that same year, Ziba and Uzal were captured by yet another raiding party and carried off to Canada, but they were able to escape and eventually made their way back to their family.  By the turn of the century, when Samuel would have arrived there, that family was quite extensive:  the 1800 census for Shelburne shows, in addition to the father Moses, four of his sons (Ziba and Uzal, along with younger brothers William and Samuel), all raising large families in Shelburne.

If Samuel's former choice of employer in Coeymans had been unfortunate, his new choice proved to be fatal.  It seems that two sons of one of the younger Pierson brothers had gotten involved in some misdemeanor or other; the details are lost to history, but it was enough to warrant an upcoming court appearance, at which Samuel was expected to be called on to testify against them.  To prevent this, so the story goes, William and Samuel Pierson decided on a drastic course of action.  They sent a fellow named Hugh Clyd to Samuel Naramore, telling him that his wife, who was at the Pierson place, was very ill and that he had better get over there quick.  Samuel headed off in that direction with Clyd - and was never heard from again.  Although not convicted in a court of law, the court of public opinion rendered a different verdict, and Clyd and the two Pierson brothers soon left the state. 

A nineteenth-century history of Charlotte at this point in the narrative adds the colorful detail "and, it is said, became vagabonds".  While probably not true (except perhaps in the case of Hugh Clyd), William, at least, had a bumpy road on the way to his final destination.  According to a published genealogy of the Pierson family (which makes no mention of the murder suspicion), William dabbled in alchemy, and was always experimenting with methods for turning base metals into gold. After leaving Vermont, he settled briefly in New York state, but left for Indiana in 1811 after his neighbors, suspicious of his "conjuring", burned him out.  According to the same source, his brother Samuel also went to New York state, settling in Cayuga county in about 1811.

From all of the above, it appears that Samuel's death must have occurred between 1800 and 1810.  It should also be noted that Asa had a son whom he named Samuel (the father of Truman Naramore) in 1806; on the theory that he was named for his murdered uncle, this would argue for Samuel's death having occurred in, or shortly before, 1805.

• Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> John (1735 - ca. 1815) -> Samuel (ca. 1780 - ca. 1805)

In Part 4, we'll look at the gruesome death of another Samuel Naramore, the son of Asa and Samuel's youngest brother, Joshua.

The Curse of the Naramores - Part 2

Truman C. Naramore was born in Charlotte, Vermont on January 30, 1838, the son of Samuel Naramore and Philura Crossman, and the grandson of Revolutionary War soldier Asa Naramore.  Twenty-three years old when the Civil War broke out, Truman enlisted in the 1st Vermont Cavalry in September 1861, and was a corporal in that regiment when he was taken prisoner on the first day of the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5th, 1864.  He soon found himself transferred to the infamous southern prison camp at Andersonville, but managed to survive the horrors there and was eventually paroled in November 1864.  His health was impaired, however, and as a result of general debility and the scurvy he contracted there, he later received a pension of two dollars a month.

Shortly after the war ended, he married Laura Murray, raised a family of three children (two others died in infancy) and returned to agricultural and mercantile pursuits in Williston, Vermont.  He was active in both the statewide and local granges, being one of the founding members of the Chittenden County grange in 1876.  He was also an inventive sort, patenting several mechanical devices and agricultural improvements.  By all accounts, he seemed to have done as his grandfather Asa had before him, successfully shaking off his wartime experience and prospering.

In the early 1880s, he moved to California, where he pursued several interests, including that of a real estate agent in the firm of More, Snyder and Naramore, with considerable success.  But it was in the last decade of the century that the Curse of the Naramores finally caught up with him.  In 1891, he set up a starch factory in Los Angeles in partnership with T. Wiesendanger, but the business exploded - literally.  On the evening of December 10, 1892, just minutes after the last employees had left work for the day, there was a terrific explosion and the boiler went flying through the wall like a cannonball, landing on the sidewalk outside.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the factory was a complete loss and the neighboring residence of the Weyse family (from whom Weisendanger and Naramore rented the factory) was partially destroyed as well.  Otto Weyse, who was in bed at the time, had a narrow escape.

There had apparently been an existing dispute between Weyse and Naramore over the ownership of a wagon, and the events of December 10 could not have improved Otto's temper.  When Naramore went to collect the wagon after the explosion, he was stopped by Weyse.  Angry words were exchanged, and then Weyse struck Naramore over the head with a piece of board, severely injuring him.  It was to be strike one.

Strike two was not long in coming.  While riding on his wagon one evening at his ranch in Riverside, a person or persons unknown came up from behind and struck him on the back of the head with a blunt instrument. Naramore was thrown from the wagon unconscious, and the team ran off in a fright, carrying the wagon with them over an embankment.  The injury was serious, although Naramore eventually recovered.  Neither the attacker nor his motive was ever discovered.

Strike three also came about on the Riverside ranch, which Truman rented out to the Cummings brothers, John and Caesar, in 1894.  When the rent money, in the amount of $500, came due in August 1895 and Naramore went out to the ranch to collect it, the brothers murdered him, and then concocted a story about robbers who stole the money and killed Naramore.  The jury didn't believe them, however, and they were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging [but see the note below from a commenter indicating that the governor of California eventually intervened to halt their executions].

• Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> John (1735 - ca. 1815) -> Asa (1761 - 1851) -> Samuel (1806 - 1847) -> Truman (1838 - 1895)

As a postscript to this story, Truman had a son of the same name who remained in Los Angeles, where he died in 1943.  In 1936, the following "filler" story appeared in several newspapers:

LOSING GROUND

About one more "drop" in real estate and T. C. Naramore may be out of house and home.  He was standing under a tree in his front yard when 30 tons of it slid 65 feet into an automobile parking lot below.  Three years ago, 15 tons went the same way.  Now, Naramore's house is perched precipitously on the edge of a steep hill in the downtown section.

I don't know what finally became of his house, but it appears that, one generation on, the Curse of the Naramores still had some kick to it.  In Part 3, we'll go back and look at the short life and tragic death of Asa Naramore's younger brother Samuel.

The Curse of the Naramores - Part 1

The notion of a curse that hangs over several generations of a family makes for good fiction, but considering the string of misfortunes and gruesome deaths that befell several of the descendants of John and Tabitha (Newell) Narramore, one is almost tempted to believe there could be some truth to it.

The story begins with Asa Naramore, eldest son of John and Tabitha, who was born at Northampton, Massachusetts in 1761.  By the time of the Revolutionary War, his father had moved the family to Pittsfield, Massachusetts where his uncle Joshua's family was living.  Both families were caught up in the events of the fateful summer and fall of 1777, with the brothers each serving hitches in the Berskshire county militia during the Saratoga campaign.

After Saratoga, the main theater of war shifted to the southern colonies, but a simmering frontier conflict continued throughout the Mohawk Valley.  Although only seventeen, Asa served for twenty weeks as part of a levy of Massachusetts men marched to Albany in 1778, but his real chance for action came in 1780, when Sir John Johnson swept south from Canada and, joining with Indian allies led by Joseph Brant, raided eastward through the Mohawk Valley, burning and destroying homes, crops and supplies as they went.  In July of that year, Asa had enlisted as a private in Capt. William White's company of the Third Berkshire Regiment under the command of Col. John Brown, and it was this outnumbered regiment that, lacking promised support from General Robert van Rensselaer, was outflanked and overrun by Johnson's forces on the morning of October 19, 1780 at the Battle of Stone Arabia.  It was a decisive defeat for the Americans, with Brown and many of his men killed. Two of Brown's men were also taken prisoner, one from Capt. John Spoor's company and one - Asa Naramore - from Capt. White's company.

General van Rensselaer's forces caught up with Johnson later that day at a farm owned by George Klock (near the present-day St. Johnsville).  Although the Americans had the advantage, and both Johnson and Brant were lightly wounded, darkness halted combat before a complete victory could be obtained.  Johnson's army escaped during the night; leaving their provisions and artillery behind, they retraced their steps back to their boats on Oneida Lake and sailed back to Canada, taking their prisoners with them.  That supplies on the return trip were tight is confirmed by Asa's recollection of the journey, on which he was allowed only a small piece of raw horseflesh each day and a few bulbous roots that they dug along the way.

Although hostilities officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September of 1783, it would be almost a full year more before Asa's captivity finally ended.  Returning to Pittsfield after his release in June of 1784, he successfully petitioned the General Court in 1786 for back pay amounting to eighty-five pounds, with which he purchased a farm in Charlotte, Vermont.  He later drew an annual pension of eighty dollars for his war service.

In the end, it's hard to make the case for the "Curse of the Naramores" weighing too heavily on Asa.  As bad as capture by Indians and four years as a prisoner in Canada must have been, it could have been worse - at least he came home again.  All in all, he seems to have been one of those people who manage to roll with life's punches.  When his wife of nearly fifty years died in 1836, he wasted no time in re-marrying - to a younger woman who soon refused to live with him and ran off just two years later.  Undeterred, he married a third time, in 1844, and ended his days in 1851 at the ripe old age of ninety, leaving an estate that was sizeable enough to be quarreled over by his widow, his children, and his grandchildren.

Still, if the Curse of the Naramores can only be said to have struck a glancing blow at Asa, it landed with full force on his grandson, Truman C. Naramore - as we shall see in Part 2.

• Asa was the great-great-grandson of Thomas Narramore:  Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> John (1735 - ca. 1815) -> Asa (1761 - 1851)
• A minor irony here is that Asa's younger brother Stephen spent his final years in the town of Brant, in Erie County, New York.  The town was named for Joseph Brant.

"With Half Pikes and Drawn Swords..."

Early in the afternoon of April 29, 1697, a boat from the British frigate Arundel slipped off from John Vyall's wharf in Boston's North End and put ashore at Master Obadiah Gill's shipyard.  There, led by the lieutenant, the chief mate, and Joseph Kigging, son of the ship's captain, William Kigging, the Arundel press gang quickly and ruthlessly set about its work, attacking Gill's apprentices and forcing one of them, John Narramore, into the boat.  During the struggle, however, one of his fellow apprentices, Nathan Raynsford, managed to escape and ran for help to the nearby shipyard of Samuel Greenwood.  As Greenwood's men came rushing onto the scene, they found the Arundel boat getting ready to depart, but caught hold of the painter and forced it to stop.  Their clean get-away ruined, the lieutenant ordered his men out of the boat, and out they came, some wielding half pikes, others with swords drawn.  In the end, Narramore was rescued, but several of Gill's and Greenwood's men were wounded in the ensuing melée.

• From testimony before the Massachusetts Court of Assize, May 15, 1697

Who was this John Narramore?  It's possible that he was the son of Richard and Ann (Waters) Narramore who was born at Boston  on September 10, 1676, but he might also be the son of Thomas and Hannah Narramore who was baptized at Boston's Second Church in 1681.  The only other known record of him is a deposition he gave before the Admiralty Court in London in late 1698 concerning the ship Frederick.  In his testimony, he states that he is a shipwright, born in Boston.