William Hannum
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 1603 - Dorchester, Dorset, England
Christening:
Death: 1 Jun 1677 - Northampton, Hampshire, Massachusetts
Burial:
Cause of Death:
AFN #:
Spouses and Children
1. *Honor Capen (1616 - 1679-1680)
Marriage: 1643-1645 - Dorchester, N, Massachusetts
Status:
Children:
1. Mary Hannum (1650-1704)
2. Abigail Hannum (1640-1690)
3. Elizabeth Hannum (1645- )
4. Joanna Hannum (1642- )
2. Mary ( - )
Marriage: 1634-1635 - Dorchester, N, Massachusetts
Status:
Notes
General:
Possibly came on the Mary and John, organized by Rev. John White of Dorchester. Possibly from the West Country.
On 20 March 1630, the ship Mary & John sailed from Plymouth, England with 140 passengers aboard. The Rev. John White of Dorchester, Dorset, recruited all the families. Nearly all of them came from the West Country of England, which included the counties of Somerset, Dorset and Devon. The ship landed in New England on 30 May 1630, two weeks before the Winthrop Fleet arrived. These people founded one of the first towns in Massachusetts, Dorchester, in 1630, and one of the earliest in Connecticut, Windsor, five years later.
William Hannum
We do not have a passenger ship list entry for William Hannum, but he first appears at Dorchester late in 1635, when he was granted an acre of meadow. This grant would suggest that he had purchased the houselot, and the attached proprietorial privileges, from one of the earlier Dorchester settlers who by that date had migrated to Windsor. Just two years later, on September 10, 1637, Hannum sold all his Dorchester land to Jonas Humphrey, and himself removed to Windsor.
William Hannum was a younger man than William Hatch by a decade or more, and had apparently arrived in New England as a single man. Soon, however, he married Honor Capen, daughter of Bernard Capen, who had come to Dorchester in 1633. With this wife, William Hannum had six children in the decade from 1637 to 1647. In 1654 the family moved to Northampton, where William died on June 1, 1677.
Beyond this history, however, any similarity to the career of William Hatch ceases. No record has been found that William Hannum ever held any public office. He did come before the Court on one occasion, on March 26, 1661, when he presented a “petition to the Court for freedom from training, watching and warding by reason of his age and the weakness of his body, the Court considering his weakness of body, his age and mean estate, have freed him from training, watching and warding.”
There is no record that William Hannum was a freeman during his residence at Dorchester, Windsor, or Northampton. Based on the baptism of one of his children at Windsor in 1640, he may have been a member of that church, but this baptism could just as well have been performed on the strength of his wife’s membership.
Hannum emerges from obscurity on only one occasion. In 1656 Sarah, the wife of James Bridgman of Northampton, made some accusations against Mary (Bliss) Parsons, wife of Joseph Parsons, as a result of which the Parsonses sued Sarah Bridgman for slander. On August 11, 1656, both William Hannum and his wife made depositions in support of the Bridgman side of the controversy.[1]
William Hannum recounted his version of three incidents in which Mary (Bliss) Parsons was involved, which might at that time have been accounted instances of witchcraft. Hannum did not himself accuse Parsons of being responsible for the death of his sow and ox. At the end of his deposition, he tried to have it both ways: “These things do something run in my mind that I cannot have my mind from this woman that if she be not right this way she may be a cause of these things, though I desire to look at the overruling hand of God in all.”
A week later, on August 18, William Hannum and his wife made a second, very revealing, deposition: “James Bridgman hired them to [go] down to Springfield to give in their testimony or else they would not have gone but that he was very importunate with them.”[2]
William Hannum was not himself motivated to become involved in the dispute between the Parsonses and the Bridgmans, and when he was pressured to do so, could not bring himself to speak strongly against Mary Parsons. He even reproached himself for making a mild joke, saying that this “manner of jesting I do not approve or allow of in myself.”[3]
William Hatch and William Hannum were in many respects typical New England immigrants of the Great Migration, but their personalities could not have been more different. Hatch apparently missed no opportunity to take a strong position on any issue, be he right or wrong. Hannum apparently made every effort to avoid conflict with his neighbors, and, on the one occasion when he did become involved in a dispute, made it very clear that he would rather not be.
The immigrants of the Great Migration were individuals, and we are assisted in teasing out some details of their personalities, and how those personalities fitted into their communities, by studying all the immigrants, and taking note of what constituted normal behavior, and what behavior fell outside those norms.
Complete biographical and genealogical details on these two families will be available in the next volume of the Great Migration series. Watch New England Ancestors and NewEnglandAncestors.org for details.
Notes
1 David D. Hall, Witch-hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638-1693 (Northeastern University Press: Boston, 1991), pp. 100-2, citing “Middlesex County Court Records, folder 15.”
2 Ibid., p. 110.
3 Ibid., p. 101.
William Hannum of New Englad and some of his descendants, Rev. William Hannum, NEHGR, 1936.
William Hannum or Hanum was born abt 1600 perhaps in small parish of Caundle Purse, Dorset, England.
History of Enfield claims Hannum became Hammond; I don't know if this is true.
Sailed from Plymouth 20 Mar 1629/30 on the Mary and John. settled at Dorchester, Mass., whee he received variuos grants of land. Elder James Humphries, who probably arrived in Dorchester in 1634, purchased the dwelling house and land of William Hannum, who moved to Windsor, Conn, about 1635.
William Hannum's home in Dorchester is said to have been in or near Humphreys Street.
William Hannum's family remained behind in Dorchester for a year or two, as his son was born at Dorchester in 1636 or 1637.
At Windsor a lot next to that of Joshua Carter is described as his.
William Hannum moved with his family to Northampton, probably in the spring of 1654, as agreed to in the previous year. His lot was on Market St., north of Geroge Alexander's lot and south of Henry Curtis's.
The Hannums were eaarly members of the chuch at Northampton.
His health seems to have failed somewhat at about the age of 60, for "the first court in Northampton of which any record exists here convened Mar 24, 1661, and "Goodman William Hannum of Northampton was relieved from trayninge, watchinge and wardinge by reason of age and the weakness of his body.
His will named his daughters, including Mary Allen.