Dates of birth and maiden names of female ancestors often are undiscoverable, something that many amateur family historians find difficult to accept. In the modern era, we have become used to women being clearly identified in official records. It is easy to forget that this was far from true in colonial Connecticut.

As an example, in my line of Ackleys, the original families of the women in the first three generations remain unidentified: Hannah and Miriam, the wives of Nicholas-1 (abt 1630-1695); Elizabeth, the wife of James (abt 1677-1746); and Jerusha(?), the first wife of Nicholas-2 (1708-1763).[1]

Sadly, online Ackley family histories routinely misidentify each of these women. This is unnecessary. Although available verifiable facts may not solve the puzzle, they can eliminate some possibilities and avoid perpetuating mistakes. We owe these hardy female ancestors the time it takes to sort through the puzzles pieces and toss those that just do not fit.

In a previous post, I outlined the common mistakes made about Elizabeth Ackley. I will be taking a closer look at Jerusha in a later post, but already know that she cannot be the Jerusha Graves so many online histories cite as the wife of Nicholas-2.

Hannah and Miriam, Wives of Nicholas-1 Ackley

Discovering Nicholas Ackley devotes several pages to exploring who Hannah[2] might have been, and includes a shorter section on Nicholas-1’s second wife, Miriam. What follows is a brief summary; please see Discovering Nicholas Ackley for additional details and a full list of sources, or contact me.

Hannah Ackley

Nicholas likely married Hannah, in 1655, although no record of the marriage itself exists. Marriages in Puritan Hartford were not the church affair most might assume. The Puritans saw marriage as a covenant, a legal contract between the man and the woman. It was a magistrate or other civil official who performed marriages, not a pastor or other church functionary. Puritans insisted couples marry for love because strong families, with faithful spouses, were seen as the bedrock of their way of life. The average age for women to marry in the colonies at that time was 23, based on the idea that younger women might lack the mature judgment required to select a life-long spouse.[3]

Where Hannah originated is unknown and the possibilities are extensive. So many more men than women had migrated to the New World in the 1630s and early 1640s that the ratio of men to women in Hartford was two to one. By 1640, the average age for men to marry was 30 because of the shortage of women.[4] Although it had begun to even out, the shortage still was serious when Nicholas married in the mid-1650s. Hannah, then, might have come from elsewhere in the colony or even recently arrived from England. It not impossible that they had travelled over together, well chaperoned, or even met on the voyage. It is unlikely Hannah travelled alone, however.

The possibilities of Hannah’s origin that are mentioned most often are as follows.

Hannah “Ford”

That maiden name for her does not appear in any of the references based on old town records.[5] A complication is that maiden names invariably were dropped once the woman married. However, it does not seem likely that Hannah was a Ford.

Not Hannah Ford born in Dorchester, County Dorset, England. Although this birthplace and date turn up in numerous online genealogies, this is not our Hannah. Thomas Ford of Windsor, Connecticut did have a daughter named Hannah born in Dorchester, England on 1 Feb 1628/9. But that Hannah died in England on 28 March 1629, just weeks after her birth.[6] (Thomas arrived in CT about 1635.)

Not Hannah Ford of Trumbull Street. A second possibility is that she was the daughter of the Thomas Ford who was admitted in 1649 as an inhabitant of Hartford with the address of Lot 42 on Trumbull Street.[7] This is the same property where Nicholas was living in 1655 when he was admitted as an inhabitant and where he lived with Hannah until his move to Haddam in 1667.

Is that a coincidence, or not?

A “Lot 42 Hannah Ford” is possible only if there were two Thomas Fords. But there were not. The only Thomas Ford who immigrated was the one noted above from Dorchester, England, whose only daughter named Hannah died shortly after her birth. It is a mystery as to why Ford owned the property in Hartford (see appendix 3 in Discovering Nicholas Ackley), but it is certain that he cannot have been the father of our Hannah.

According to Banks,[8] three other Fords did immigrate to the New England colonies between 1630 and 1650: John to Weymouth, Stephen to the Isles of Shoals, and William to Plymouth.[9]

• John Ford arrived unmarried in Weymouth in 1635. He would have had to marry almost immediately to produce a Hannah old enough to marry Nicholas in 1655, unlikely although not impossible. A widow would have been too old to have produced Nicholas’s last child about 1677.
• Stephen Ford emigrated to the Isles of Shoals but no more information about him is readily available. Given the location, he is unlikely to have been Hannah’s father.
• William Ford arrived in Plymouth in 1621; he did marry a woman named Hannah. But she was still his wife when she died in the 1680s and none of his daughters was named Hannah.

With the idea that perhaps the old handwriting had been misread, I also looked at similar last names in the Hartford area, e.g., Lord. No Hannahs.

Hannah “Ford Mitchell”

The online Ackley family genealogies that list Hannah Ford Mitchell as Nicholas’s wife appear to refer to two different Hannahs. One was born in 1614, but died in 1650, about five years before Nicholas married. The other Hannah supposedly was born anywhere between 1629 and 1639, dates for which I have yet to find any source. Any date later than 1636 is probably too late, but not impossible. As noted above, the Puritans strongly discouraged early marriage.

The “Ford Mitchell” part of this name is never clearly explained.[10] Children were not given middle names for about another hundred years and women did not use their maiden names as middle names after marriage (how I wish they had!). Middle names do not appear in the records from early Connecticut.

Some Ackley family histories suggest Hannah was the widow of a Mitchell. For that to be true, her first husband had to have lived but briefly after the marriage. That a first husband died would be more likely than divorce, which was rare and took years. Had there been a first husband who died, however, probate would have been undertaken and the widow listed by name. No such probate record exists, and such records are remarkably complete for Connecticut at this time.

Mitchell appears as a name in several colonial Connecticut towns. John Mitchell, a barber, lived in early Hartford in Nicholas’s time.[11] In fact, Nicholas sold one of his Hartford properties to him in 1668. None of John Mitchell’s daughters, however, was named Hannah and all were still unmarried at his death in 1683. A Mitchell also lived in Wethersfield, not far away, but none of his daughters or wives was named Hannah. Neither Mitchell had a son who could have been a first husband of Hannah. A different Mitchell, from a more distant town, is a slight possibility.

I also attempted to locate a possible Hannah (or Hanna, or Hana, or Anna) by looking through all available probate records for the early settlers, which regularly listed all their children. The sprinkling of Hannahs I found either were too young or married to someone else. Any widows of a similar name also were unavailable.

A final possibility is that Hannah was the daughter of one of the few servants brought to the colonies. If that were the case, looking for her name among the early settlers would be pointless. The names of servants rarely were recorded in official documents.

For now, then, Hannah’s parentage remains unknown. What we do know of her is that she had to have been a strong woman to have met the challenges of the time and produced as many as 12 children, 10 of whom survived to adulthood.

Miriam

Hannah died in about 1687. In about 1688, Nicholas married his second wife, Miriam,[12] who is just as much of a mystery as Hannah.

All we know about Miriam is that she was a widow. We have no idea of Miriam’s age or whether she had children from her earlier marriage. No children from her first marriage are listed in the probate of Nicholas’s estate, but they would not have been entitled to any of the estate and so would not be mentioned. (Nicholas died without a will.) She and Nicholas did not have children, but that does not necessarily reveal her age.

Some Ackley family genealogies list Miriam’s surname as “Moore” at the time she married Nicholas. The source for that is unclear since records from the time note only that she was Nicholas’s second wife and do not list surname.[13] One false lead now discounted is that she was the Miriam Moore who was the daughter of Miles and Isabel Joyner Moore of New London. This Miriam married John Willey in 1670. In 1687, he moved with his family to the part of Haddam that became East Haddam, where some of the Ackley sons were settling. He died in May 1688, the year Nicholas married again. But Miriam Moore Willey married Samuel Spencer in 1689, not Nicholas Ackley.[14]

What happened to Miriam after Nicholas’s death in 1695 is unknown. Some of the children still were living at home and she may have remained with them at the homestead until it was sold three years later.

My search for Miriam was somewhat less thorough than for Hannah since she is not a direct ancestor. I did search various sources and probate records for “Miriam” or variations on that name. I found none with dates or marital status that would fit.

For many of these strong, remarkable female ancestors, then, we have very few facts. It is not impossible that records may yet be found, but every lead needs to be checked and rechecked. Knowing more about the culture of the time can help determine whether a particular fact could be true.

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If anyone has any new information on any of these women in the Ackley family history, I would be thrilled to see it. Please contact me using the form on this website.

Copies of Discovering Nicholas Ackley are available on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and from Lulu.com.

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[1] The maiden name of his second wife is recorded.

[2] I have not seen any original documents showing that this was her name, but am accepting on faith that some ancient family history recorded that correctly.

[3] See DH Fischer, 1989, Albion’s seed: four British folkways in America, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 78-69

[4] JT Main, 1985, Society and economy in colonial Connecticut, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 5

[5] The LDS/Ancestry database, while useful for clues, does not purport to be definitive and is based on family histories and recollection as well as primary sources. In the case of Hannah, it simply perpetuates misinformation.

[6] Dorset Holy Trinity Church, n.d., Dorset parish registers, 1559‐1812, Dorchester, England: Dorset History Centre.

[7] WS Porter, 1842, Historical notices of Connecticut, no.1: Hartford, Hartford: Elihu Geer’s Press, p. 37.

[8] CE Banks, 1963, Topographical dictionary of 2885 English emigrants to New England, 1620‐1650, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co.

[9] The information about John, Stephen and William Ford is from a search on Ancestry.com, so not exhaustive but enough to discount them as likely sources.

[10] It likely is just coincidence that Thomas Ford once owned Lot 42 on Trumbull Street, which Nicholas later bought, and that Nicholas sold his upland Hartford property to John Mitchell – “Ford” and “Mitchell” or “Ford Mitchell”. But this may well be the source of those last names being associated with Hannah.

[11] JH Trumbull (ed.), 1886, The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633–1884, vol. I. Boston: Edward J. Osgood, p. 275

[12] At least it is certain this was her given name since she is identified by name in Nicholas’s estate probate.

[13] It is possible that a source exists and I have not found it. Any mentions of “Moore” that I have seen do not indicate the source of information.

[14]  OJ Harvey, 1899, The Harvey book: giving the genealogies of certain branches of the American families of Harvey, Nesbitt, Dixon and Jameson, and notes on many other families, together with numerous biographical sketches, Wilkes-Barre, PA: E.B. Yordy & Co, pp. 595-596.