MY PURITAN ANCESTORS: HOBARTS AND THE GREAT MIGRATION

(This post is a follow-up to an introductory post about my personal genealogical journey.)

Puritans head to church in the snow.

“Puritanism is the fear that someone somewhere might be having a good time.”—HL Mencken

Although it happened nearly 400 years and multiple generations ago, I have no problem imagining how my 10th great-grandfather, Edmund Hobart, must have felt on the morning of 16 September 1635. An anxious anticipation would have gripped his chest as he awaited the arrival of his second eldest son, 31-year-old Peter Hobart—my 9th great-grandfather—aboard a small boat from Boston, where Peter had been living most of that summer after emigrating from England. Peter, his family and other settlers from Hingham in England's Norfolk region were joining Edmund in a nearby village called Bare Cove where Edmund had been living the last two years, following his arrival from England.

Now Peter’s arrival would mark not only a milestone event for Edmund, but also for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the history of New England and, of course, my lineage as the Hobarts would become one of three foundational New England family lines down to my mother’s birth in 1918 in Missouri. I shared the story of one of those lines in a 2020 post about the four ancestors who preceded the Hobarts by arriving aboard the Mayflower in 1620: Stephen Hopkins (also a 10th great-grandfather), his daughter Constance Hopkins (9GG), Thomas Rogers (10GG) and his son Joseph Rogers (9GG).  I will post at some other time about the third New England line through my ancestor John Libby, who came to Maine about 1630 to build a life as a commercial fisherman.

For now, however, I am focusing on the Hobarts and their Puritan contribution to American culture. When Peter arrived at Bare Cove in 1635, he hadn’t come just to join the community. He came to succeed Edmund as the head of the Puritan oligarchy, ruling the place with his brother Joshua Hobart until his death in 1679.

 As the anointed leader, Peter wasted no time taking charge. Bare Cove was quickly renamed Hingham as a salute to the homeland, and it carries that name today. Immediately, Peter and his new arrivals had drawn lots to choose their homesteads. Guess who was allowed to pick first. Peter chose lot 19 with a 10-acre plot. My 9th great-uncle Joshua picked second so he could live next door. As a Puritan minister, Peter would control the religious community, town commerce and the village government for the next 44 years. Joshua was destined to lead the militia.

Along with Edmund, the younger Hobarts represented the vanguard of what would become known as the Puritan Great Migration, a movement destined to bring more than 20,000 Puritan immigrants to New England between 1620 and 1640. Before looking closer at the subsequent lives of the Hobarts as they established Hingham and created Massachusetts, it’s necessary to review a bit of English history to understand why the Puritans had come and how they lived.

I’ve undertaken this writing project as part of my interest in genealogy and researching my own family history. While I have managed to identify hundreds of ancestors to fill out a tree, I also have realized I want to do more than provide names and dates. So, I have researched several important sources to produce this profile of the Hobarts, Hingham, and the Puritan Great Migration.

This post will include profiles of three other ancestors associated with the Puritan Great Migration: The Scottish prisoner of war Robert Dunbar; an ancestor hanged for murder, Amaziah Harding; and, a veteran of the American Revolution, Francis Lane. All were multi great-grandfathers of mine who lived in Massachusetts more than three centuries ago.

A crucial source has been a 2001 biography of Peter Hobart written by descendant Edward Franklin Ripley (1927-2009). Although no longer available in print, that biography, Shepherd In The Wilderness, was available online when I first went searching for background on the Hobarts a few years ago. Thus, this post enjoys the benefit of meticulous research by Ripley for his biography, using colonial journals and town records to recreate the story of the Hobarts.

“A central theme of the biography is the quest of Hobart and the Hingham Parish for inclusiveness, which helped prepare New England for democracy,” writes Ripley in his introduction. He also cites the biography of Peter Hobart included by the colonial literary icon Cotton Mather in his 1702 history of New England, Magnalia Christi America.

RELIGIOUS UPHEAVAL

As a religious agnostic, I believe I can write about the Protestant Reformation more objectively than many others with a religious bias. If you want to research deep in the weeds of this development from the 16th and 17th centuries, you can spend years reading details in sections of public libraries devoted to the subject. Or, there’s always Wikipedia  For the purposes of this posting, however, I will summarize the events to show how they impacted the migration of my ancestors from England to Massachusetts.

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 when a German priest named Martin Luther expressed his opposition to corruption in the Catholic Church in writing. But it was the invention of moveable type and the evolution of the printing press in the previous century that laid the foundation for sweeping religious change across Europe. Publication of affordable Bibles and other philosophical works offered the masses greater access to ideas. They no longer needed to rely on Catholic priests to interpret their religious texts.

They started to challenge the authority of the church, which had reigned supreme across Western Europe for the prior millennium. While they still considered themselves Christians—followers of Jesus—they also questioned some rules and beliefs imposed by the Papacy in its control of the Catholic Church. As a result, Europe saw the creation of numerous new protestant sects and, of course, they fought with each other. The 16th Century became a dangerous time to express beliefs.

In England, King Henry VIII  used the upheaval to political advantage. Ruling from 1509-1547, Henry first sought to win favor with the Catholic Church in 1521 by challenging the Protestant movement and defending the Papacy. His efforts made him a hero in Rome. But not enough of a hero to persuade the Pope to grant him an annulment from his first wife Catherine so he could marry the younger Anne Boleyn a few years later.

Henry VIII

By 1534, Henry had solved his problem by creating his own church, the Church of England and cutting ties with the Catholic Church. He spent the rest of his reign looting monasteries and diverting money that traditionally would have gone to Rome for his own use. In England, the 16th Century became a dangerous time to be a Catholic.

Following Henry’s death, the British monarchs bounced from Protestant to Catholic and back, while battling Scotland’s Catholic leaders about control of both governments and thoroughly confusing the populace about which heretics might get burned at the stake for practicing the wrong religion. Meanwhile, the Church of England continued to provide the monarchs with the power to control both the religious and secular activities of the country.

ENTER THE PURITANS

They never called themselves “Puritans.” That became a term of derision after they emerged as a Protestant sect with a mission to “purify” the Church of England by wiping clean its remaining vestiges of Catholic pomp and circumstance. The simplest definition on the internet describes puritanism as “the beliefs or principles of a group of English Protestants of the late 16th and 17th centuries who regarded the Reformation of the Church under Elizabeth I as incomplete and sought to simplify and regulate forms of worship.”

I found a solid and concise summary of Puritanism on the History.com web site  for anyone eager to learn more. 

“As they gained strength, Puritans were portrayed by their enemies as hairsplitters who slavishly followed their Bibles as guides to daily life or hypocrites who cheated the very neighbors they judged inadequate Christians,” notes History.com.

But the “movement found wide support among these new professional classes, who saw in it a mirror for their growing discontent with economic restraints,” reports History.com.

The article continues: “In the early decades of the 17th century, some groups of worshipers began to separate themselves from the main body of their local parish church where preaching was inadequate and to engage an energetic ‘lecturer,’ typically a young man with a fresh Cambridge degree, who was a lively speaker and steeped in reform theology.”

Just as the English separatists and Puritans began seeking places to practice their beliefs in peace, opportunities for emigration emerged across the Atlantic Ocean, where the English had been trying to establish permanent colonies for the last century. Once the Pilgrim separatists had created a commercially successful colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts after 1620, the Puritans realized they could start fresh as well.

History.com notes: “The Puritan migration was overwhelmingly a migration of families (unlike other migrations to early America, which were composed largely of young unattached men). The literacy rate was high, and the intensity of devotional life, as recorded in the many surviving diaries, sermon notes, poems and letters, was seldom to be matched in American life.”

Citing the German historian Max Weber, History.com concludes Puritanism “supplied ethics that somehow balanced charity and self-discipline. It counseled moderation within psychology that saw worldly prosperity as a sign of divine favor. Such ethics were particularly urgent in a New World where opportunity was rich, but the source of moral authority was obscure.”

Ask Google for a list of Puritan beliefs and its artificial intelligence generator says “They believed in a stricter moral code, emphasized individual piety and advocated for a more pure form of worship, free from unnecessary rituals and practices.”

They emphasized a need for education because they wanted individuals to find God from their own readings of the Bible and considered it the foundation for all decisions in life. Many Puritans adopted a belief in predestination arguing that God had already determined a person’s salvation before birth.

But they also emphasized community and religious conformity within a moral code that sometimes prohibited activities like gambling, drinking or dancing. They advocated the importance of hard work and diligence as aspects of religious duty.

Despite misgivings about their strict rules and punishments, I must conclude that the resulting nation benefitted greatly from the Puritan Great Migration. These were clearly serious and ambitious people determined to make a new world in this New World. The results would speak for themselves. They founded Harvard University in 1636 and invented universal public education. New England became a prosperous and thriving colony under their leadership building global trade relationships based on fur, lumber, agricultural and other goods.

Although the most fiery Puritanical views had mellowed within two generations of emigration to Massachusetts, the population boom triggered movement across the American continent and the Puritan work ethic played a crucial role in commercial development across the land.

OLD HINGHAM AND THE HOBART FAMILY

I’m usually skeptical of family trees dating back beyond the American colonial period. But Ripley writes authoritatively of the Hobart family legend dating the line back to the 9th Century through the Norseman King Hubba, killed in 878 during the Scandinavian Wars. Hubbas appear in records later under a variety of similar-sounding names such as Hubbard, Hubbert, Hubberde and Hobart. If the legends are true and my line traces back to old King Hubba, then it likely ranks as the oldest known line in my genealogy research.

Ripley appears satisfied in identifying Sir James Hobart (1436-1517) as an ancestor, noting he served as attorney general to King Henry VII. But he seems most eager to make the point that the Hobart family likely aligned with the crown and the Catholic Church while establishing their land holdings in the Hingham area of Norfolk County. And there’s no doubt about the history of the land.

Hingham is an ancient village, with a name identifying it as the town of “Hega’s People.” In 925, it belonged to King Athelstan, a descendant of Alfred the Great, and became a royal holding under William the Conqueror after the 1066 Battle of Hastings. Hingham was located in Norfolk or East Anglia as the market center for that agricultural area. The parish church of St. Andrews was rebuilt in the 1300s and would be the dominant focal point for succeeding generations in Hingham.

According to Ripley’s research, Sir Walter Hobart served as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk counties until his death in 1538. By then, the Protestant Reformation had begun shaking the roots of my lineage in the Hobart family tree. Ripley speculates that Thomas Hobart (1542-1609), who served as Lord of the Manor in Hingham likely became the first Hobart to consider separation from the Catholic Church.

While Ripley records Thomas Hobart as the father of my 10th great-grandpa Edmund Hobart, the WikiTree online genealogy research site records Edmund’s parentage as disputed. And the FamilySearch genealogy site lists no known father for Edmund. Thanks to my research into American colonial and United States census records, however, I remain satisfied listing Edmund as my ancestor and can provide this chart to record my Hobart lineage in America.

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	Edmund Hobart (1575-1646)	Margaret Dewe (1577-1634)	Edmund emigrated to New England in 1633.
2	Peter Hobart (1604-1679)	Elizabeth Ibrook (1608-1645)	Peter arrived in 1635 to found Hingham, Mass.
3	Elizabeth Hobart (1632-1692)	John Ripley (1621-1684)	John arrived in 1638 after Elizabeth’s 1635 arrival.
4	John Ripley (1655-1720)	Jane Whitmarsh (1664-1705)	John was first generation born in Massachusetts
5	Hezekiah Ripley (1693-1736)	Sarah Garnet (1691-1737)
6	Abner Ripley (1723-1808)	Abigail Robbins  (1718-1773)
7	Thaddeus Ripley (1746-1831)	Lydia Abigail Ransom (1754-1786)	Thaddeus served in the American Revolution.
8	Ransom Ripley (1786-1842)	Susan Lane (1797-1851)	Susan’s father was a sea captain in the Revolution.
9	Abbie Jane Ripley (1833-1870)	Joseph Clement Libby (1831-1902)	Joseph moved the family to Missouri in 1860.
10	Henry Augustus Libby (1852-1913)	Mary Lamburth (1861-1939)	Henry was a baseball player in St. Louis, then a prominent farmer in Pike County, Missouri.
11	Della Libby (1891-1969)	Leslie Wright (1891-1972)
12	Rheva Wright (1918-1981)	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)
13	Gary Dale Taylor (1947-)

 

EDMUND HOBART LEADS AN EXODUS FROM HINGHAM

By the time of Edmund’s birth on New Year’s Day 1573 in Hingham, the Protestant Reformation had become the most significant religious movement to sweep across Europe since the birth of Christianity. By the time Edmund became an adult, it is clear the movement had impacted his thinking. Because his conversion to Puritanism would prove so significant for the future of Old Hingham and the New England migration, Ripley spends a good deal of time speculating about the circumstances, asking: “Why did the Thomas Hobart family change their loyalty so drastically and become Puritans?”

To suggest an answer, he cites the movement of a group of persecuted protestant radicals into southeastern England during the decades before Edmund’s birth. Called the Lollards, they had developed their beliefs after gaining personal access to the Bible thanks to the invention of moveable type. No longer forced to learn Biblical verses from priests reading in Latin, more common people could hear the Bible read in their language and make their own conclusions about the meaning of the words. As a result, Ripley concludes: “Popular reading of the Bible in turn gave birth to non-conformity and criticism of the Church and clergy.”

Influenced by the Lollards, parishes in the region began rejecting many of the Roman Catholic rituals in a bid to simplify their lives and, in their view, move closer to God. This Puritan movement evolved as part of the broader divisions between all Protestants and Catholics in Europe and England—divisions marked by violence and government controls.

St. Andrews in Hingham was one of the parishes that simplified its rituals. Moreover, a Hingham citizen named William Carman was one of the more than 300 Protestants burned at the stake between 1555 and 1558 for offenses against the Church. Carman met his end in 1556 in Norwich at an execution spot called Lollards’ Pit for the offense of owning a Bible written in English. While this event occurred well before the birth of Edmund, it had happened recent enough to have affected open-minded young men for generations to come.

As Lord of the Manor in Hingham, Edmund likely reflected the views of his neighbors. He managed the Hobart estate there, and married Margaret Dewe in 1600. They had 10 children by 1617, including Peter born in October of 1604. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), they thrived in the peaceful period for religious freedom that prevailed in England. But the uncertainties of the future there, and the eventual successes of English colonists seeking new opportunities in America pushed Edmund toward a decision to leave his homeland and join them.

With creation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as an investment company in 1628, Edmund found his vehicle. That colony evolved from a land grant issued to a group of English investors led by the Puritan minister John White, who would never join the migration himself. The company recruited settlers and sent about 100 by the end of 1628 to its grant of land in the Boston area, then known as Charlestown. The next year they received a royal charter from King Charles I, who likely had no idea that settlers planned to establish a Puritan stronghold in Massachusetts.

The Puritan Great Migration really got rolling in 1630 with the appointment of John Winthrop as governor, a position he would hold for 12 years. Winthrop would coordinate the emigration of more than 20,000 Puritan settlers to the area during his time running the colony. By 1633, Edmund Hobart had become one of them, leading an exodus from Hingham destined to devastate the area in their wake.

Edmund’s group had been so prominent in the community that those left behind had to petition the English government for assistance. Historical documents from the period described the town as having been uprooted physically, socially and spiritually from England to Massachusetts.

THREE DECADES OF PREPARATION

Just as his parentage remains in dispute, the birth year of my Grandpa Edmund Hobart is uncertain, too. Research by WikiTree’s Puritan Great Migration Project places it in 1575 with marriage in Hingham to my grandmother Margaret Dewe on 7 September of 1600, according to church records. By 1617 they had created a family with 10 children, all baptized in Hingham. Margaret’s parentage, birth and death also remain unclear, but it appears she never made it to Massachusetts because no record reflects her joining the church with Edmund upon his arrival.

Optimism about the opportunities in Massachusetts had blossomed by 1625 with the publication of stories touting the successes of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation, including circulation of letters from the colonists themselves. Winthrop arrived with a fleet of 11 ships and 700 colonists in June of 1630, scouting the coast from Maine south to what today is Boston harbor and settling on the southern end of the bay at Charlestown on the mouth of the Mystic River. 

Charlestown had been established by an earlier immigrant named Samuel Maverick, who had built a house. The newcomers began building wigwams to prepare for the winter. But sickness triggered fears about the water supply there. So, Winthrop relocated his colony across the bay to what would become Boston, about 20 miles north of Charlestown.

Meanwhile, Edmund was continuing his life in Hingham—a life that had prepared him to lead a party of colonists into a virgin landscape. Notes Ripley: “In making his plans for living in the wilderness, Edmund’s experience of operating his estate in Hingham, England, was invaluable.”

As Lord of the Manor in Hingham, Edmund managed land and tenants. He supervised construction of housing and farm buildings, purchased equipment and made repairs. He oversaw the breeding of cattle and raised livestock, buying and selling them. Margaret would have been adept at managing the farm economy, gardening and supervising the manufacture of clothing. She also would have supervised home education as a crucial part of the Puritan culture.

About the time of Peter’s birth in 1604, Hingham welcomed the controversial Robert Peck as the Puritan rector at St. Andrews. Peck would have a great influence on the community in general and the Hobart family in particular as a mentor for Peter. Later Peck would join them in moving briefly to Massachusetts.

Edmund shared correspondence with Winthrop after establishment of the colony in Boston. By then, ships were moving regularly between London and the American colonies as commercial trading got under way. He received important advice on preparations for moving the Hingham congregation across the Atlantic. Families usually sold their homes and furniture before emigrating, replacing them in the colony after arrival.

With Winthrop’s advice, Edmund decided to eventually settle his group of 14 family members and seven wealthy community leaders south of Boston at a place called Bare Cove. That area of coastline offered many potentially suitable locations for harbors. One of Edmund’s acquaintances had already settled at Bare Cove, so the first Hobart party enjoyed several advantages of advance information when it landed at Charlestown on 15 June of 1633. Edmund planned to live in Charlestown for a while, dispatching work parties to Bare Cove to prepare shelter, survey home lots and scout for farmland.

Researching an ancestor like Edmund leads me to philosophize a bit on the subject of leadership. I wonder how one man like Edmund became a leader for so many in such a dangerous and arduous venture, to pack up and cross an ocean without knowing what really lay on the other side? I recall from my own life that leaders always seem to emerge. As early as first grade, for example, I recall my classmates dividing into groups following one little boy or another. In my case, I remember three boys named Mike emerging as leaders of three different groups and a fourth group led by a boy named Ronnie. These groups congregated during our recess periods—our free time away from the teachers.

I can’t remember how they led us. Did they assign positions for ball games? Why did we follow their orders? Were they persuasive and articulate in the view of their first-grade peers? Did we fear them physically? Or, did they just assume a dominant role as alphas for some reason? How far would we have followed them? Later on, these questions probably would arise if boys advanced into gangs with criminal intentions. Would we have accepted their orders on a trip across the ocean?

Writing for Forbes magazine in 2015, Kevin Kruse explored the concept of leadership within companies. He emphasizes that titles do not make a leader in any endeavor—church, community or workplace. Seeking a definition of leadership, Kruse offers quotes from noted business icons to help but finally he concludes with his own definition: “Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal.”

So, how did Edmund Hobart and his son Peter influence their neighbors to follow them toward achieving the goal of building a new world in the New World? Since the followers were adults, it seems obvious that both men would have had to have articulate and persuasive language skills, dominating conversation and debate in a way that engendered trust in their decisions. But Ripley in his biography of Peter Hobart offers additional observation that makes sense.

Although the WikiTree Puritan Great Migration Project as well as FamilySearch declines to identify any parents for Edmund, Ripley seems confident in identifying his father as Thomas Hubbarde and credits that link for Edmund’s power in Hingham. He writes: “Edmund’s status as gentry came from inherited wealth and land holdings. In 1598 at age 26, Edmund Hobart arrived in Hingham, England from Snoring Magna near Norwich to assume the hereditary title of Lord of the Manor and to receive rents and services from lands which his father, Thomas Hubbarde, had willed to him.”

The search for confirmation of Edmund’s parentage has taken several interesting twists over the years. In 1966, for example, descendant Keith W. Hubbard offered a $150 reward for anyone providing proof of Edmund’s parentage. One researcher claimed the reward by supplying records of a baptism of “Edwardi Hubbard” in 1573 at Snoring Magna listing Thomas Hubbarde as the father. In his source materials for his 2001 book about the family, Ripley cites records from Keith W. Hubbard as the source for his belief in Edmund’s inheritance. Later researchers have discounted the fruits of Keith Hubbard’s reward. One explanation for the confusion likely stems from the family’s use of several different names through the centuries before finally settling on Hobart in colonial America.

Nevertheless, Ripley makes a strong case for Edmund having inherited wealth from somewhere. While Edmund may have been illiterate himself, he had the resources to finance a Cambridge education for Peter. And after the Hobarts abandoned Hingham, England with their group, their departure left the town so devastated it needed aid from the government.

In addition, Edmund has been described by American contemporaries as a profoundly religious man, a Puritan zealot, which means he could probably bring the fire and brimstone into any conversation with fellow parishioners already terrified about religious persecution from the English monarchy. By 1633 he had demonstrated the skills of management and the will to succeed that attracted followers.

Landing in Charlestown, Edmund joined the church and became a citizen. He began building three houses side by side to use while expanding into the Bare Cove area. He was named a constable of Charlestown and later would become a justice of the peace after relocating to Bare Cove and renaming it Hingham.  

At 60 years of age, Edmund was entering the twilight of his productive life when he led the Hingham congregation into the New World. But he had planned for the future, too. He had persuaded his well-educated son—my 9GG Peter Hobart—to join the community as its new pastor. By the time of Edmund’s death 13 years later in 1646, the old man could take pride in a successful passing of the baton to the next generation. He was always known as “Edmund Hobart the Elder.”

PETER HOBART AND THE PURITAN THEOCRACY

Born 8 October of 1604, my 9th great-grandpa Peter Hobart was the third child of ten born to Edmund Hobart and Margaret Dewe, who had married in 1600 in Hingham, England, where Edmund was Lord of the Manor. As usual for those days, Edmund and Margaret wasted no time in building their family. Peter followed sister Nazareth in 1601 and brother Edmund Jr. in 1603. Some reports claim they were twins. He was followed by four younger brothers and three younger sisters each born about a year apart until 1617. Younger brother Joshua Hobart, born 1614, also would play a key role in the development of Hingham, Massachusetts.

The timing could not have been more perfect for Peter to grow to manhood. By all accounts, Peter as a lad benefitted from an agile and curious mind in a time of the European reawakening. He walked several miles daily to reach a grammar school. After attending a free school at Lyn, Peter received a recommendation from the master there for advancement. He took advantage of all educational opportunities and earned a bachelor’s degree of arts in 1625 from Queen’s College and Magdalen College at Cambridge University. He added a Master of Arts in 1629 and was ordained as a minister in the Anglican Church of England.

At that time, Puritan scholars dominated the faculty at Cambridge, exposing Peter to their religious philosophy. He also became influenced by the Reverend Robert Peck (1580-1656), a Puritan lecturer who became the rector at St. Andrews in old Hingham. Later, in New England, Peter would marry one of Peck’s nieces after the death of his first wife, and my 9GG Elizabeth Ibrook.

Besides teaching children at a grammar school, the young graduate had no difficulty finding invitations to lecture at many churches around that part of England. The masses hungered for education and welcomed the Puritan scholars who brought philosophical enlightenment. These contracts also paid well.

Ripley writes: “In London of 1628, with a total population of about 250,000, ninety percent of the 116 Anglican parishes had hired lecturers, and almost half of these were Puritans…Peter easily found employment as a lecturer at various Church of England parishes in and around Southwold, and it proved to be a lucrative living.”

Even before graduating, Peter had married my 9th great-grandmother Elizabeth Ibrook in 1628. Her parents Richard Ibrook (1580-1651) and Margaret Gentleman (1587-1664) also would emigrate to Massachusetts in 1635, living in new Hingham until their deaths and outliving daughter Elizabeth, who died in 1645 at the age of 37 during childbirth. 

Before her death, Elizabeth had 11 children with Peter, including my 8th great-grandmother, also named Elizabeth (1632-1692). Her 1654 marriage to my 8GG John Ripley (1621-1684) joined the Hobarts with another powerful Puritan oligarch family, and my lineage would descend through Ripley males until the 19th Century.

Citing Cotton Mather’s (1663-1728) short biography of Peter Hobart, author Ripley notes in his biography of Peter that the couple lived comfortably on Peter’s earnings from a lecturing assignment in Haverhill thanks to Peter’s “diligence” and Elizabeth’s “frugality.” They were prosperous enough to retain indentured servants who would accompany them to New England. Peter also spent those years before emigration learning from Peck as a mentor and honing his skills as a lecturer.

Say what you may about the excesses of Puritan religious views. But it remains clear to me that their religious zeal served them well facing the challenges of settling a wilderness. They believed they had a duty to their creator to live as perfect a life as possible—a view that motivated them culturally and commercially toward success. Peter Hobart harnessed that motivation as he gathered an emigration party from Hingham and Southwold to join Edmund’s group in Massachusetts.

By the time Peter’s group arrived in Charlestown on 8 June of 1635, his father’s group had relocated to Bare Cove—so named because the water there fell so shallow at low tide. Peter’s party moved into the three houses Edmund had built in Charlestown and occupied since his arrival two years before. Charlestown and the Boston area had grown into bustling market towns.

While Peter established himself as a new citizen and pastor in the colony, Edmund waited in Bare Cove building new houses and organizing a new town. Bare Cove already boasted a small population of English settlers who had come earlier as fishermen. Known as the West Countrymen, they welcomed the new Puritan arrivals as evidence of commercial growth and eagerly awaited Peter’s arrival as a new pastor.

After taking an oath of allegiance to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston and joining the Congregational Church in Charlestown, Peter received permission from the colony’s General Court to incorporate Bare Cove as a new town named Hingham and distribute land there for settlement. On 2 September of 1635 his party took the short four-hour boat ride along the coast to join his father.

While the Pilgrims living at Plymouth considered themselves “separatists” without ties to the Anglican Church of England, the Puritan pastors like Peter Hobart received their ordination from the Anglican church. They just practiced their religion more independently from the Anglican ceremonies. But they were separated by distance in New England and free to create their own governing structure. The result was a theocracy or oligarchy in which the pastors and church members controlled everything in their communities. They also became wealthy through control of commercial enterprises and the land.

They called their churches “congregational churches” or Church of Christ and only members could vote as “Freemen.”  The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the offices of governor, deputy governor and 18 additional magistrates elected annually by freemen and serving as the Governor’s Council in Boston.

As the population grew, communities emerged across New England. From 506 settlers in 1630, the colony swelled to 8,932 by 1640 and more than 14,000 in 1650—excluding colonists living in Maine. Immigration attracted few titled nobles, but most of the newcomers boasted some degree of wealth and skill that influenced commercial growth.

Commercial enterprises included shipbuilding, fisheries, fur and lumber. By 1632, ships from Massachusetts were trading with other colonies, England and some countries in Europe. A merchant might ship dried fish to Portugal or Spain, collect wine and oil for buyers in England and carry finished goods back to New England. By 1660, historians believe the colony’s merchant fleet counted more than 200 vessels.

After arriving in Hingham and drawing lots for their homesteads, Peter’s group joined his father in selection of a place for construction of a large building for a meeting house as required by the governor’s council for new settlements. They designed this building to serve as a place of worship, a town hall and a fort for defense against hostile natives or invaders from other colonial empires. But they had to start building individual homes first.

Peter arrived at about the time the colony became engaged in its first war with native Americans, known as the Pequot War (1636-1638). For the previous decade, settlers in Plymouth and around Boston had enjoyed a peaceful relationship with New England natives who engaged with them in the fur trade. By 1635, however, those commercial relationships had frayed to a point where violence erupted. It concluded with annihilation of the Pequot nation by an alliance of the colonial communities in New England and ushered in a period of peace destined to last 40 years until the larger conflict known as King Philip’s War (1675-1678).

Besides the meeting house, colony regulations required that each community also build a training field for their militia, a town common, school, tavern, stocks, pillories and animal pens. They could build no house farther than a half-mile from the meeting house. In the event of attack, residents could reach their fortress in haste. Living so closely together, however, they enjoyed little privacy from their neighbors policing their Puritanical ways.

But their general level of freedom in New England must have created a significant cultural shock for a population accustomed to monarchy. It was here that the foundations for American democracy were laid.

“They well understood that much of the English medieval culture had to be abandoned to make room for a new, prosperous theocracy,” writes Ripley. “The Reverend Peter Hobart and the Hingham Plantation congregation were active participants.”

Ripley cites the advantage of Hingham’s large, circular and sheltered harbor as a foundation for the community’s growth and prosperity. Hingham quickly became a thriving seaport with the construction of new wharves and shipyards. Although the settlers had brought farming skills from England, they diversified into merchants, lumbermen, fishermen and seamen. The community erected three mills for grinding grain and sawing lumber. Those mills emerged as gathering spots for a wide range of people—locals to sailors arrived from foreign lands.

Within the Hingham community, Ripley identified three distinct classes. Atop the oligarchy sat the pastor Peter Hobart, local elected government leaders and wealthy owners of property. Colony rules prohibited Peter from holding a government position. But only church members could vote. And to join the church, newcomers were required to sit for an interview with the local pastor—giving him control over citizens with voting rights. Lesser gentry and craftsmen formed the second class while cottage farmers labored at the bottom.

Regulations required all able-bodied men between 16 and 55 to train with the local militia. But Hingham enjoyed peaceful relations with the natives in its area. They lived in wigwams nearby and often received work in the town. In 1665, the local chief would officially cede the land to the Hingham settlers in exchange for what was recorded only as a “valuable consideration,” according to Ripley.

Seven ships brought more than a hundred settlers in 1638, including Robert Peck, who would stay only for three years. Meanwhile, local politics grew complicated as the Old Hingham settlers easily outnumbered the earlier West Country fishermen who had come from Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. But Peter helped keep the peace by including the West Country folks in church positions, despite their disdain for Puritan reforms in the Anglican church.

“Moreover, early records seemed to indicate that the West Country people were a somewhat bawdy country folk, fond of common pleasures,” writes Ripley. “This included the pagan rite of Maypole dancing, cavorting with ladies of pleasure and public drunkenness.”

Still, 90 percent of the Hingham population had become members of the Puritan church by 1640, compared with just 50 percent in Boston. Cotton Mather credited Peter Hobart’s personality and even-handed leadership for his success in leading the parish growth. Peter also earned respect for his fearlessness in challenging the colony authorities in Boston and championing his community’s right to make decisions for themselves.

In one example, Peter welcomed to the Hingham congregation the carpenter Thomas Joy after he had been jailed and then forced out of Boston in 1646 for opposition to Governor Winthrop there. In a notable controversy, Peter challenged the colony’s general council in a dispute that became known as Peter Hobart’s Rebellion. The dispute involved the excommunication and dismissal of Hingham’s elected militia leader despite the objections of Governor Winthrop.

After researching official accounts, Ripley concluded: “The standard historical interpretation retained Winthrop’s casting of Hobart as a rebellious troublemaker.”

Later analysis, however, has come to portray my 9th great-grandpa as a local hero of sorts who eventually accepted a fine rather than surrender local rule. And his congregation joined him—armed with muskets—in a trip to Boston where he accused the governor of exceeding his authority under the charter. The affair ended with the council acquitting Winthrop and issuing a small fine against Peter and some of Hingham’s militia. Ripley writes he could find no record it ever got paid. In 1646, the record reflects an official from Boston failed to collect the fines from Peter and the other members of the militia.

In 1652, Peter’s brother Joshua became the captain of the militia, which would join the colonial alliance against the native tribes in what became known as King Philip’s War (1675-1678). Named after the English title for the native chief Metacom, that conflict raged across New England in the years just before Peter’s death, and represented the first major war in America between English settlers and Native Americans.

Often overlooked when compared with later conflicts on the western plains, King Philip’s War devastated the New England colonies and ranked as the native tribes’ final bid to chase the settlers from North America. More than half of all New England towns suffered attacks during the war with many destroyed. Hingham sent more than 50 of its militia men to the colonial alliance, including Peter’s brother Joshua as captain of the force. The city constructed three forts for defensive purposes.

Nevertheless, the natives attacked the town on 19 April 1676 and burned five houses before withdrawing. They apparently determined Hingham too well-defended for further risk. Peace arrived later that year following the death of the native chief, King Philip.

Ripley concludes the Hingham oligarchy used its power of wealth and elected positions to maintain political control of the town and the local congregation. One analysis from 1642-1688 found that 10 percent of the leading families controlled 31 percent of Hingham’s wealth. Ripley notes: “During the first half century, the three families of Hobarts, Cushings and Beales held one-third of all elected positions in the Hingham settlement.”

Peter received an annual salary of 70 to 100 pounds (worth about $20,000 in 2025), making him one of the highest compensated pastors in the colony, according to Ripley. He also received grants of land from time to time. Besides leading the parish, Peter also served as the town’s primary physician, a position that likely required little medical knowledge at that time. But his academic credentials must have impressed the patients who contacted him to cure their ills.

The inventory of his holdings after his death in 1679 recorded his net worth in money and land at 1,254 British pounds, worth an estimated $348,070 in 2025.

Also for their money, the congregation received lectures lasting six to eight hours on Sunday and Thursday every week. I can’t imagine sitting through sermons like that or being able to talk for that long. I can see why the serious Puritan era lasted only about two decades before the younger generations discovered more entertaining activities. Church membership began a decline.

Peter fathered 11 children with my 9th great-grandmother, Elizabeth Ibrook, and seven more with his second wife, Rebecca Peck. At least five of those children graduated from Harvard, which the Puritans founded in 1636 shortly after creation of the colony. His third child, my 8th great-grandmother Elizabeth Hobart (1632-1692) married John Ripley (1621-1684) about 1654 in Hingham.

In 1671 Peter contracted an unidentified illness so severe it forced him to take a leave of absence. But he recovered and resumed his ministry the next year until 1679 when he died at the age of 75. According to Cotton Mather, Peter suffered depression during his final years as he reviewed his life and concluded he had not fulfilled his full potential.

But Ripley offers his perspective in the final lines of his biography: “Peter Hobart’s colorful life and brave dedication to the on-going development of both religious tolerance and political inclusiveness in America warrants him a significant place in American colonial history.”

Peter's Old Ship Church in Hingham today.

SCOTTISH PRISONER OF WAR: ROBERT DUNBAR

Once the Puritans had established their oligarchy in Massachusetts, they realized they still needed outsiders to ensure growth and economic development. That realization coupled with the outbreak of civil war in England would provide me with another 8th great-grandfather in Robert Dunbar (1634-1693), a man destined to become an intriguing figure in Hingham, Massachusetts. Many things remain mysterious about him, but the facts that are known sound fascinating indeed.

The first group of non-Puritan immigrants came to work in an ironworks constructed by English investors between 1641 and 1645. Thanks to tax exemptions and cooperation from the colony’s general court, those investors demonstrated the power of public-private partnerships long before the advent of those kinds of deals in our time.

“Puritan leaders were moving toward the diversified economy that sustained Massachusetts throughout the colonial period, a change that encouraged immigration from many Protestant regions of Europe,” notes Marsha Hamilton in a 2004 academic paper reporting research into “Alternative Communities in Seventeenth Century Massachusetts.” 

The paper describes construction of an “elaborate” plant in Saugus between Boston and Salem. Equipment included a furnace, two refining forges, a finishing forge, a water-powered hammer, a slitting mill, and a complex water system that powered seven water wheels. It attracted skilled indentured workers from Europe.

As the first indentures expired about 1650, however, the investors needed a new source of cheap labor. That need would be filled by England’s Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, who had captured 10,000 prisoners in a battle at Dunbar south of Edinburgh during his war against Scottish royalists seeking to maintain the English monarchy just overthrown by Parliament under Cromwell’s leadership.

Unwilling to simply release those prisoners, Cromwell’s government decided to exile many of them to England’s colonial holdings from New England to the West Indies through indentures to budding businesses there. The first group of 150 POWs arrived in December of 1650 in Boston destined for the ironworks. My 8GG Robert Dunbar was among them.

Peter Hobart later would mention Robert Dunbar in his journal as being one of the wealthiest residents of Hingham, where Robert lived soon after his arrival. Peter noted that only two other Hingham residents paid higher annual taxes, leaving many researchers to speculate that Robert may have somehow brought funds from Scotland at some point. He married a woman known only by her first name Rose—my 8th great-grandmother “Rose”—and speculation suggests she might have joined him from Scotland with a nest egg of some sort. In Hingham, they lived on Scotland Street—of course!

Descendants of New England’s Scottish POWs have actively researched their family lines. Organized as The Scottish Prisoners of War Society, they maintain a web site and Facebook presence. The Society’s web site includes a profile of Robert under its list of prisoners from the Battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650 in East Lothian, Scotland. A 2017 article in Archeology Magazine also includes an account of the Battle of Dunbar and the long, brutal forced march of prisoners south to England before transport to the colonies.

This 1886 painting depicts Cromwell at Dunbar

Robert’s parentage remains a matter in dispute. One record listed his rank as lieutenant colonel when captured but he would have been a teenage officer in 1650. In a 1659 deposition for a legal dispute, he reported his age as 25, offering the best written record on his birth. After arriving in Boston, Robert was assigned to the ironworks at Braintree.

My Dunbar lineage chart:

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	Robert Dunbar (1634-1693)	Rose (Unknown) (?-1700)	Transported as a Scottish POW to Hingham 1650.
2	Joseph Dunbar (1661-1725)	Christian Garnet (1668-1726)	Both were born in Hingham, Massachusetts.
3	Deborah Dunbar (1697-1772)	Samuel Ransom (1693-1737)
4	David Ransom (1724-1801)	Content Tilson (1718-1804)
5	Lydia Abigail Ransom (1754-1786)	Thaddeus Ripley (1746-1831)	Thaddeus served in the American Revolution.
6	Ransom Ripley (1786-1842)	Susan Lane (1797-1851)	Susan’s father was a sea captain in the Revolution.
7	Abbie Jane Ripley (1833-1870)	Joseph Clement Libby (1831-1902)	Joseph moved the family to Missouri in 1860.
8	Henry Augustus Libby (1852-1913)	Mary Lamburth (1861-1939)	Henry was a baseball player in St. Louis, then a prominent farmer in Pike County, Missouri.
9	Della Libby (1891-1969)	Leslie Wright (1891-1972)
10	Rheva Wright (1918-1981)	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)
11	Gary Dale Taylor  (1947-)

 

A MURDER IN MY FAMILY TREE

Likely the most infamous episode to emerge from my genealogical research concerns the fate of my 7th great-grandmother Hannah Rogers (1669-1733), who died at the hands of her husband, my 7th great-grandfather Amaziah Harding (1671-1734). Hannah was the granddaughter of Mayflower passenger and my 9th great-grandfather Joseph Rogers (1603-1678). Neither Hannah nor Amaziah were related to the Hobarts or Dunbars of Hingham. But they remain part of my Massachusetts heritage, so their story belongs in this post.

Although his lineage remains in dispute, Amaziah likely was the grandson of my 9th great-grandfather Joseph Harding, who arrived in 1623. Amaziah was the fifth of 10 children born in Plymouth Colony to Joseph Harding (1632-1687) and Bethia Cook (1640-1687). He married Hannah Rogers before 1694 when the first of their nine children was born. Amaziah worked as a miller, processing grains into flour.

Amaziah and Hannah lived a relatively inconspicuous life together with their last child born in 1717. The brood included my 6th great-grandfather John Harding (1698-1761). Then they made the papers and the history books.

On 18 July 1733, Amaziah beat and strangled Hannah to death, then tried to pretend she died of natural causes. His profile on WikiTree cites an article from the Boston Weekly Newsletter of July 1733 to provide the details:

“We hear from Eastham on Cape Cod, That the beginning of last Week, a most barbarous Murder was committed there, on the body of one Mrs. Harding, suppos'd to be done by her own Husband Amaziah Harding; he having for a great while before, as 'tis said, carried it very ill towards her, to the imparing of her Reason; and now being found in the Room alone with her, where she lay dead near him, with her Neck twisted and broke, and about her Mouth and Throat much beat and bruis'd. The hard-hearted Man being thus surpriz'd, and charg'd with the Fact, by those who first discover'd it, endeavoured to put an end to his own Life, by stabing a Knife into his Bowels, which stroke not proving mortal immediately, he went to repeat it, aiming at his Breast, but was prevented by those about him, and on Friday last he was sent to Barnstable Goal.(sic)”

At Amaziah's trial in May 1734, neighbors testified they met him at the door of his house, asked if his wife was dead, and were told, “yes & he was glad of it.” They entered the house and found her body on a bed wrapped in bed clothes. They testified he told them she had drank her fill of rum. He added that she had been a “plague” to him for 20 years and he hoped now he could find someone to clean the house for him.

So, the authorities hanged my 63-year-old 7th great-grandpa Amaziah on 5 June 1734 in Barnstable. To date, he is the only ancestor I’ve found who committed serious criminal acts. 

SEA CAPTAIN AND REVOLUTIONARY WAR PRIVATEER FRANCIS LANE

By 1750 the Massachusetts colony had grown substantially following the Puritan Great Migration and other waves of immigration. Established in 1642, Gloucester had grown into one the colony’s most successful port towns with a population of 2,700 and a reputation for a harbor lifestyle that extends into the present. After four or five generations in the New World, the colonists had begun to consider themselves more Americans than British, taking pride in the creation of a culture and commercial identity all their own. They had grown ripe for revolution.

“In Gloucester as much as in any other community in Eastern Massachusetts, the warlike spirit was easily fostered and developed,” noted James R. Pringle in his 1892 History of the Town and City of Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

So, it should be no surprise to learn that Gloucester moved quickly to join the fray after learning about the April 1775 battles between colonial “Minute Men” and British regulars at Lexington and Concord. Gloucester boasted its own group of Minute Men, too. Among the 225 recruits mustering out from Gloucester toward Boston on 12 June 1775 was my 4th great-grandfather Francis Lane—just 19 at the time.

“Captain Row’s company marched from Gloucester, June 12, and on the evening of the 16^th reached Breed’s Hill where they assisted in throwing up a redoubt,” recorded Pringle, listing Francis Lane as a member of that group.

Two companies of militia had left Gloucester to assist patriot forces in what would become known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Actually fought on nearby Breed’s Hill, the Battle of Bunker Hill erupted 17 June 1775 after colonial forces in Boston learned of British plans to occupy the hills overlooking this crucial seaport. On their third assault of the hill, the British forced colonial forces to retreat, seizing control of the Charlestown Peninsula in a tactical victory.

British charging up Breed's Hill

But the British suffered many more casualties with 226 dead and another 828 wounded—including 100 commissioned officers. Colonials lost 140 dead and another 310 wounded. The British lost a significant portion of the regular officers stationed in America. The Battle of Bunker Hill ranks as a landmark in the revolution demonstrating that colonial militia squads could handle British regulars on the battlefield.

Thanks to his service at Bunker Hill, Francis Lane is a Patriot Ancestor for the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) A068597. But he was just getting started. Francis returned to Gloucester and signed aboard one of the vessels known as a privateer in the fleet that would become America’s guerilla navy. 

“While the Continental fleet had little impact on the outcome of the war, tens of thousands of citizen sailors seeking both freedom and fortune played a critical, yet underappreciated, role in the quest for independence,” wrote historian Christopher Klein in a 2020 article for History.com. “An armada of more than 2,000 so-called privateers commissioned by both the Continental Congress and individual states preyed on enemy shipping on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, severely disrupting the British economy and turning British public opinion against the war.”

Investors posted bonds to receive privateering commissions that would allow the ship captains and crews to keep British cargos and vessels seized at sea. Operating like a navy of pirates, the privateer navy provided my 4GG with an education in seamanship and a nest egg by the end of the war. Of course, the service did not come risk-free, as many privateers went down and crews were killed or captured.

To learn more about the privateers, you can read about the Irish captain Luke Ryan in an article by Bob Ruppert in 2017 on the web site for the Journal of the American Revolution.

“Much like investors in the stock market, speculators made vast fortunes by buying shares in and bankrolling privateering enterprises,” noted Klein in History.com. “Ship owners and investors usually received half the value of seized goods, with the other half divided among privateering crews.”

The privateers operated as far afield as Canada, the Caribbean and even close to England itself, forcing insurers to increase the costs of commerce for the British. But an estimated 12,000 Americans died in British prison ships, with most of those privateers who spawned a generation of orphans and widows back in New England. Gloucester lost all 24 of its registered privateers, according to Klein’s research, cutting the town’s male population in half by the war’s end.

Nevertheless, American privateers captured an estimated 2,300 British ships, compared with just 200 by the American regulars of the Continental Navy. They helped turn popular opinion in Britain against continuation of the war.

Although many of his fellow sailors from Gloucester failed to return, my 4GG Francis Lane managed to survive and collect his share of several cargoes, according to genealogical records. He became Captain Francis Lane after the war and took ships around the world. He wrecked once on Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada, spending a winter there while recovering a cargo of cotton from the sunken ship.

Born 12 December 1756 in Gloucester, Francis Lane descended from colonists who had arrived in Maine a century before but moved to Gloucester about 1700 to escape wars with natives.  He married my 4th great-grandmother Esther Griffin in 1779 in Gloucester. A descendant of a family that arrived as part of the Puritan Great Migration in 1639, she died at age 38 in 1799 while helping a neighbor recover from Yellow Fever.

They had six children together, including my 3rd great-grandmother Susan Lane (1797-1851).

Francis survived Esther, remarried and lived until 1829 when he died in Paris, Maine at the age of 73.  Lane family genealogy records report him as “rather small in stature with light complexion, blue eyes and delicate constitution—soldier, scholar and gentlemen.”

I really would have enjoyed sitting down and sharing a round of drinks with Francis Lane so I could hear more details about his adventures on the high seas.

My Lane lineage chart

Gen	Name	Spouse	comments
1	Francis Lane (1756-1829)	Esther Griffin (1761-1799)	Revolutionary veteran of Bunker Hill and privateer
2	Susan Lane (1797-1851)	Ransom Ripley (1786-1842)
3	Abbie Jane Ripley (1833-1870)	Joseph Clement Libby (1831-1902)	Joseph moved the family to Missouri in 1860.
4	Henry Augustus Libby (1852-1913)	Mary Lamburth (1861-1939)	Henry was a baseball player in St. Louis, then a prominent farmer in Pike County, Missouri.
5	Della Libby (1891-1969)	Leslie Wright (1891-1972)
6	Rheva Wright (1918-1981)	Dale Taylor (1921-1984)
7	Gary Dale Taylor (1947-)