Family:John Shepard and Hannah Peck (1)

The Two Youngest Children

Paul Peck's 25 June 1695 will specifically names four married daughters, leaving them £20 each. He does not mention daughter Hannah (Peck) Shepard. He does, however, name her husband, John Shepard, as one of his two executors and leaves him "that lot on which his dwelling house now standeth." The most obvious conclusion is that Hannah was then deceased. However, the fact that he left land to her husband may have led him to not include her among the daughters receiving £20 as legacies. John Shepard had two children born after 1695, and the identity of their mother is in question. She may have been Hannah (Peck) Shepard; however, both Savage and Jacobus made the inference of an interim, unknown wife prior to his marriage to Mary (Benton) (Cole) Bigelow in 1712. Whether their mother was Hannah Peck or this inferred second wife has no genealogical significance since both Rebecca and Timothy died young without issue.^[2][3]

1. ↑ Hartford Vital Records [NEHGS], in Connecticut, United States. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records
   287.

   Shepard, John, Jr., m. Hannah Peck, May 12, 1680 [FFS:52].

2. ↑ Shepard, Gerald Faulkner, and Donald Lines Jacobus. The Shepard Families of New England. (New Haven [Connecticut]: New Haven Colony Historical Society, 1971-1973)
   2:9.
3. ↑ Paul Peck, Hartford, in Manwaring, Charles W. A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records. (Hartford, Conn.: R. S. Peck & Co., 1904-06)
   1:494-95.