Person:Hannah Unknown (1225)

[EVERED] JOHN, with a perpetual alias Webb, for surname, Boston, from Marlborough in Wilts, emb. in the James at Southampton Apr. 1635, arr. 3 June, had large est. from 1656, as also at Chelmsford, where he was capt. and rep. 1663, 4, and 5, spent the last 5 or 6 yrs. of life in that part afterwards Dracut, and d. 16 Oct. 1668. His will of 10 Feb. 1666, bestows £50 on ch. of Boston, names w. Mary, six serv. his niece Rebecca, w. of John Arsleby of Andover, and her brs. John, Robert, Thomas, Peter, and Nathaniel Eayres, or Ayres, of Haverhill, and the eldest s. of John Bishop of Nantucket, beside cous. or neph. James Breedane, and br. William Dinsdale of Boston, and Rev. John Fiske, wh. with Thomas Hincksman he made overseers of this will, from all wh. it may be presum. he left no descend. STEPHEN, perhaps br. of the preced. hav. the same alias, and com. in the same sh. with him. No more is kn. of him. It may be unavailing to ask why this fam. is describ. in all the rec. by a double surname, as was the progen. of famous Oliver Cromwell, by the precession of Williams. Webb was a com. name in Wilts, and in many other parts of Eng.
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[CAUTION: Based on this abstract, many researchers have assumed that Hannah, the mother of the Ayres children named in the will of John Evered Webb, must be John's sister, but see Note 74 in Bailey ² below.]

This book is lengthy and very well researched. It is often quoted by the NEHGS in their scholarly publications. It concludes that Hannah, who married John Ayer the emigrant, was not a Evered alias Webb. A couple of quotes:

Note 6: Ayer, Hannah. The emigrant's widow is the Hannah recorded by Haverhill as dying in 1688. Her Feb. 3, 1681 deed transferring her husband's Salisbury lands to son Robert, signed by her mark X, was not filed until 1691 and, together with his 1692 sale thereof, was confirmed by quitclaim of Dec. 3 & 27, 1692 by her sons John, Peter and Nathaniel Ayer (Ipswich deeds, 5:384 & 564). These dates after 1688 caused confusion in some Ayer genealogies. She also used a mark H. There seems to be no clue to her maiden name: for the misleading guess of Evered alias Webb, see Note 74.

Note 74. Evered alias Webb, Hannah. Hannah is not a name of the Evered alias Webb family of Wiltshire. Wills were found covering three generations of Robert Everett’s descendants (other than Noah, Jr.’s, see Note 76) but they do not mention a Hannah as wife, child or other relative earlier than Daniel Webb’s child Hannah, who was baptized at Chiseldon in 1641. By this date Mrs. Hannah Ayer was in America with a half dozen children of her own. Hence (despite the paucity of this region’s baptismal records and bishop’s transcripts), it would seem that the maiden name of John Ayer’s wife Hannah was not Evered alias Webb. The term “cousin” in official 17th century documents varied in meaning from a distant marital connection to the close blood tie now termed nephew and niece. The latter meaning was used so often that one American expert “translated” the “cousins” (Ayer children) of the 1665 will into nephews and niece and it has misled others into guessing that their mother Hannah was born an Evered alias Webb.

AYERS, Hannah, wid., [died] Oct. 8, 1688.

John Ayer m. Hannah ---; she d. Haverhill 8 Oct 1688.