Person:Thomas Hayward (12)

Excerpts from the Sketch of Thomas Howard or Hayward in The Comstock-Thomas Ancestry of Richard Wilmot Comstock^S1

Thomas Howard or Hayward, b. about 1643, d. Enfield, Conn, (then Mass.) in 1700 [Savage, Gen. Dict.]; m. Lynn, Mass. [V.R. 2:192], 15 Nov. 1667, Ruth Jones, b. Gloucester, Mass., 22 Feb. 1644/5, d. Enfield, after 1706, daughter of Thomas and Mary (North) Jones. …

He first certainly appears at the time of his marriage in Lynn in 1667, but after the birth of his eldest child there the following year, shortly removed to Salem, where the Town Records [2:13] show him admitted an inhabitant 5 July 1670. Here he and Ruth had three children recorded 1672-1675. Perley's History of Salem [3:45] states that Thomas Howard came from Lynn and lived in Salem as late as 1688. However, he was granted land in Enfield in 1680 and seems to have been living there in 1686 when the birth of his youngest child was recorded, and on 11 Feb. 1689/90 he was chosen a fence viewer [Allen, Hist. of Enfield, 1:13, 76, 86, 121]. …

We might guess from his age that Thomas was a native of New England, but we have failed to establish a parentage here for him. …

It is more than doubtful that a Thomas Howard was an early settler in Ipswich. …

The History of Ipswich, Essex and Hamilton (1834) by Joseph B. Felt, on page to, shows no one named Howard or Hayward as an old settler of Ipswich. Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1905), by Thomas Franklin Waters, has only one reference [1:102] to a Thomas Hayward as being an inhabitant about 1677. The records of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County mention no Thomas Howard, Hayward or Haward — these spellings were used indiscriminately — in any town of the county until 1668, when one of the name testified in a Lynn case [4:86], and hence was our Thomas who had married in Lynn the previous year. In 1672 it was our Thomas who was named as brother in the will of Thomas Jones, Jr. [his brother-in-law], and also on 25 March 1678 when he took the oath of fidelity at Salem [5:162; 7:155]. Savage, citing a record we have not identified, states that Thomas of Enfield was aged 50 in 1693. That accords with the age of Thomas who deposed, aged about 37, in a Salem case in 1680 [7:426], and we suspect an error when Thomas, aged about 26 (read 36?) deposed in another Salem case in 1679 [7:307]. …

After the death of Thomas in Enfield, the deeds there provide important evidence. On 13 Dec. 1704, John Haward with Priscilla his wife, Ruth Haward his mother, and Benjamin Haward his minor brother, conveyed. Ruth Howard witnessed a deed of John Howard, 12 Feb. 1705/6, which is the last reference we have seen to her as living. On 17 Mar. 1732, Obadiah Hulburd of Enfield, Benjamin Howard of "Narrowgansett," and John Pirkins of New Haven had land laid out upon Thomas Howard's right. John Perkins and Elizabeth his wife of New Haven conveyed 30 June 1737 to Ebenezer Howard of New London [her nephew], all right from her father Thomas Howard deceased. Thomas's son John called himself a weaver in a deed, and that may perhaps have been his father's trade. [Hist, of Enfield, 3:1995, 1998, 2080; 1:826.]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6} Thomas Howard or Hayward, in Pitman, H. Minot (Harold Minot); Donald Lines Jacobus; and G. Andrews Moriarty. Comstock - Thomas Ancestry of Richard Wilmot Comstock. (Bronxville, New York: H.M. Pitman, 1964)
   143-46.
2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 Savage, James. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England: Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1860-1862)
   2:473.

   Thomas (Howard), Lynn, m. 15 Nov. 1667, Ruth Jones, had Thomas, b. 17 Jan. 1669
   
   [Additions and Corrections: Savage 3:636] [Vol. 2. P.473. l. 5. after 1669; add Mary, 24 Apr. 1672; Nathan, 17 Sept. 1673; and Solomon, 5 Aug. 1675.