This William (I) came to America in 1635. He was born in Bruton, Somerset, England, about 1605; he was christened October 6, 1605. He died in old Braintree, Massachusetts January 11, 1654. He married Hannah about 1639 or 40.
We do not know where William Ames (I) lived or what he did for the first three years after landing in America. He was an Ironworker and had probably learned his trade in England, for he was thirty when he reached America. A man of that age who did not already have some special occupation would probably turn farmer where land was almost free. He is called Ironworker instead of Blacksmith, for nowadays when machines have so completely supplanted hand work we think of Blacksmiths mainly as shoers of horses. ...in William's (I) time the well-trained Smith was a highly expert craftsman. He could smelt his own iron from bog ore and cast such massive pieces as cannons and anchors or forge the delicately wrought grilles and railings that ornament the finer colonial homes. With hammer and anvil only, he made tools for all trades, elaborate locks, latches, hinges and chains. When need arose, he was able, as William's great, great grandson proved, to turn out without machinery, such intricate pieces of mechanism as the flintlock musket. Indeed, skilled blacksmiths were so needed in the early settlements that towns sometimes offered them special privileges of free grants of land.
We find William (I) first mentioned in 1638 as living in Old Braintree, Massachusetts. The following year he married a Braintree girl named Hannah (her family name is not recorded) who must have been considerably younger, for she outlived him almost sixty years. No trace of the house he built remains; but an old survey shows that it stood close to the town stockade and first corn mill on Town Brook in that part of old Braintree which is now Quincy Adams, and near the present Fort Square. This was only a mile and a half from Wollaston.
We are certain that John Ames (lb) sailed on the ship 'Hercules' from the port of Sandwich in the latter part of March, 1635, for two fellow passengers, Samuel Hinckley and Thomas Hayward, said that he came with them. They did not mention William (I), but this is not remarkable since both had special reasons to speak of John(Ib). Hayward became his lifelong neighbor, and John (lb) later married Hayward's sister whom he met on the voyage, and their marriage was performed by Hinckley's son, then Governor of Plymouth. Neither William (I) nor John (lb) is listed among the twenty four passengers who got their permits to sail at Sandwich, but all these were residents of Kent County, and there were seventy eight others on board. It seems so like that the brothers journeyed together, if only for companionship and for economy in sharing the necessary outfit, that, as there is no evidence to the contrary, I assume William (I) was also on the 'Hercules.'
