Edmund HOBART (1575 – 1646) was Alex’s 11th Great Grandfather; one of 4,096 in this generation of the Shaw line.

This story has two parts, the sacred and the profane. First the sacred part, the Hobarts led a large part of Hingham, Norfolk, England to Hingham, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edmund’s son Peter was minister in Hingham for 44 years. The Old Ship Church, completed a couple of years after Peter’s death is the oldest continuous house of worship in the United States. It’s the only existing example of a Hammerbeam roof left in the United States, in my view architecturally beautiful. Westminster Hall is the most famous example. Edmund’s second wife’s first husband represents the profane part.

Immigrant Ancestor – Hobart Coat of Arms

Edmund Hobart was born about 1575 in Hingham, Norfolk, England. His parents may have been Thomas HOBART and Audrey HARE. An Edmund Hobart, son of Thomas & Hellena Hubbard, was baptized at Snoring Magna, Norfolk, on 1 Jan 1573. This would be about the right year of birth for the immigrant, & the immigrant did name a son Thomas, but Snoring Magna is some distance from Hingham in Norfolk, so further evidence would be welcome. Edmund Hobart first married Margaret DEWEY on 7 Sep  1600 in Hingham, Norfolk, England.  Edmund and Margaret immigrated in 1633. Their children Edmund, Thomas, Alice, Rebecca, Joshua and Sarah traveled with them.  After Margaret died, he married  Sarah Oakley on 10 Oct 1634 in Hingham, Massachusetts Bay Colony, now Plymouth County. Sarah was the widow of Rev. John Lyford. Edmund Hobart died on 8 March 1646 in Hingham, Mass.

Margaret Dewey died circa 1633 at Charlestown, Suffolk, Mass.   It is not certain that she survived to come to New England, especially since she did not join the Charlestown church with her husband on 19 Oct 1633.

Sarah Oakley was born about 1586 (deposed 1 August 1639 aged “about fifty-three years,” ) she was the widow of Rev. John Lyford.

“Edmond Hubberd Senior and Sarah Oakeley widow did join in marriage before me,” Increase Nowell; “And also I have seen a sufficient register of the marriage of the said Edmund and Sarah, testifying that they were lawfully married at Charlestown in New England upon the tenth day of October in the tenth year of his said Majesty’s reign.”

Sarah had 4 children by her first marriage and none later. She died Hingham 23 June 1649 (“mother Hobart died in the evening being Saturday, buried on the Sabbath”).  Edmund Hobart was guardian to her children and was otherwise involved in securing their inheritance from their father.

Sarah’s first husband the Reverend John Lyford (ca. 1580-1634) was a controversial figure during the early years of the Plymouth Colony. After receiving degrees from Oxford University (A.B. 1597, A.M. 1602), he became pastor at Leverlegkish, near Laughgaid, Armagh, Ireland. He was the first ordained minister to come to the Plymouth Colony. He arrived in 1624 aboard the Charity and pretended to be sympathetic to the Separatist movement there, while in reality he was allied with the Church of England. 

In the months ahead, the leaders of the colony discovered that Lyford had been writing letters to England disparaging the Separatist movement at Plymouth. Governor William Bradford seized some of these letters before they were sent, opened them, and confronted Lyford about their contents. Lyford apologized, but later wrote another similar letter that was also intercepted. After the second incident, Lyford was sentenced to banishment.

Before he was banished, Lyford’s wife, Sarah, came forward with further charges. Lyford had fathered a child out of wedlock with another woman before his marriage, and after his marriage, he was constantly engaging in sexual relationships with his housemaids. In his famous history, Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford wrote that Sarah Lyford came forward and explained

“… how he (Lyford) had wronged her, as first he had a bastard by another before they were married, and she having some inkling of some ill cariage that way, when he was a suitor to her, she tould him what she heard, and deneyd him; but she not certainly knowing the thing, other wise then by some darke and secrete muterings, he not only stifly denied it, but to satisfie her tooke a solemne oath ther was no shuch matter. Upon which she gave consente, and married with him; but afterwards it was found true, and the bastard brought home to them. She then charged him with his oath, but he prayed pardon, and said he should els not have had her. And yet afterwards she could keep no maids but he would be medling with them, and some time she hath taken him in the maner, as they lay at their beds feete, with shuch other circumstances as I am ashamed to relate.”

Later, the real reason why Lyford came to New England was revealed. While giving pre-marital counseling to a girl in his parish back in Ireland, Lyford raped her; and when she later told the matter to her husband, he and his friends hunted Lyford down, which resulted in Lyford’s departure to Plymouth Colony. Bradford’s account of the rape and what followed is rather vivid:

” … some time after marriage the woman was much troubled in mind, and afflicted in conscience, and did nothing but weepe and mourne, and long it was before her husband could get of her what was the cause. But at length she discovered the thing, and prayed him to forgive her, for Lyford had overcome her, and defiled her body before marriage, after he had commended him unto her for a husband, and she resolved to have him, when he came to her in that private way.

The circumstances I forbear, for they would offend chast ears to hear them related, (for though he satisfied his lust on her, yet he indeavored to hinder conception.) These things being thus discovered, the womans husband tooke some godly friends with him, to deale with Liford for this evill. At length he confest it, with a great deale of seeming sorrow and repentance, but was forst to leave Irland upon it, partly for shame, and partly for fear of further punishmente, for the godly withdrew them selves from him upon it; and so coming into England unhapily he was light upon and sente hither.”

Accordingly, Lyford was expelled from Plymouth Colony, went to Nantasket, then Cape Ann, and finally moved to Virginia, where he died. Because of his immoral behavior, Lyford is grouped with several other men that the Pilgrims considered detrimental to their project of settling a “godly” community in America.

We have a family connection to several other stories of immorality among the Puritans.

• Thomas Granger, [servant to  our ancestor Elder William BREWSTER’s son Love]
• Thomas Morton [our ancestor Benjamin CRISPE was a servant of Edward Gibbons  at Morton’s  free-loving Merrymount in the 1620’s],
• John Billington  [Our family relationship  to Billington isn’t especially close, he was Richard MARTIN’s  daughter-in-law’s grandfather, but the first Englishman to be convicted of murder in what would become the United States is a noteworthy black sheep.]

Following Lyford’s death before 10 Oct 1634 in Martin’s Hundred, James City, Virginia,, his widow Sarah remarried Edmund Hobart Sr., a prominent early settler of Hingham, Massachusetts. Children of Sarah and Rev. John Lyford

i. Obadiah Lyford (1617 – ____)

ii.  Ruth Lyford Bates (1619 –  9 Mar 1690 in Hingham, Plymouth, Mass; m. 1643  to  James Bates

iii.  Mordecai Lyford (1621 – ____)

iv.  Martha Lyford (1628 – 1693) m.  Samuel Lincoln (wiki) baptised 24 Aug 1622 in Hingham, Norfolk, England, as the son of Edward Lincoln; died in Hingham, Massachusetts, 26 May  1690), was progenitor of many notable United States political figures, including his great-great-great-great-grandson, President Abraham Lincoln, Maine governor Enoch Lincoln, and Levi Lincoln, Sr. and Levi Lincoln, Jr., both of whom served as Massachusetts Representatives, Governor and Lieutenant Governor.

Having grown up in meager circumstances due to a family squabble in which his wealthy grandfather disinherited his earlier children, Samuel Lincoln became an apprentice weaver under Francis Lawes of Norwich, England. Samuel Lincoln’s father Edward had abandoned his home at Swanton Morley near Hingham after he was cut out of his father Richard’s will, and relocated to some small acreage at Hingham. 

In 1637, Lincoln left England for the New World with Lawes’ family, embarking on a ship named John & Dorothy. Although most accounts indicate that he was 15 years old at the time, it has been suggested that he misrepresented his age in order to be permitted to make the voyage.

The house built by Samuel Lincoln’s son  Samuel is still in existence.  As you can see from the sign, there were  seven generations of Lincolns in  Hingham, Mass.

Samuel sailed for the colony of Massachusetts, where his older brother Thomas – known in early records as “Thomas Lincoln the Weaver” to distinguish him from several other unrelated Thomas Lincolns – had already settled. Samuel’s brother Thomas, who settled in 1635 in Hingham, Massachusetts, where he was granted a house lot by the town, later left at his decease a great deal of his property, including several house lots, to Samuel and to his nephews. (Although twice married, Samuel’s brother Thomas had no children.

Lincoln Statue Hingham, Mass In 1937 well-to-do lumber merchant E. Everett Whitney left a $30,000 bequest to pay for the grand statue.

Lincoln Day in honor of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln, celebrating the lives of the two, is observed every February in Hingham, Mass. The day’s procession originates at Old Ship Church, proceeds down Main Street and ends at Fountain Square where the bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln commands a triangular “green” between North and Lincoln streets.

Children of Edmund and Margaret:

Natives of Hingham in Norfolk County, East Anglia, Edmund Hobart and his sons Edmund, Joshua,  Peter and Thomas were among Hingham’s most prominent early settlers.

The Elizabeth Bonaventure, John Graves, Master, left Yarmouth, Norfolk, the first week in May and arrived at Boston on June 15, 1633 with ninety five passengers. The ship sailed into the small harbor called Bare Cove, so called because only the bare flats could be seen at low tide. They stopped in Charlestown for a time, and then received permission to scout out a place for their new town Hingham.  Included on board were 14 men and women  from from Hingham, Norfolk, England who together founded Hingham, Mass.

Edmund HOBART  of Hingham, Norfolk to Charlestown  with Mrs. Margaret Hobart,  Nazareth, Edmond,  Thomas, Joshua, Rebecca, Elizabeth, and Sarah

Henry Gibbs of Hingham, Norfolk to Charlestown

Ralph SMYTH of Hingham, Norfolk to Charlestown

Nicholas Jacob of Hingham, Norfolk to Watertown  with Mrs. Mary, Jacob, John, Jacob,  Mary and Jacob

Thomas Chubbock  of Hardingham, Norfolk to Charlestown  with Mrs. Alice Chubbock, Sarah and Rebecca

Mrs. Elishua Crowe  to  Charlestown

Simon Huntington   of Norwich, Norfolk to  Roxbury  with Mrs. Margaret Huntington, Christopher, Anne, Simon,  and Thomas.

Hingham, Plymouth, Mass

The town of Hingham was dubbed “Bare Cove” by the first colonizing English in 1633, but two years later was incorporated as a town under the name “Hingham”  The town was named for Hingham, a village in the English county of Norfolk, East Anglia, whence most of the first colonists came. Hingham was born of religious dissent. Many of the original founders were forced to flee their native village in Norfolk with both their vicars, Rev. Peter Hobart, son of Edmund HOBART and Rev. Robert PECK, when they fell foul of the strict doctrines of Anglican England.  While most of the early Hingham settlers came from Hingham and other nearby villages in East Anglia, a few Hingham settlers like Thomas Miner came from the West Country of England.  As of the census of 2000, there were 19,882 people in Hingham.

1636 –  The Thomas MINER Family arrived in Hingham
4 Mar 1638 – Clement MINER baptized in Hingham

Hobart History and Benealogy 1632- 1912 by Edwin Lucius Hobart.

[Edmund Hobart] arrived in this country from Hingham, Norfolk, England, in 1632, where he was born in 1574, and died at Hingham, Mass., March 8, 1648. He arrived with his wife, son Joshua, daughters Rebekah and Sarah, and servant, Henry Gibbs, in May 1633, and settled in Charlestown, Mass.  He was made a freeman Marach 4, 1633-4 and admitted to full communion in the Flirst Church of Christ in Boston, August 19, 1633-4, and stood No. ’15’ on the ‘freeman’s list’, and was one of ten citizens, October 13, 1634, who, with Increase Nowell, agreed that only certain desirable persons should be allowed to ‘sit downe and dwell in the towne’. In 1635 he was the constable of Charlestown. This same year he removed to Bear Cove (Hingham) and assisted in organizing the first church there, of which his son Peter was the first minister, and was made a commissioner September 6, 1638, the functions being similar to those of a Justice of Peace nowadays, permitting him to officiate at marriage ceremonies, a privilege then denied to many ministers. He was Deputy to General Court in 1639-40-41-42, and was generally spoken of as ‘Edmund Hubbard, the Elder’. “Edmund Hobart’s second wife, Ann, was the widow of Rev. John Lyford, an Episcopal clergyman from Laughgaid, Ardmagh, Ireland, who was banished from Plymouth Colony in 1624. She was a ‘grave matron and of good carriage’ and died June 23 1649.

Cotton Mather said Edmund Hobart and his wife Margaret (Dewey),

“were eminent for piety and feared God above many.”

Hingham, Mass is said to have been settled in 1635, which is the date of the earliest record to be found of the proceeding of planters in relation to the disposal of lands. The exact date when the first English people settled here cannot be ascertained. Among some private papers there is a “list of the names of such persons as came out of the town of Hingham and towns adjacent, in the county of Norfolk, Eng., and settled in Hingham, New Eng.,” from which it appears there were inhabitants here as early as 1633.

In June 1635, grants were made to a considerable number of individuals, and on the 18th of Sept., thirty of the inhabitants drew for house-lots, and received grants of other lands for the purpose of pasture, tillage, &c. The following is a list of the first settlers of Hingham, with the year in which lands were granted them in the town:

1635.
Joseph Andrews, [son-in-law]  Thomas Chubbuck,  [servant] Henry Gibbs,  Edmund HOBART, sen.  [sons] Edmund Hobart, jr., Joshua Hobart,  Rev. Peter Hobart,  Thomas Hobart,  Nicholas Jacob, [future son-in-law’s brother] Thos. Lincoln, weav.  Ralph SMITH [future son-in-law],  Jonas Austin,  Nicholas Baker,  Clement Bates,  Richard Betscome,  Benjamin Bozworth, William Buckland,  James Cade,  Anthony Cooper,  John Cutler,  John Farrow,  Daniel Fop,  Jarvice Gould,  Wm. Hersey,  Nicholas Hodskin,  Thomas Johnson,  Andrew Lane,  Wm. Large,  Thomas Loring,  George Ludkin,  Jeremy Morse,  William Nowlton,  John Otis,  David Phippeny,  John Palmer, John Porter,  Henry Rust,   John Smart,  Francis Smith,  John Strong,  Henry Tuttil,  William Walton,  Thomas Andrews,  William Arnall,  George Bacon,  Nathaniel Baker,  Thomas Collier, George Lane,  George Marsh,  Abraham Martin,  [brother of Robert and Joseph] Nathaniel Peck,  Richard Osborn,  Thomas Wakely, Thomas Gill,  [father-in-law to two of Edmund’s daughters] Richard Ibrook,  William Cockerum,  William Cockerill,  John Fearing,  John Tucker.

1636
[son-in-law] John Beal, senr.,  Anthony Eames,  Thomas Hammond,  Joseph Hull,  Richard Jones,  Nicholas Lobdin,  Richard Langer,  John Leavitt,  Thomas Lincoln,  Adam Mott,  Thomas Minard,   John Parker,  George Russell,  William Sprague,  George Sprague,  Thomas Underwood,  Samuel Ward, Ralph Woodward,  John Winchester,  William Walker.

1637
Thomas Barnes,  Josiah Cobbit,  Thomas Chaffe,  Thomas Clapp.  William Carlslye,  Thomas Dimock, Vinton Dreuce,  Thomas Hett,  Thomas Joshlin,  Aaron Ludkin,  John Morrick,  Thomas Nichols, Thomas Paynter,  Edmund Pitts,  Joseph Phippeny,  Thomas Shave,  Ralph SMITH [future son-in-law],  Thomas Turner, John Tower,  Joseph Underwood,  William Ludkin,  Jonathan Bozworth.

1638.
[Rev.] Mr. Robert PECK,  Joseph PECK,   Edward Oilman,  John Foulsham, Henry Chamberlin, Stephen GATES,, George Knights, Thomas Cooper, Mauhew Cushing, John Beal, jr., Francis James, Philip James, James Buck, Stephen Payne, William Pitts, Edward Mitchell,  John Sutton.  Stephen Lincoln, Samuel Parker,  Thos. Lincoln, farm.,  Jeremiah Moore,  Mr. Henry Smith,  Bozoan Allen,  Matthew Hawke,  William Ripley,  John Buck,  Thomas Jones,  Thomas Lawrence,  John Stephens,  John Stoddard,  Wid. Martha Wilder,  Thomas Thaxter.

Children

1. Nazareth Hobart

Nazareth’s husband John Beale was born 18 Sep 1588 Hingham Norfolk, England His parents were Edwarde Beales and Martha Stone. Nazareth and John immigrated in 1638. Their children Martha and Mary traveled with them.

3. Peter Hobart

Peter’s first wife   Elizabeth Ibrook was baptized on 31 Aug 1608 in Southwold, Suffolk, England  Her parents were Richard Ibrook and Margaret Clark.  Her maternal grandparents were our ancestors John CLARK and Elizabeth HOBSON. She immigrated with husand, children  Joshua, Jeremiah, Elizabeth and Josiah , parents and sisters, Margaret and Helen arriving 8 June 1635. Elizabeth died in childbirth in Dec 1645 in Hingham, Massachusetts Bay Colony, now Plymouth County.

Peter’s second wife Rebecca Peck was baptized 25 May 1620 in Hingham, England.  Her parents were Joseph PECK and Rebecca CLARK.  Rebecca died in Hingham, Mass 9 Sept. 1693, age 72 yrs.; and in her will, made four days. previously, gives to son David the dwelling house with thirty acres of land.

Peter attended the heavily Puritan Cambridge University. He was the first minister of the Hingham congregation who built Old Ship Church.  Assisting Hobart in the foundation of the congregation was [our ancestor] Rev. Robert PECK, Hobart’s senior and formerly rector of St Andrew’s Church in Hingham, Norfolk. [See Robert’s page for the story of their dissent in England.]  He was married in England. and came to New England with his wife and four children arriving at Charlestown in June, 1635. On the first page of a journal which he kept, giving a record of the baptisms, marriages, and deaths, which came under his notice during his ministry of nearly 44 years in out Hingham is the following.:

‘I with my wife and four children came safely to New Englane June ye 8: 1635: for ever praysed be the god of Heaven my god and king.’

Hobart, born in Hingham,Norfolk, in 1604 and, like Peck, a graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, sought shelter from the prevailing discipline of the high church among his fellow Puritans.  The cost to those who emigrated was steep. They “sold their possessions for half their value”, noted a contemporary account, “and named the place of their settlement after their natal town.” (The cost to the place they left behind was also high: Hingham was forced to petition Parliament for aid, claiming that the departure of its most well-to-do citizens had left it hamstrung.)

In Sept. following he settled in Hingham, and on the 18th of that month received a grant of a house-lot on Town (North) St. He also had other grants of land for planting purposes. Rev. Peter Hobart also left a will, in which his fifteen children. then living are mentioned. The date of his death, and the years of his ministry are recorded on a memorial tablet standing near Central Ave., in the Hing. cemetery as foll.: —

In memory of Revd. Peter Hobart who died January 20th 1679 in the 75th year of his age and 53rd of his ministery 9 years of which he spent in Hingham Great Britain & 44 in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Check out Peter Hobart’s journal, published in NEHGR 121(1967):3-25, 102-127, 191-216, 269-294.

Peter was the minister of the Old Ship Church of Hingham.  History has Peter “as an independent and spirited clergyman … which occasionally brought him up before the general court [of the Massachusetts Bay Colony]  to answer for his outspoken opinions.

Before the Rev Peter Hobart arrived in New England, with his flock from his church in Hingham, England, the place he came to was settled, but known as Barecove.  By petition to the general court of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Hobart got the name of ” Barecove is changed and hereafter to be called Hingham.” After 44 years of service, minister Peter Hobart died on Jan. 20, 1679, on the eve of the building of the new house of worship.

Hobart’s diary of events in Hingham, begun in the year 1635, was continued on his death by his son David. By the time Old Ship was built, Harvard-educated Rev. John Norton, who had been ordained by Peter Hobart, had assumed Hobart’s ministry. (Rev. John Norton was the great-grandfather of Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams.

Old Ship Church – Oldest continuous house of worship in the United States

Old Ship Church deacon John Leavitt, whose son John married Rev. Hobart’s daughter Bathsheba, was deacon when Old Ship was constructed and he argued forcefully for the construction of a new meetinghouse. The matter of replacing the old thatched log meeting house stirred intense emotion in Hingham, and it took two heated town meetings to settle on a site for the new edifice, which was built on land donated by Capt. Joshua Hobart, twin brother of Rev. Peter Hobart. Ultimately, the town appropriated £430 for the new building, said to be the equal of any in the Massachusetts Bay Colo The modern frame edifice, devoid of ornamentation, was raised in 1681, and accommodated its first worship service the following year.

Old Ship Church Interior

The Old Ship  in Hingham, Massachusetts, is the oldest surviving meetinghouse. It is the oldest church in continuous ecclesiastical use in the United States. It is the only remaining 17th century Puritan meetinghouse in America. and the only surviving example in this country of the English Gothic style of the 17th century.   The most distinctive feature of the structure is its Hammerbeam roof, a Gothic open timber construction, the most well-known example that of Westminster Hall. Some of those working on the soaring structure were no doubt ship carpenters; others were East Anglians familiar with the method of constructing a hammerbeam roof.  The more familiar delicately spired white Colonial churches of New England would not be built for more than half a century.”

Old Ship Church Beams resemble the construction of a ship

Within the church, “the ceiling, made of great oak beams, looks like the inverted frame of a ship,    Architecturally, the Old Ship is quite a bit different from the Meetinghouses that were built in the 1700s. Its layout is essentially square, with a hip roof. As with later meetinghouses, the main entrance faces south, and the interior layout consists of a high pulpit on the north wall, and galleries on the other three walls. Box pews occupy both the ground floor and the galleries. When it was originally built, there would probably have been entrances on the east and west walls for women and men, respectively. However, additions to the east and west sides of the building have removed these earlier entrances.
.

8. Rebecca HOBART (See Edward BANGS‘ page)

9. Elizabeth HOBART (See Ralph SMITH‘s page)

10. Joshua Hobart

Joshua’s wife Helen Ibrook was baptized 10 November 1622 in Southwold, Suffolk, England.. Her parents were Richard Ibrook and Margaret Clark.  She immigrated with her parents and sisters Elizabeth and Margaret in 1635. Sources:

http://www.gulbangi.com/5families-o/p232.htm#i5781 http://www.colonialmeetinghouses.com/mh_hingham.shtml