Hannah ²⁰⁹

  General Notes:

1641 Map of New Haven shows two adjacent town lots on the southwest portion of town - one assigned to John Potter and the other assigned to Widow Potter. There is no town lot assigned to the Widow Beecher. In the records and the Index of the Ancient Town Records of New Haven the entries indiscrimately refer to both Widow Potter and Beecher, indicating that she was the same person. This would make sense since she was living in town also with 3 sons, Issac Beecher, John and William Potter. Her name would easily get mixed up and she might be referred to by either moniker.

6 August 1650: Court held at New Haven, p43: Widow Potter fined 12 pennies for one gap in her fence.

5 April 1659: Court Held at New Haven (p399):

"The last will & testament of Hannah Beacher, late of New-haven deceased, was by her sonne Wm Potter p'sented, wich being read & attested upon oath by Mr. Mathew Gilbert & Mr. John Wakeman (witnesses to the sd will) to be the last will of the deceased, according to their best knowledg, It was judged legall. Also an inventory of the estate of the said Hannah Beacher was presented, amountinge to 55. 05. 06, attested by Will. Potter upon oath to be a full inventory of her estate, to the vallew of .12, to the best of his knowledge. Mr. Wakeman & Tho. Kinberly attested upon oath that ye apprizemt was iust, according to their best light. [Added later:] Isaac Beacher acknowledged the receit of his 3d part, to his satisfaction."

A rather confused record of Hannah, and I don't have the answers. According to a 1953 history of the town of New Haven, the 'Widow Potter' aka 'Widow Beecher' was an important member of the community, she being the midwife. Numerous references occur to her in the early records of the New Haven Colony, but there has been some controversy over whether she was two people or one, the emminent genealogist of New Haven, Donald Lines Jacobus, thought that she also the Widow Beecher, in any case, it would seem that she was the mother of Issac, my 8G grandfather. ⁷³¹

  Research Notes:

The LDS Ancestral File has the marriage of Widow Beecher to John Potter, but the dates are all mixed up, showing her and her first husband, John Beecher, dying in 1656.

See Connecticut Genealogies #1: Genealogies of Connecticut Families, Vol III page 150 for the Shepard Article of 1900. (CD-Rom)

It is most likely, based on the opinion of Donald Jacobus in his "Ancient Families..." and his article in 1958, that Hannah was married to John Potter in England and bore him two sons, William and John, circa 1610. He died and she remarried John Beecher about 1620 in England and they followed her eldest son William to America about 1636. John Beecher died in the expediton to locate the settlement to be known as New Haven in 1637. Hannah lived in New Haven and is referred to in the town records as both the Widow Potter and the Widow Beecher, although it was more common as the Widow Potter in the early years as her grown Potter sons lived there as well. Other researchers (Shepard, in his 1900 article on the Potters of New Haven) are not so sure, thinking that the Widow Potter and the Widow Beecher were two different people.

Her will is published in the Shepard article and quoted in the Jacobus article.

Hannah married John Potter. (John Potter died about 1620 in England.)

Hannah next married John Beecher circa 1620-1625 in England. (John Beecher was born in 1580 in England and died in 1637-1638 in New Haven, Connecticut.)