Browne and Chapin

The ancestry of Henrietta (Browne) Hatten (1886-1964), wife of Ralph A. Hatten and mother of Jack Thomas Hatten of Seattle: the Puritan founders of Springfield, Massachusetts, and the soldiers and settlers who carried their families west to the Mohawk country, Ohio and Chicago. Deacon Samuel Chapin of Paignton, Devon, was at Roxbury by 1635 and at Springfield from 1642/3, and when William Pynchon, the town's founder, went back to England in 1652, Springfield was put in the hands of his son John, Elizur Holyoke and the Deacon. The Deacon's son Japhet rode in the Falls Fight of 1676, and Japhet's great-granddaughter Abigail Munn married Lt. Jonathan Chapin of Monson, Massachusetts, whose mother, Anna Hitchcock, descended from the Pynchons and the Wyllyses: her family, with the Sheldons and the Whitings, is the Hitchcock and Pynchon line.

The Chapins went west. Jotham Chapin of Monson was one of the first settlers of Winfield, Herkimer County, New York, in the wilderness south of the Mohawk, in 1792; the next year Capt. Abel Brace brought his wife and fourteen of their children there from Connecticut, and Jotham's son Loring married Abel's granddaughter Sally Brace, whose father kept what was probably the town's first inn. Their son Dr. Marvin Chapin, a physician, married Marion Orinda Cumins at Parkman, Ohio, in 1847 and moved by way of Erie, Pennsylvania, and Dixon, Illinois, to Chicago; Marion's family, with the Converses of Woburn, the Walbridges and the Porters, is the Cummings and Converse line. His daughter Ella Persis Chapin entered Vassar in 1865, the year it opened, married Edward Browne, a Chicago lumber dealer in Michigan pine, at Pentwater, Michigan, in 1875, and became her family's historian. Henrietta Browne, born at Winona, Minnesota, in 1886, was possibly their daughter. She married Ralph A. Hatten, bore their son Jack at Seattle in 1913, and died there in 1964.

The line at a glance

• Chapin: Jonathan Chapin "Jr., of the Elbows" (c. 1711-1780), a first settler of Palmer = Anna Hitchcock (1717-1770) > Lt. Jonathan Chapin (1738-1819), of Monson = Abigail Munn (1739-1838) > Jotham Chapin (1764-1838), of Monson and Winfield = Ann Waite > Loring Chapin (1790-1864) = Sarah (Sally) Brace (1795-1871) > Dr. Marvin Chapin (1821-1907) = Marion Orinda Cumins (1818-1889) > Ella Persis Chapin (1848-1936) = Edward Browne (1850-1924), of Chicago > Henrietta Browne (1886-1964) [?] = Ralph A. Hatten (1872-1934) > Jack Thomas Hatten (1913-1996).
• Through Abigail Munn: Deacon Samuel Chapin (bp. 1598-1675), of Paignton, Roxbury and Springfield = Cicely Penny > Japhet Chapin (bp. 1642-1712) = Abilenah Cooley > Sarah Chapin (1668-1747) = Nathaniel Munn > Benjamin Munn (1700-1775) = Rebecca Russell > Abigail Munn, above.
• Brace: Capt. Abel Brace (bp. 1740-1832), founder of Winfield = Keziah Woodruff > Charles Brace (1764-1823), innkeeper = Persis Brandegee > Sally Brace, above.

The scope walks every ancestor of Henrietta Browne. Her husband's side is the Hatten line, which stops at her. It stops in turn at Anna Hitchcock, whose family is the Hitchcock and Pynchon line, and at Marion Orinda Cumins, whose family is the Cummings and Converse line.

How sure it is

The first link is the weak one. That Henrietta was the daughter of Edward Browne and Ella Persis Chapin rests on the Ancestry tree alone (compiled, possible), which attaches no record to it. What was found points the other way: The Chapin Book (1924), compiled while Ella was living, gives her marriage and then "Children: BROWNE. No issue"; Kith and Kin (1922), by her first cousin, who thanks her for details, lists no child; and the Chicago Blue Books of 1899 and 1904 list "Mr. & Mrs. Edward Browne" and Dr. Marvin Chapin at their address, with no daughter (weak evidence, since Blue Books often left out younger daughters). The tree has the right Edward and Ella; what is unsupported is the step from Henrietta to them. She may have been adopted or a ward, or the tree may have joined her to the wrong Brownes. Everything above her is Ella's ancestry whatever is decided, but the notable ancestors and famous kin through it are held off the Notable connections page until her parentage is settled (Questions to decide, item 22; the ruling of 8 Oct 2026 in Research decisions). Henrietta as Jack Hatten's mother is proven by the 1950 census, which has her, widowed, in his household; her marriage to Ralph A. Hatten is the tree's (probable).

Above Ella the line is well supported, by her own DAR application of 1900 and two family genealogies she helped with (Patricia Hatten's Browne–Chapin side: the pedigree, notable ancestors and famous kin):

• Ella to Dr. Marvin Chapin: documented, proven: her DAR application, and his obituary of 1907, which has him dying "at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Edward Browne." To Marion Orinda Cumins: documented, proven: the DAR application, "Daughter of Dr. Marvin Chapin and Marion O. Cumins, his wife," with both genealogies; his obituary calls his wife "a sister of Theron Cumins."
• Marvin to Loring Chapin and Sally Brace: compiled, probable. The Chapin Book, Kith and Kin and the DAR application agree; the Brace Lineage (1927), written from the Brace side, independently gives Charles Brace a daughter Sally (Chapin). A census or Loring's probate would make it proven.
• Up the Chapin line (Loring to Jotham and Ann Waite, Jotham to Lt. Jonathan and Abigail Munn, Lt. Jonathan to Jonathan of the Elbows and Anna Hitchcock): compiled, probable, from The Chapin Book, the DAR application and the Hitchcock genealogy (1894). Abigail Munn's birth is in the Brimfield vital records (documented, probable).
• Jonathan Chapin of the Elbows (c. 1711): his parents are not known. The Chapin Book names "Jonathan & Elizabeth (Burt) Chapin," but records that couple's son twice, under two different fathers, and its "best guess" for the older Jonathan, a son of David Chapin, it calls unprovable. The archive holds both parents as names, at possible (the research report, written before the duplicate entry was noticed, rated the step probable). Nothing depends on it: the family descends from Deacon Samuel Chapin through Abigail Munn, whose line (Benjamin Munn, Sarah Chapin, Japhet) is compiled and probable, and Japhet's own father is documented.
• Edward Browne: his birth in Antrim and his dates are the tree's (possible); nothing was found on his Irish origin. His marriage to Ella at Pentwater in 1875 is in both genealogies (probable).

Anna Hitchcock's ancestry and Marion Cumins's, and how sure each step is, are on the pages of the Hitchcock and Pynchon line and the Cummings and Converse line.

Left out: Marvin Chapin (1807-1899) of Springfield, a hotel keeper and banker, is a namesake (Unrelated), and the tree's Sir William Anthony Browne belongs to another branch, not to Edward Browne.

Open questions

• Whose daughter was Henrietta? Her 1964 death certificate, her marriage to Ralph A. Hatten, the 1900 census of the Browne household and her Social Security application should say.
• Edward Browne's Irish origin and his dates.
• Whether Dr. Marvin Chapin died at Chicago or at Lake Park.
• The parents of Jonathan Chapin of the Elbows.
• Ann Waite's and Persis Brandegee's parents.