Hitchcock and Pynchon

In 1650 William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, published in London The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, and when it reached Boston it was burned on the Common, the first book banned in the New World. Charged with heresy, he went home to England in 1652 and never came back, and Springfield passed into the hands of his son John, Elizur Holyoke and Deacon Samuel Chapin. Pynchon had come with Winthrop in 1630, one of the colony's original patentees, and begun the settlement of Roxbury; in 1635-36 he led the settlement of Agawam on the Connecticut, renamed Springfield after his home village in Essex, and built it into a town of the beaver trade, sending out four to six thousand pelts a year. John, who had come over at five, married in 1645 Amy, daughter of George Wyllys of Fenny Compton, Warwickshire, governor of Connecticut in 1642, whose steward had built at Hartford the largest house of any of its first settlers, on the land where the Charter Oak stood. "The Worshipful" John Pynchon carried the settlements up the river to Northampton, Westfield and Hadley. His daughter Mary married Joseph Whiting, a young merchant at Westfield and a son of William Whiting, Connecticut's first treasurer, and died soon after the birth of their second child in 1674.

When the war came up the valley in 1675, John Pynchon was major of the Hampshire regiment and commander-in-chief in the county, and Joseph Whiting rode as cornet of his troop. On 5 October Springfield was burned. Pynchon came back with 190 soldiers to "a Lamentable & woefull sight. The Towne in flames," his corn mill and saw mill gone, and for a time the town's corn was ground at the Westfield mill Whiting owned with the Dewey brothers. Jonathan Burt, a deacon who had taken refuge with the town's older men in its fortified houses, wrote the only account of the burning in the town book; his daughter Sarah had married Benjamin Dorchester that April. In May 1676 Luke Hitchcock, twenty, rode with his brother John and with Japhet Chapin to the Falls above Deerfield, where Capt. William Turner's men fell on the fishing camp at Peskeompskut; on the way back the column broke, and thirty-eight of the English were killed. John came home with one arm shot through and the other broken. Benjamin Dorchester died five days after the fight, and in February 1676/7 Sarah married Luke.

Luke was born at Wethersfield, a son of Elizabeth Gibbons, whose brother was the steward Governor Wyllys had sent to Hartford, and was brought to Springfield as a boy when his widowed mother married again. He kept a tavern there, was a captain and sheriff of Hampshire County, and in 1693 was sent to the Bay to find the town a minister. His son Ebenezer married in 1716 Mary Sheldon, a granddaughter of Joseph Whiting and Mary Pynchon. Her father, Joseph Sheldon, a son of Isaac Sheldon, one of the first settlers of Northampton, had taken the family to Suffield and died at Boston in 1708 while sitting in the General Court, and the governor and both houses attended his funeral. Mary bore Ebenezer fourteen children, and the rest of her fortune from the Pynchon estate, £379, came to him. A soldier in the French wars, he was commissioned lieutenant at Louisburg in June 1745, "just after the fall of that famous fortress." Their eldest, Anna, born in July 1717, married on 10 December 1736 Jonathan Chapin of the Elbows, one of the first settlers of the tract that became Palmer, and raised nine children there; she died in 1770, and her father's will left £10 "to his daughter Ann wife of Jonathan Chapin." Her son Lt. Jonathan Chapin of Monson married Abigail Munn, a great-granddaughter of Japhet Chapin, and so the two families that had ridden together to the Falls met in the Chapins of Monson.

The line at a glance

• Hitchcock: Luke Hitchcock (d. 1659), shoemaker, of New Haven and Wethersfield = Elizabeth Gibbons > Capt. Luke Hitchcock (1655-1727), of Springfield = Sarah Burt (1656-1746), daughter of Jonathan Burt > Capt. Ebenezer Hitchcock (1694-1776) = Mary Sheldon (d. 1760) > Anna Hitchcock (1717-1770) = Jonathan Chapin (c. 1711-1780), of the Elbows > Lt. Jonathan Chapin (1738-1819), of Monson.
• Sheldon: Isaac Sheldon (c. 1629-1708), of Windsor and Northampton = Mary Woodford (d. 1684), daughter of Thomas Woodford > Joseph Sheldon (1668-1708), of Suffield = Mary Whiting (1672-1735) > Mary Sheldon, above.
• Pynchon and Whiting: William Pynchon (1590-1662), founder of Springfield > John Pynchon (1625-1702/3) = Amy Wyllys (1624-1698/9), daughter of Gov. George Wyllys (1590-1644/5) > Mary Pynchon (1650-bef. 1676) = Joseph Whiting (1640-1717), Treasurer of Connecticut, son of William Whiting (d. 1647) > Mary Whiting, above.

The scope walks every ancestor of Anna Hitchcock. Her husband's side is the Browne and Chapin line, which stops at her.

How sure it is

Everything here reaches the Hattens through the Browne and Chapin line, and through its doubtful first step: Henrietta (Browne) Hatten as the daughter of Edward Browne and Ella Persis Chapin rests on the Ancestry tree alone (compiled, possible), against two family genealogies that give the couple no children (Questions to decide, item 22). Between Anna and Ella the Chapin links are compiled and probable: Lt. Jonathan as Anna's son (The Chapin Book; Temple's History of Palmer, 1889), and on down through Jotham, Loring and Dr. Marvin Chapin. Anna's marriage to Jonathan Chapin of the Elbows on 10 Dec 1736 is in the Hitchcock genealogy and The Chapin Book (compiled, probable).

Above Anna (Patricia Hatten's Browne–Chapin side: the pedigree, notable ancestors and famous kin):

• Anna to Capt. Ebenezer Hitchcock: documented, proven: his will, as the Hitchcock genealogy (1894) abstracts it, leaves £10 "to his daughter Ann wife of Jonathan Chapin."
• Anna to Mary Sheldon: compiled, probable. The Hitchcock genealogy says Ebenezer "married Feb. 14, 1716, Mary Sheldon who was the mother of his fourteen children." The Chapin Book names Anna's mother Mary Morgan; that is disproven, since the widow Mary Morgan of Brimfield was Ebenezer's second wife, married after Mary Sheldon's death in 1760, and Anna's stepmother.
• Ebenezer to Capt. Luke Hitchcock and Sarah Burt: compiled, probable: the Hitchcock genealogy lists "Ebenezer, b. Aug. 20, 1694" among Luke's children. It calls his mother Sarah Dorchester, her first husband's name, and also "Sarah, daughter of Jonathan Burt, widow of Benjamin Dorchester": the same woman. Luke's own parents, Luke Hitchcock of Wethersfield and Elizabeth Gibbons, and Sarah's, Jonathan Burt and Elizabeth Lobdell, are names from the Hitchcock genealogy and Burt's First Century of the History of Springfield (compiled, probable).
• Mary Sheldon to Joseph Sheldon and Mary Whiting: compiled, probable: the Hitchcock genealogy gives her descent, and Savage lists a Mary among their children, "whose dates are unkn."
• Joseph Sheldon to Isaac Sheldon and Mary Woodford: compiled, probable: Savage lists "Joseph, 1 Feb. 1668" among Isaac's children (the research report, without Savage, rated it possible).
• Mary Whiting to Joseph Whiting and Mary Pynchon: compiled, probable: Morse's Genealogiae (1925), "Mary born Aug. 19, 1672, married Joseph Sheldon and second John Ashley," with Dwight and Savage. Joseph Whiting to William Whiting is compiled, probable (Morse; Savage); his mother is known only as Susanna.
• Mary Pynchon to John Pynchon and Amy Wyllys: compiled, probable (Dwight's Dwight genealogy, 1874; Morse, who calls her mother "Anna, daughter of Hon. John Wyllys," an error for Amy, daughter of George). Her marriage is dated 5 Oct 1669 by Morse and Savage, 6 Aug 1670 by the Westfield town record and 6 Oct 1671 by Dwight; her daughter was born in August 1672.
• John Pynchon to William Pynchon, and Amy Wyllys to Gov. George Wyllys: compiled, probable (Dwight; the Hitchcock genealogy; Wikipedia). John's mother, Anna Andrew, is WikiTree's name (possible); Amy's mother is Bridget Yonge, whom Dwight calls Mary, the name of the governor's second wife. George Wyllys's parents are not researched.

The war is in King Philip's War: the Connecticut valley, the Colony of Connecticut, Long Island and New Paltz: Luke Hitchcock on the Falls Fight roll is proven; Joseph Whiting at the Westfield mill, and the Sheldons at Northampton when it was attacked on 14 Mar 1676, are probable.

Left out: the Hitchcock genealogy's descent of Joseph Sheldon from Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon of Canterbury, which no source supports.

Open questions

• Mary (Sheldon) Hitchcock's birth, between 1695 and 1700.
• Anna's birth: 9 July 1717 (the Hitchcock genealogy) or 1715 (Temple's History of Palmer).
• Isaac Sheldon's parents and English origin.
• William Whiting's English origin, and who his wife Susanna was.
• When Joseph Whiting left Westfield for Hartford.
• Where Sarah (Burt) Hitchcock was born and died, and what Benjamin Dorchester died of in 1676.
• Luke Hitchcock's petition of 30 May 1679, paid from the "Hadley account."