Read and Peck

The ancestry of Hannah (Read) Tyler (1744-1822), wife of Col. Ebenezer Tyler of Attleborough and mother of Rowland Tyler: the Reads, Pecks and Ides of Rehoboth, who lived through its burning in King Philip's War. On 26 Mar 1676 John Read's son John was slain, probably with Capt. Pierce's company, and two days later a war party, "crossing the river, laid the town in ashes, burning forty houses and thirty barns." That autumn, in the burned town, Nicholas Ide buried his wife Martha and then his son John, who had been on the Narragansett expedition; and in August 1677, in the first summer of peace, John Read's son Daniel married Hannah Peck.

The families had come to Rehoboth in the 1640s. John Read, who kept a public house at the Rim and was the town's constable, came from Braintree by 1644/5 with his wife Sarah, daughter of Will Lessie of Blyborough, Suffolk; Nicholas Ide was there by 1643, his wife very probably a daughter of Thomas Bliss. Hannah Peck's grandfather Joseph Peck, of a gentleman's family of Beccles, had lived at Hingham, Norfolk, where his brother Robert was rector, and in 1638 the brothers came over together on the Diligent, Joseph with three sons and a daughter, to the new Hingham, which he served as deputy to the General Court. He was one of the purchasers of Seacunk, and when he moved there in 1645 his party sheltered on the way in a wigwam that caught fire and burned three of their horses and all their goods. Daniel and Hannah's son, Capt. Daniel Read, married Nicholas Ide's granddaughter Elizabeth in 1715, and their son, Capt. Daniel of Attleborough, married Mary White in 1741.

Mary was born at Norton in 1720 and came to Attleborough, it seems, with her widowed mother. Her family, the Whites of Taunton and Norton, with the Humphreys, Macombers and Deans, is the White and Dean line. Her daughter Hannah married Ebenezer Tyler in 1762. In the autumn of 1775 Hannah's mother, two of her brothers and three of her sons died within three weeks; the twins born to her in 1780 were given two of the lost boys' names, Rowland and Abijah. Her brother Daniel was very probably the composer of the hymn tunes "Windham" and "Sherburne."

The line at a glance

Read: John Read (c. 1598-1685) = Sarah Lessie, daughter of William Lessie of Blyborough > Daniel (1655-1710) = Hannah Peck > Capt. Daniel (1680-1740) = Elizabeth Ide > Capt. Daniel (c. 1716-1801) = Mary White > Hannah Read (1744-1822) = Col. Ebenezer Tyler (1740-1811) > Rowland Tyler (1780-1872)

Peck: Robert Peck of Beccles (1546-1593) = Hellen Babbs > Joseph Peck (bp. 1587, d. 1663) = Rebecca Clark > Joseph (bp. 1623) = Hannah > Hannah Peck (b. 1653), above

Ide: Thomas Bliss (d. 1649) > Martha = Nicholas Ide (d. 1690) > Timothy (1660-1735) = Elizabeth Cooper > Elizabeth Ide (1690-1759), above

The scope walks every ancestor of Hannah Read. Her husband's side is the Tyler and Ginn line, which stops at her. This line stops in turn at her mother, Mary White, who heads the White and Dean line.

How sure it is

Most of the steps are in the town records. The Rehoboth records give Capt. Daniel Read (1680) to Daniel and Hannah, with both his marriages; Daniel (1655) "of John"; Hannah Peck (1653) to Joseph and Hannah; Elizabeth Ide (1689/90) to Timothy and Elizabeth; and Timothy (1660) to Nicholas Ide. Joseph Peck Jr.'s will of 1697 names "my daughter Hannah wife of Daniel Reed," and John Read's of 1679 a son Daniel; and in 1644 John Read and "Sarah his wife the daughter of Will Lessie of Blyborough in Suffolke" gave a letter of attorney (Aspinwall Notarial Records p. 11). The rest is compiled or inferred:

• Hannah's own parents (probable): Lothrop (1902) lists her, born 26 June 1744, among Daniel and Mary's eleven children, from the Attleborough records, which have not been seen. Her son Rowland's parentage is Brigham's (compiled).
• Capt. Daniel Read (c. 1716) as a son of Capt. Daniel and Elizabeth Ide (probable, inferred): no birth record has been seen. His age at death, "in his 85th y." in 1801, and J. W. Reed's "Dec. 3, 1716," at Attleborough fit the marriage of December 1715. His father also had a son Daniell, born 9 Sept 1713 by his first wife, Elizabeth Bosworth; the archive keeps the two as different men (Questions to decide, Low and Tyler-Ginn, item 8).
• Elizabeth Ide as Timothy's daughter: her birth is recorded; that she was Capt. Daniel's second wife rests on her age at death, "in her 70th y." in 1759.
• Martha Ide as a daughter of Thomas Bliss (probable): his will of 1649 calls Nicholas Ide "my sonninlaw," which could also mean a stepson.
• Elizabeth Cooper's father: Thomas Cooper Jr. of Rehoboth, whose daughter Elizabeth was born in 1662, is a candidate only.
• The Pecks above Joseph Jr. (probable): the Beccles baptism, Robert Peck and Hellen Babbs, and the marriage to Rebecca Clark at Hingham in 1617 are Ira Peck's (1868); Joseph's holograph will, which he prints, leaves "my gould Ringe" to his son Joseph.

Mollie Pfeiffer's typescript (pp. 147-156) first named nearly all of these families, and most of its dates match the records. Where it went wrong: Capt. Daniel Read's wife Elizabeth Ide was Timothy's daughter, born 1689/90, not Nicholas's daughter of 1658, who would have been 57 at the wedding; Hannah Peck was born at Rehoboth on 25 Mar 1653, not at Hingham in 1646; Capt. Daniel Read was born on 20 Jan 1680, not the 30th; Robert Peck's wife was Hellen Babbs, not "---- Norton"; Nicholas Ide's wife was Martha, not Mary Bliss, and Ralph Waldo Emerson descends from another Thomas Bliss, of Hartford and Springfield; and John Read did not come with Winthrop in 1630, and was constable, not sheriff. Its descents from the Redes of Redesdale and the Pecks of Belton have no evidence behind them. The verdicts are in Tyler and Ginn Line Research: Hannah Read Tyler's ancestry (Part One) and Mollie Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer's typescript: a claim-by-claim review (section 7.2).

Open questions

• The printed Attleborough births: Hannah's, and the children of Daniel Read and Elizabeth Ide.
• Daniel Read and Mary White's marriage: 2 April or 2 May 1741?
• Bristol County probate: Hannah (Read) Tyler, 1822 (the silver spoon).
• Was Martha Ide Thomas Bliss's daughter? The 1648 petition, if it exists, or his estate papers.
• Was Elizabeth Cooper the daughter of Thomas Cooper Jr., born 1662?
• John Read's will (Bowen, Early Rehoboth 3:163), and his and Sarah Lessie's English origins.
• The maiden name of Hannah, wife of Joseph Peck Jr.
• Did Benjamin Ide Wheeler descend from Nicholas Ide?