Luke Hitchcock

Father of Capt. Ebenezer Hitchcock, and for fifty years one of the leading men of Springfield. He was born at Wethersfield on 5 June 1655, a son of Luke Hitchcock and Elizabeth, sister of William Gibbons of Hartford, the steward Gov. George Wyllys sent ahead to build his house. His father died in 1659, and when his mother married William Warriner of Springfield in 1661 she took her two boys, John and Luke, to Springfield; in 1673, still under age, Luke chose his brother John as his guardian (The Genealogy of the Hitchcock Family, pp. 206-207, 407).

King Philip’s War. He was twenty when Springfield was burned on 5 Oct 1675. His brother John, the husband of Hannah Chapin, lost his house: Major Pynchon’s letter of that day names “Mr. Glovers & John Hitchcocks & Goodman Stewarts, burnt downe with Barnes, corne & all they had” (The First Century of the History of Springfield, 1:131). In May 1676 both brothers rode with Capt. William Turner’s men to the Falls above Deerfield, where on the morning of 19 May they fell on the Native fishing camp at Peskeompskut; on the way back the column broke under attack, and “Thirty-eight of the English were slain, and all but one after they left the falls” (History of Hadley, p. 164). John was “wounded in the fight at Turner’s Falls, one arm shot through and the other broken,” and Major Pynchon asked the Governor to give him a lieutenant’s commission “for gallant conduct” (Hitchcock 1894, p. 208). The list of the soldiers in “the fight called the falls fight,” approved by the General Court’s committee in June 1736, has “Hitchcock, John, Springfield” and “Hitchcock, Luke, Springfield,” and Luke’s share in Falltown, the township granted to the survivors and their heirs, went to his son: “Luke Hitchcock, Springf, son Luke Hitchcock” (Soldiers in King Philip’s War, pp. 250, 253; Hitchcock 1894, p. 407). Others of the family rode with them: Japhet Chapin, Hannah’s brother, and John and James Munn, whose mother was a sister of Jonathan Burt.

Marriage. Nine months later, on 14 Feb 1676/7, he married Sarah Burt, daughter of Jonathan Burt, who had written the town book’s account of the burning. She was twenty and already a widow: her first husband, Benjamin Dorchester, whom she had married on 22 April 1675, had died on 24 May 1676, five days after the fight (Hitchcock 1894, pp. 407-408).

Springfield. “He became a prominent man of Springfield, Mass., where he kept a tavern. He was also a shoemaker and a captain in the army and was made sheriff of Hampshire County, which then included Hampden, Franklin and Berkshire counties.” He was an original grantee of Suffield, with fifty acres allotted there in 1680; he paid rates at Brookfield in 1717 and petitioned for land at Brimfield. On 30 May 1679 the Massachusetts court, “in answer to the petition of Luke Hitchcock,” granted him ten pounds “to be payed forthwith by the county treasurer deducting the same from Hadley account” (Hitchcock 1894, p. 407). The town chose him a surveyor of highways in February 1677/8 and constable at the meeting of 1 Feb 1680/1 (Burt 2:135, 145), and a selectman in 1687, 1696 and, as “Luke Hitchcock, Sr.,” in 1704, 1705 and 1712 (1:29-30). On 30 Nov 1693 the town sent “Capt. Thos. Colton and Luke Hitchcock … to the Bay to procure a minister,” with orders to apply to Increase Mather and “the rest of the Rev’d. Elders in Boston” (Hitchcock 1894, p. 407, quoting Hinman).

His will, signed on 26 May 1722 and proved on 16 May 1727, left his wife the use of half his house and meadow “so long as she bear his name,” land and his grant “at Wachuset” to his son Luke, meadow “at the World’s End” and a day apiece of his saw mill to Ebenezer and Peletiah, and money to his daughters. His gravestone at Springfield reads: “Here rests the body of Luke Hitchcock, Esq., who after he had served God and his generation in several publick offices deceased Jan. 24, 1727, in ye 72 year of his age” (p. 408).

Their children, born at Springfield (pp. 408-409): Sarah (1678), who married James Mirrick; Elizabeth (1679/80), who married Peletiah Bliss; Mercy (1681), who married Capt. George Colton; Hannah (1683/4), who married Samuel Stebbins; Thankful (1686), who married John Phelps of Westfield; Mary (1688), who married Samuel Taylor and then Daniel Arms of Deerfield; Luke (1691), who married Martha Colton; Jonathan (1693), who died an infant; Ebenezer (1694); another Jonathan (1696-1697); and Peletiah (1698), who married Sarah Parsons.

Research: research/king-philips-war/Connecticut_and_Long_Island.md; research/hatten/Browne_Chapin_Cumins.md.

Open questions

• His petition of 30 May 1679, paid from the “Hadley account”: war service or charges? (Records of Massachusetts Bay, vol. 5.)
• Pynchon’s letter on John Hitchcock’s wound and commission, probably in Mass. Archives vol. 69.