Hannah Lewis (1756 - 1840) and her sister Mary Lewis (abt. 1758-60 - 1833) of New Haven, CT are often listed as daughters of Lois Bishop (1734 - 1813) and Nehemiah Lewis (abt. 1730 - abt. 1757). Different information has been passed down through my family, and after studying the matter carefully, I am confident that Hannah and Mary were actually the daughters of Hannah Gorham (1733 - 1803) and Leonard Lewis (abt. 1728 - bef. Jul 1767). As the facts around this have been a challenge to locate, I compile them here for the benefit of others.
Be aware that this post includes several different Hannahs. I always refer to the mother as Hannah Gorham, even after her marriage to Leonard Lewis. There are also two Nehemiahs mentioned. I've included a family chart at the end of the post, showing the most accurate information that I have.
Our Hannah and Mary Lewis (who appears in some records as Polly) married two brothers, Henry and John Peck, respectively. They lived near each other in New Haven. They each raised several children. The Peck brothers took over their father's business as spar and block makers. Hannah Lewis and Henry Peck are my sixth-great grandparents.
Part I: Conflicting Records
The trouble begins with two primary sources:
The New Haven Vital Records list:
Hannah ye Daughter of Lennard & Hannah [Gorham] Lewis, born 7 Feb 1756.
Then, in the records of the First Church of Christ (Congregational, also called Center Church) in New Haven, we have:
Hannah, daughter of Leonard, died 19 Sept 1765 ae 9 mos in New Haven.
Working just from these two records, one might think that either Hannah's age at the time of her death was transcribed in error - being 9 years instead of 9 months old - or that the first daughter named Hannah must have died young, her parents reused the name (a common practice in those days), and then their second daughter named Hannah died in Sept 1765 at the age of 9 months.
The latter was the conclusion drawn by Donald Lines Jacobus in Families of Ancient New Haven, a voluminous and respected work. He lists them as:
Lewis. Family 10. Leonard "[can he be Lent, son of Barnabas...?]", married Hannah Gorham on 10 Oct 1753. She was the daughter of Hannah Miles and Isaac Gorham. After Leonard's death she married Stephen Bradley on 19 July 1767.
Hannah and Leonard's children are listed as:
1. Betty, born 31 July 1754, died 20 Aug 1754.2. Hannah, born 7 Feb 1764.3. Barnabas4. Hannah, born "[Dec 1756]", died 19 Sept 1764 ae 0-9.
Note that Jacobus has misconstrued both the year of birth for the first Hannah (as compared with the vital records) and the year of death for the second Hannah (as compared with the church records). Concluding that Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis did not have a daughter named Hannah who lived to marry Henry Peck and have children, he places that Hannah and her sister Mary in another family group:
Lewis. Family 12. Nehemiah (d. 1757), married Lois Bishop (1734-1813). She was the daughter of Esther Dorman and Job Bishop. After Nehemiah's death she married Isaac Bradley on 7 Apr 1763.
Lois and Nehemiah's children are listed as:
1. Joseph, born 20 Aug 1755, died young.2. Hannah, born c. 1757, married Henry Peck on 22 Feb 1783, died 1 May 1840 ae 84.3. Mary, born c. 1760, married John Peck on 26 Oct 1788, died 9 Apr 1833 ae 73.
Here, Jacobus makes no attempt to reconcile the listing of Nehemiah dying in 1757 (for which he also doesn't provide a source) and then having a daughter born around 1760. His dates and citations leave something to be desired. Many family trees still follow this listing of Hannah and Mary as daughters of Lois Bishop and Nehemiah Lewis.
I don't know how (or even if) Leonard Lewis and Nehemiah Lewis were related to each other.
Part II: The Mayflower
The information passed down through my family over generations is that the Hannah Lewis who married Henry Peck was the daughter of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis, and through them traced back to several Mayflower passengers: John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, and Elizabeth's parents John Tilley and Joan Hurst.
My uncle applied for membership in the Mayflower Society in 2019 using that information, and was denied with the claim that two daughters of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis who bore the name Hannah had both died young. This was not the first time this pattern has played out... over 25 years ago, another distant relative also sought admittance to the Mayflower Society using the same family information, and hit the same answer.
I strongly suspect that the Mayflower Society, in reviewing the information on both of these applications, turned to the thoroughly-researched John Howland of the Mayflower by Elizabeth P. White. Volume One of this work traces the first five generations of descendants from John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley through their daughter Desire Howland. When it reaches our Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis, it lists their children as:
1. Betty/Betsey, born 31 July 1754, died 20 Aug 1754.2. Hannah, born 7 Feb 1756, died young.3. ?Barnabas, listed by Jacobus; no other record found.4. Nehemiah, born abt. 1760; ...5. Hannah, died 19 Sept 1764 ae 9 months.
White largely follows the information compiled by Jacobus. Note that she corrects the year of birth for the first Hannah - aligning it with the Vital Records - but not the year of death for the second Hannah.
White does make two important contributions for this family. First, she persuasively discredits the idea that Leonard Lewis might have been "Lent, son of Barnabas" as Jacobus posited. This casts into doubt the inclusion of a child in the family named Barnabas, since no documentation has been found to support that claim. Second, she locates compelling evidence that there was a son in this family named Nehemiah. The use of this name suggests to me that Leonard Lewis was related to the older Nehemiah Lewis, who passed away around 1757.
One might look at these Lewis family listings from Jacobus and White and leave things there. These are both respected genealogists. Fortunately, when my distant relative was eager to join the Mayflower Society in 1993, they had the assistance of Michael Dwyer, State Historian for the Vermont Society of Descendants, who carefully pursued this question to get to the bottom of the matter.
Dwyer compiled a substantial list of evidence which suggests that both Hannah and her sister Mary were daughters of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis. Hannah Lewis was a baptismal sponsor for two of her half-siblings, children of Hannah Gorham and her second husband Stephen Bradley. Mary's husband John Peck was one of the principals for the administration of that same Stephen Bradley's estate, and Hannah's husband Henry Peck was surety for that estate. Dwyer also located this listing of two church admissions in the records of the First Church of Christ:
Admitted on 22 Feb 1807:Member #1616, Hannah Lewis (widow of Henry) Peck / Daughter of Leonard and Hannah [Gorham]; born Feb 1756 / died May 1840.Member #1617, Mary Lewis (widow of John) Peck / born 1760 / died Apr 1833.
Not only did the sisters join the church on the same day, but it happened to fall on Hannah Lewis and Henry Peck's wedding anniversary.
Dwyer also looked for any evidence that our Hannah and Mary could be daughters of Lois Bishop and Nehemiah Lewis. He found none, beyond Jacobus. He notes that when Lois Bishop remarried Isaac Bradley, they named one of their daughters Hannah... something they likely wouldn't have done if Lois still had a living daughter named Hannah from her first marriage.
With all of this evidence pointing to Leonard Lewis and Hannah Gorham as the parents of Hannah and Mary Lewis, and only one record of a second daughter of theirs being named Hannah and dying at 9 months old, Dwyer concluded that the single contradictory entry from the New Haven Vital Records must have somehow been incorrect. No other record has been found which shows the death of the "first Hannah," nor has one been found showing the birth or baptism of the "second Hannah."
Dwyer published his findings in The Mayflower Quarterly, and I highly recommend that anyone researching this topic find that article as it includes more details than I have listed here. His corrected list of children for Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis is:
1. Betty/Betsey, born 31 July 1754, died 20 Aug 1754.2. Hannah, born 7 Feb 1756, married Henry Peck on 22 Feb 1783.3. Nehemiah, born abt. 1760; ...4. Mary/Polly, born abt. 1758-60, married John Peck on 26 Oct 1788.
My distant relative was accepted into the Mayflower Society based on these findings.
Part III: Setting the Record Straight
Why doesn't the story end here? Why, if it was proven conclusively in 1994 that Hannah and Mary Lewis were the daughters of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis, in one of the Mayflower Society's own publications, was the Society still dismissive in 2019 of the link between our Hannah Lewis and those parents?
The person reviewing my uncle's application to the Society must not have known about Dwyer's article. It seems highly likely that she or he turned directly to Elizabeth White's John Howland of the Mayflower, saw the listing there of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis with two daughters named Hannah who both died young, and trusted that to be the best information available on the matter. I easily found that same book early in my own search.
Several of us in the family looked into this question in late 2019, collecting some of the evidence that others had before us. By the time I came across Michael Dwyer's article in The Mayflower Quarterly, I was feeling hopeful that Hannah Lewis really did belong as a daughter of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis. I was prepared for his article to prove otherwise, and it was a pleasant surprise to have a clear, firm answer laid out that agreed with the information handed down through our family.
Happily, I was able to reach Mr. Dwyer to discuss all of this. He remembered working on this question and had not heard of any followup research which might alter his findings. He also related how he had shared his findings with Elizabeth White, who was appreciative and supportive of the corrected information. She herself had worked on this question at length, without solving it. She promised to include his corrections in an upcoming (as of 1994) printing of John Howland of the Mayflower... and she made good on that promise. By 2002, there were new printings of the first volume of that set which included additions and corrections, though they were still published under the same ISBN. It took a bit of searching, but I was able to find a library with a copy of the sixth printing of that volume, from 2008. They sent me an excerpt from the corrections at the back of the book, confirming that Dwyer's research really was included there.
It seems to me that most libraries have earlier printings of John Howland of the Mayflower, making copies with the corrections at the back a challenge to locate. The information on those pages is therefore at risk of being overlooked.
I will add one final piece of information that I believe is related to all of this. As I searched for any records of Lewis children in the 1750s or 60s, I found this in the records of the First Church of Christ in New Haven:
Sarah, daughter of Leonard, baptized 16 Dec 1764, by Rev. Chauncey Whittelsey.
If this entry is correct, and if Sarah was baptized soon after her birth (which wasn't always a given), the timing lines up extremely well with the record of that mysterious "second Hannah" dying at 9 months old on 19 Sept 1765. I believe it was actually a daughter named Sarah who was born around December 1764 and died in September 1765.
We end up with the following list of children for Hannah Gorham (bp. 5 May 1733 - 1 Oct 1803) and Leonard Lewis (abt. 1728 - bef. Jul 1767), all of whom were born and died in New Haven, CT:
1. Betty/Betsey, born 31 July 1754, died 20 Aug 1754.2. Hannah, born 7 Feb 1756, married Henry Peck on 22 Feb 1783, died 1 May 1840 ae 84.3. Mary/Polly, born abt. 1758-60, married John Peck on 26 Oct 1788, died 9 Apr 1833 ae 73.4. Nehemiah, born abt. 1760.5. Sarah, bp. 16 Dec 1764, died 19 Sept 1765 ae 9 months.
And here's that promised family tree (click for a larger view):
Sources:
Connecticut Church Records (Congregational church indexes) (Hartford, CT, 1942-63) v78, available on Ancestry.com (paid account required).
- for the death of the "second Hannah", p328, transcribing v9 p177.
- for the baptism of Sarah Lewis, p330, transcribing v9 p33.
- for the marriage of Hannah Lewis and Henry Peck, p328 and 414, transcribing v9 p115.
- for the marriage of Mary (listed as Polly) Lewis and John Peck, p330 and 415, transcribing v9 p97.
- for the second marriage of Hannah (Gorham) Lewis to Stephen Bradley, p97 and 328, transcribing v9 p47.
Dexter, Franklin Bowditch, Historical Catalogue of the Members of the First Church of Christ in New Haven, Connecticut (Center Church) (New Haven, CT, 1914), p125, available on Google Books.
Dwyer, Michael F., "Hannah (Lewis) Peck, daughter of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis", The Mayflower Quarterly, v60 n1 (Feb 1994) p19-21.
Family records.
Jacobus, Donald Lines, Families of Ancient New Haven (Rome, NY, 1929), v6 p1089-90, available on Archive.org.
Personal correspondence with Michael Dwyer.
Vital Records of New Haven, 1649-1850 (Hartford, CT, 1917), available on Archive.org.
- for the births of Joseph Lewis (son of Lois Bishop and Nehemiah Lewis), Betty (listed as Bele) and Hannah Lewis (daughters of Hannah Gorham and Leonard Lewis), v1 p340, transcribing Marriages - Births - Deaths, Book II, 1753-1790, p15.
- for the marriage of Hannah Gorham and Leonard (listed as Lennard) Lewis, v1 p401, transcribing ibid, p141.
- for the death of Betty (listed as Bete) Lewis, v1 p439, transcribing ibid, p228.
- for the death of Mary (Lewis) Peck, v2 p677.
- for the death of Hannah (Lewis) Peck, v2 p753.
White, Elizabeth Pearson, John Howland of the Mayflower (Camden, ME, 1990-2011). v1 (first printing, 1990) p428-31, available on Archive.org (free account required). Also v1 (sixth printing, 2008) p734-5, courtesy of Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IL.
