The Mysterious Fate of Naomi's Daughter
Female Child Hull: 1667-?
In my previous blog post on my seventh great grandmother
Naomi Hull, I noted that Naomi gave birth to an illegitmate child in her
twenties around 1667. She was sentenced to be whipped for fornication, and her
child was taken away from her. The community of Dover bribed a man named John
Church to raise the child and “keep her till she be 20 years old”. On October
3, 1667, Church was granted sixty acres of land if he would take the child with
the promise of ten more acres when the girl reached her majority.
So what happened to this child, who would be my seventh-great-aunt?
The child was only identified as “Naemys child”, so we don’t
even know her name. There is no further mention of the child in the records. However,
there are some hints and clues that paint a possible picture of the child’s
fate.
John Church lived in Dover in 1689 when the Dover Massacre
or Cochecho Massacre occurred. Natives in the area, bitter after years of poor
treatment by colonists, attacked the garrison houses at Dover, killing 23
people. An additional 29 people were taken captive. John Church was one of
those captives; it is likely that his home was one of the several buildings the
natives set ablaze. While I have been unable to find a full list of the
captives, his entire family may have been taken captive, including Naomi’s
daughter. She would have been about 22 years old at that point, so might still
have been part of the household.
Charles Weygant, in his book The Hull Family in America,
posits the following:
“John Church was
captured by Indians in the Dover massacre of 1689, and he was killed and
scalped, 7 May 1696, at Cochecho. Among the pupils registered at Quebec was
Nimbe II, whom Miss Mary P. Thompson thought to be Naomi Hull [Joseph’s
daughter]. Is it not more probable that this was Naomi Hull, the ‘Neamy’s
child’ brought up in the family of John Church, named for her mother, and
captured with him in 1689?”
It is possible that this captive, turned over to the nuns in
Quebec, was Naomi’s child. However, as I pointed out, Naomi’s daughter would
have reached the age of 22 by this point, so I question whether she would have
been enrolled as a pupil at the convent, unless they took in women as well as
children.
We may never know the girl’s fate. I just hope that Naomi
was kept apprised of her daughter’s well-being over the years. Life in colonial
America was cruel to unwed mothers and illegitimate children.
Sources:
The Hull Family in America; Weygant, Charles. Hull Family
Assoc., 1913
History of the Town
of Durham, New Hampshire : (Oyster River Plantation) with Genealogical Notes; Stackpole,
Everett Schermerhorn, 1850-1927; Thompson, Lucien, b. 1859; Meserve, Winthrop
Smith, 1838-. Pages 222-223, 235-240.
https://www.dover.nh.gov/government/city-operations/library/history/the-cochecho-massacre.html
https://commonheroes3.wordpress.com/12th-generation/hull-joseph-agnes/
https://www.geni.com/people/Joanna-Davis/6000000001791625198
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