Ann Hammond Hawkins

Biography

Life summary. Ann, also called Hannah, administered Timothy Hawkins’s estate after his death in 1651 and later married Ellis Barron. Her children’s inheritances continued through that remarriage. She survived both husbands and her daughter Mehitable, making her own will in 1683 before her death two years later.

Ann Hawkins took responsibility for her husband’s estate in October 1651. Timothy’s death left her with children and property whose settlement would continue long after his death. The court’s grant of administration placed the handling of that estate in her hands. ^610-1

Her family connections reached back to Lavenham, Suffolk, in eastern England. The family reconstruction identifies her with William Hammond’s daughter, baptized there on July 14, 1616. In Massachusetts, her Hawkins household stood within Watertown’s dispersed agricultural settlement, west of Boston. Timothy’s home lot adjoined Hammond land, keeping the two families close in the local landscape as well as through kinship. ^610-2610-3

Ann married Ellis Barron in December 1653. The remarriage brought the Hawkins children into a family with continuing obligations to their father’s estate. Barron entered a guardian bond for Mehitable in 1654; when she later chose her uncle John Hammond as guardian, he acknowledged a legacy received for her from Barron. These arrangements maintained a separate account of the child’s inheritance through her mother’s remarriage. ^610-2610-4

Another marriage joined the same families in the next generation: Ann’s daughter Hannah married a younger Ellis Barron. Ann’s husband and her son-in-law were distinct men, and the two marriages created overlapping Hawkins and Barron connections. ^610-2

The 1670s brought Ann further bereavements. Mehitable died in December 1675, and Ann’s husband Ellis died the following year. Ann was a widow again, now with decades of experience of the family’s changing households and estate arrangements behind her. ^610-2610-4

On August 18, 1683 she made her own will, identifying her Hawkins children. The family she had raised during her first marriage remained part of the estate she planned near the end of her life. A published epitaph records her death on September 1, 1685, aged about seventy; her will was proved on 6 October. ^610-2