Elizabeth Paine

Biography

Life summary. Elizabeth Paine Hammond prepared to cross the Atlantic in 1634 with three children to join her husband William. Their later household was established at Watertown, where his will provided for her lifetime use of the property. She died in 1670.

Elizabeth Hammond’s passenger enrollment in 1634 records a family preparing to cross the Atlantic at different stages of life. She was listed as forty-seven, accompanied by Elizabeth, fifteen, Sarah, ten, and John, seven, for passage on the Francis. Her husband William had already left England. Elizabeth and the children were preparing to join him in New England, reassembling a household that had been divided by his departure. ^694-2

Elizabeth had been baptized at Lavenham, Suffolk, on September 11, 1586, a daughter of William Paine and Agnes Neves. She married William Hammond there on June 9, 1605. The retained family reconstruction reports that earlier children Anne and John died and that their names were later given to younger children. The seven-year-old John listed for the voyage belonged to this later part of the family. ^{694-1694-2694-3}

The household established in Watertown lay west of Boston, in a settlement sustained chiefly by agriculture and grazing. Its resources extended from the home lot to meadow, upland and more distant farm parcels. A recorded cartway through William’s land allowed hay to be brought from outlying meadows. Such arrangements explain how scattered holdings could support one household: land at a distance needed practical connections to the animals, storage and work nearer home. ^694-4694-6

Family relationships also connected neighboring properties. Timothy Hawkins’s home lot adjoined Hammond land, and the reconstruction identifies his wife Ann or Hannah as Elizabeth’s daughter. Later guardianship records linked the Hawkins children with Hammond relatives. As children established homes of their own, the Hammond family’s connections continued through neighboring property and responsibility for the next generation. ^694-4694-5

When William made his will in 1662, he put Elizabeth’s continuing support before their son John’s eventual possession of the houses and land. She was to use the estate for her lifetime. This gave her an ongoing claim on its resources after William’s death on 8 October, rather than requiring an immediate division of everything among the children. ^694-2

Elizabeth survived him by almost eight years. Watertown’s printed register records her death on September 14, 1670 and describes her as about ninety. Her death came eighty-four years after the recorded baptism. Her life connected the Lavenham family she had raised, the children who accompanied her migration and a Massachusetts estate arranged to sustain her through widowhood. ^694-1694-4