Hannah’s Family

The Life and Family of Hannah Marie Compton Wells,

AKA “Great-grandmother Wells”

Hannah Marie Compton Wells

“Great-grandmother Wells” died in April 1888, two months before her 67^th birthday. Her great-grand-daughter, my grandmother Fern Hawkins, wasn’t born until six years later[1]. Consequently, not much of substance was carried down through the years about this ancestor. In fact, the only times her name came up, it seems, was in mention of a bad trait in the family--"She must have gotten that from Great-grandmother Wells." Since I'm quite sure you didn't deserve that, Grandmother, may I offer our collective apologies? (I have not clue what led to that family habit. It was not continued beyond my mother.) 

Obtaining the quotes from her Bible in 1951[2] gave us more information about her than anyone had had before. What struck us as most interesting at that time was the information about her grandfather who had died in the American Revolution and her ancestor Spencer Compton who had died in 1643 fighting the Parliamentarian forces that had ousted England's King Charles. Hannah's Bible called them "Cromwell's forces," but we now understand that Cromwell did not come into prominence until at least a couple of years later.

Little did we dream that someday we would learn much more about Hannah's whole family and reams about Spencer’s family, even though the concrete, document-able link between him and Hannah has continued to be illusive.

Back in 1951 we learned that Hannah was the youngest of eleven children. We learned the names of her brothers and sisters and their spouses but no dates and no children’s names. For a long time we did not realize that one of the siblings was left out in copying the information and that the married name of one of the sisters was misspelled. (See Wells for more on this.)

In the mid-1990s, the Internet changed everything for us. We discovered dates to go with the rest of the family and the names and birth dates of Hannah’s parents’ sixty grandchildren[3]. We learned that Hannah’s middle name was Marie and that her mother Hannah’s middle name was Phebe. We made contact with a fellow Compton descendant and learned that her ancestor was the brother who had been left out of the 1951 list. (We have since made contact with two descendants of one of Hannah's other brothers.) 

We learned that the oldest sister Annie married Seymour Lockwood, not Sachwood¸ and that Hannah’s oldest daughter married one of Annie’s younger sons. We even learned that there was an earlier Hannah who must have died very young, so that Hannah Marie was really the 12^th child, not the 11^th. In that time when so many families lost multiple children in infancy, the Compton family must have felt blessed to have lost only one. All the others grew up and married and had children, some of them lots of children.

Hannah Marie's Grave. See map for its location

I had always known that Guy Lockwood’s parents were Seymour and Minnie Lockwood, which made him cousin to my great-grandmother Esther Stauffer Porter. Minnie and Esther’s mother, Roxy, were sisters. What I did not know was that there were two Seymour Lockwoods, one the father of the other, and the father (the one I didn't know about) was married to the oldest of the Compton children, Grandmother Wells’s sister Annie (Anna in the records). So Guy’s parents, Seymour and Minnie, were cousins.

The father of the twelve Compton children bore the same name as his father, Hannah’s Revolutionary War grandfather, William Compton.[4] Hannah’s Bible tells us that her grandfather fought and died with the militia of Orange County in eastern New York, and other records confirm that (again, see Wells). We have also found records that William I had two brothers, Jacob and Vincent, and that they were involved in the earliest history of the town of Cornwall in Orange County. .

We now know that William the son was born in the midst of the War (1776). If his father died in the War, and records beyond our own attest to that, then the young William may have scarcely known his father. The Internet seems to indicate that William had an older brother named Runyon, but we know almost nothing about him. What we do know is that on February 23, 1794, in Orange County, New York, William II married Hannah Phebe Post, daughter of Peter Post and Mary Canfield Gibbs.

Internet records indicate that all the Compton children until Susannah, the one just before Hannah, were born in Orange County but that the last two were born in Tyrone, Steuben County. For Hannah, that birthplace is confirmed in her obituary. So sometime between 1812 and 1816, the Compton family pulled up their roots and migrated westward across the mountains and through the forests to the southern Finger Lakes area of central New York[5].

THE FAMILY ONE BY ONE

So what was Hannah’s family like when she was growing up? As the youngest of eleven living children, was she surrounded by a passel of older brothers and sisters? Not as many as one might think.

For starters, when she was born, Hannah’s brothers and sisters (note that Annie was the only girl until she was 18) were the following ages: Annie, 27; David, 25; Hezekiah, 23; Peter, 22; Runyen, 19; Abraham, 16, John P., 12; William, 11; Elizabeth, 9; and Susanna, 5. We can piece together a surprising amount about their lives, considering that more than 180 years have passed since Hannah’s birth but, not surprisingly, many matters remain cloudy.

We know that Annie was married, had stayed in eastern New York, and already had several children. She had twelve children all together, and eventually her family migrated westward to the Finger Lakes area as well.

David was married the year after Hannah was born and his first child was reportedly born in Orange County, so he too apparently initially stayed there when the parents moved. However, he has at least one child buried in a cemetery in the “Donovan Hill” area in west central New York, so he too must have joined the family there for at least a few years before moving to Ohio, where he is reported to have died. He and his wife had seven children that we know of, with at least six of them growing to adulthood and marrying.

Hezekiah was not married until Hannah Marie was ten years old, so it is possible he was with the family in Tyrone for Hannah’s birth and early childhood. There is a report that he ended up in Ottawa County, Michigan, along with Hannah, but it is unconfirmed. It may also be unlikely since he is shown in the 1860 as still being in New York. He and his wife had six children that we know of.

Peter was one of two very prolific Compton sons. We have records of him and his wife having 14 children. He is a special “treasure” because we have a detailed obituary on him, courtesy of Shelley Compton Hutchens, which give us insights into his life.[6] He married the year that Hannah was born, and he lived in the Lakes area until the 1850s. Three of his children are buried in one cemetery there—son Samuel who died in 1825, and two daughters, a 2-year-old in 1940 and a 15-year-old in 1841.

Runyen, the other prolific son (another 14 children), may have been around when Hannah was born, but he moved away from the family fairly early. In fact, he was married in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1826 when she was only five. Some of his children were born there and at least one across the border in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, so it is likely Hannah did not see much of him during her lifetime, and especially her early years.

We don’t know anything about brother Abraham other than that he married a girl born in Orange Co. Though he was young enough to have surely made the move to Steuben County as a youngster, it is possible he found his way back to Orange County…? We do have names for three children—Abby, Peter, and William—but no dates or birth places.

John Palmer (apparently called John P.) was twelve when Hannah was born and was around not only while she was growing up but much longer. His children were born in the Lakes area, but he and his wife died in Chester, Ottawa County, Michigan. So they apparently migrated there along with Hannah and Charles and their daughters. John and his wife had ten children, most of them born in Chemung County, near Steuben County where Hannah was born. He and several of his family are buried in unmarked graves in the Lisbon Cemetery of Kent County, Michigan.

We know little about William, the 8^th child and 7^th consecutive son except that he too married a lady from Orange Co. NY, and he too buried a child in the Donovan Hill-area cemetery. He supposedly died in Lemont, Michigan, though this is not confirmed. Eleven when Hannah was born, he would have been around at least for her early years.

Elizabeth—finally, another daughter! (One Internet report has sister Susan born fourth in the family in 1803, but Hannah's Bible listed her as second from the last. At nine, Elizabeth would surely have been both big sister and little mother to baby Hannah and to the child Hannah for a number of years. It is easy to picture her lugging Hannah around on her hip. In that day and age, a child her age would surely have spent much of her time helping with family chores, even if she had the opportunity to attend school. Elizabeth and her husband lived and died in the Lakes area, so they would have been part of Hannah’s life until she and Charles moved to Michigan in 1854. Elizabeth married and had at least two children, but they may have died very young.

Susanna, called “Susan” in Hannah’s Bible, also spent her whole life in the Lakes area. She would come the closest to a sibling playmate for Hannah in her early years. Many years later her father, William, was living (or visiting) in her home when he died sometime after the 1850 census. Susan had three children—Catherine, Elizabeth, and Edward, but we have no other information on them.

So we can draw a fair picture of what life was like for our Great-grandmother Wells in her family when she was growing up. Her sisters were five and nine years older than she, but they would clearly have been part of her life. At least two brothers, John P. and William, were still living at home, as well as perhaps Abraham for a few years. Five of her siblings were adults by the time she was born and played different parts in her life—some large and some small.

THE PICTURE EXPANDS

About the time that Hannah was ten, some excitement took place in the family because apparently sister Annie Lockwood and her brood came across the mountains from Orange County to join her parents and siblings around the Finger Lakes. Could it be that this was the first that Hannah would have met her oldest sister, Annie? Travel across the mountains of central New York could not have been easy in those days. It is true that the Erie Canal opened in 1825, and that may have played a part. It is even conceivable that the canal might have contributed to Annie and Seymour’s decision to make such a big move with their young family. Nevertheless, it does not seem that visits back and forth in the previous years could have been plentiful.

The arrival of Annie’s family would have also brought into Hannah’s life her niece Hannah Lockwood, who was the same age. We cannot tell whether Annie’s three oldest children made the move at that time, but there were two sisters and two brothers younger than her Hannah. Suddenly Hannah Compton had several small family members younger than she for playmates.

Her mother, Hannah Phebe, must have been thrilled to have nearby all those grandchildren she may not have even known. Though it has been mentioned that William and Hannah Phebe had 80 grandchildren, most of the sons moved away from New York, so “having” the grandchildren didn’t necessarily mean having them as part of their lives.

Two decades later when Hannah and Charles decided to make the move to Michigan in 1854, it would have been bittersweet to part from their family roots. Hannah’s parents had recently died, and most of her brothers had moved away from the area, but her three sisters and many of their children died in the Lakes area. We know for sure brother John P. went to the same township in Michigan as well, and it’s possible he went the same time as Hannah, but we don’t know.

An intriguing footnote to the story of Hannah’s family is that her second daughter married her sister Anna’s tenth child. The second Seymour Lockwood was born in 1831 and was ten years older than Hannah’s daughter Marion, known as Minnie. She would have been only 13 when her family moved to Michigan, with Seymour 23. Was a romance already budding? We cannot tell, but we know from family records that the two were not married until 1959, when Minnie was 18. They lived out their lives in Michigan.