The Appearance of Hannah Dickerman
About 240 years after her death, Hannah Dickerman first surfaces in print as the name of the wife of William Ives and William Bassett through Frank Bassett’s 1902 Reports of the Two Reunions of the Massachusetts Branch of the Bassett Family Association (20). This publication is followed by a response in the Boston Evening Transcript in February 3, 1906 (21). In this response to a question, H. B. G. states that William Bassett married Hannah (Dickerman) Ives in Nov. 7, 1648 and she was probably the sister of Abraham Dickerman and daughter of Thomas and Ellen Dickerman. He adds, “I think this information came from either ‘Families of Dickerman Ancestry’ or the ‘Tuttle Book.’ ”
We shall look closely at what is actually said in the “Families of Dickerman Ancestry,” published by Tuttle in the next section of this article. In 1920 and 1929, there were two more postings in the Boston Evening Transcript naming Hannah Dickerman as the wife of William Ives and/or Bassett; however the 1929 posting mentions Hannah as the daughter of Abraham Dickerman (22). Abraham did have a daughter named Hannah but she was born after William Ives died. Hannah Dickerman also appears as the wife of William Bassett in Wheeler Bassett’s, A Bassett Book, as well as a genealogy of the Obil Beach family in 1936 (23). Clarence Torrey lists Hannah Dickerman as the wife of William Ives in his New England Marriages Prior to 1700, but with a question mark indicating he is not certain of the validity of this information (24).
Today a large number of genealogy Web sites and postings list Hannah Dickerman as born on 1622 in Little Missenden, Bucks, England and arriving in America with her parents from England on August 17, 1635, sailing out of Bristol on the James. Her parents are listed as Thomas Dickerman and Ellen Whittington who married in 1621 in Little Missenden, Bucks. England. These sites also claim that Hannah Dickerman married William Ives on June 14, 1639 and that she died on November 5, 1665 in New Haven, CT. For example, there were 193 hits on a search in the Ancestry.com family tree on November 2003 on Hannah Dickerman as both the daughter of Thomas Dickerman and wife of William Ives. However, all of the above claims are posted with either no reference to a primary or secondary source or with a secondary source that does not provide confirming evidence when examined.
Many of the secondary sources such as the works by Atwater (1902), Jacobus (1923), and Virkus (1929), list the wife of William Ives and William Bassett as Hannah, with no last name (25). This approach is also taken with a number of family genealogies including those of Goodyear (1899), Hall (1954), Ives (1932), Keeler (1939), Merriman (1914), Randall (1943), and Smith (1938) (26). The Ludington-Saltus (1925), Hollister (1916), and Miner (1928) family histories take the position that neither her first or last name is known (27). (Continued)
20. Bassett, Frank. Reports of the Two Reunions of the Massachusetts Branch of the Bassett Family Association (Boston: Bailey Publishing, Co., 1902), p.18.
21.Boston Evening Transcript, Posting by H. B. G. on Feb. 3, 1906.
22. Boston Evening Transcript, Posting by D. M. V. on May 19, 1920; Boston Evening Transcript, Posting by Franklin on Aug. 12, 1929 - #8718.
23. Bassett, Wheeler, A Bassett Book. (Interlaken, NY: Published by author, 1928), James, Alma Eliose, The Ancestry and Posterity of Obil Beach (Fairbury, IL: Blade Publishing Co., 1936), p. 60.
24. Torrey, Clarence Almon, New England Marriages Prior to 1700. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogy Society, 2001), p. 412. All of the references that Torrey lists were reviewed (see footnotes 26 & 27). The only Torrey reference not listed in these footnotes is Curtiss, Frederic Haines, A Genealogy of the Curtis Family (Boston: Rockell & Churchill Press, 1903), p. 103, since it covers a later Hannah Ives (1778-1844).
25. Atwater, Edward, History of the Colony of New Haven to its Absorption into Connecticut (Meriden, CT: The Journal Publishing Co., 1902), p. 544, 711; Jacobus, Donald Lines, Families of Ancient New Haven, vols. 1-9. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1923), p. 910; Virkus, Frederick Adams, Immigrant Ancestors: A list of 2,500 Immigrants to America before 1750, Vol. 7 (Chicago: The Institute of American Genealogy, 1929), p. 861 for Ives and p. 846 for Bassett.
26. Kirkman, Grace Goodyear, Genealogy of the Goodyear Family (San Francisco: Cubery & Co., 1899), p. 153; Sumner, Edith Blake Bartlett, Ancestors and Descendents of Amaziah Hall and Betsey Baldwin (Los Angeles: American Offset Printers, 1954), p.107; The Genealogy of the Ives Family, p. 28; Frost, Josephine C. Ancestors of Evelyn Wood Keeler, Wife of Willard Underwood Taylor (Brooklyn, NY: privately printed, 1939), p. 327; Merriman, Mansfield, Reunion of Descendents of Nathaniel Merriman of Wallingford, Conn., June 4, 1913 with a Merriman Genealogy for Five Generations (New Haven: D. L. Jacobus, 1914), p. 139; Randall, Frank Alfred, Randall and Allied Families (Chicago, Raveret-Weber Print, Co., 1943), p. 443-447, Charles Smith and Rachel Amy Bryant: Their Ancestors and Descendents, p. 112.
27. Ludington, Ethel M. (Saltus), Ludington-Saltus Records (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1925), p. 89; Talcott, S. V. The Hollister Family (Asbury Park, NJ: Martin & Allardyce, 1916), p. 18; Selleck, Lillian Lounsberry, One Branch of the Miner Family (New Haven, D. L. Jacobus, 1928), p. 35
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