Ancestors

Dea. Edward Church

Edward Church was born about 1628, the son of Richard Church, who came to Hartford by 1637. By 1654 he was at Norwalk, on Long Island Sound, where he was a deacon of the church. A deacon was a lay officer who cared for the poor and the church's goods and served at the Lord's Supper.

His wife was Mary. Her surname is not known. Their children included Rebecca, Mary, born 1656, John, Samuel, born 1662, who died at a month old, a second Samuel, born 4 August 1663, Naomi, born 1666, Sarah, born 1670, Hannah, and Richard, born in January 1675.

The family moved up the Connecticut River to Hatfield, in the Massachusetts settlements around Hadley, where his father had gone in 1659. Hatfield was a frontier town when King Philip's War broke out in 1675.

On 19 May 1676 his son John was killed in the Falls Fight, a battle of King Philip's War at the falls of the Connecticut River above Deerfield.

His wife Mary died in 1690 or 1691. The town record gives 30 September 1690, and her gravestone gives 17 September 1691, aged fifty-four. Edward died at Hatfield on 19 September 1704, aged seventy-six.

His daughter Rebecca probably married Joseph Selden in 1677. Mary probably married Philip Russell in 1679, and Naomi married Joseph Bodman in 1687. The family compilers of the 1900s made his son Samuel the Samuel Church who settled at Lyme.

If Dea. Edward Church is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Dea. Edward Church (1628-1704)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/dea-edward-church-1628-1704-fcaa04.