Henry Champion

Children include Mary

Henry Champion was at Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River, by 1647. His children were born there from 1649. He later moved across the river to Lyme. His English origin is not established.

His family genealogy, printed in 1891, could find little about him. It ends its sketch of him this way: "He was not of base degree, but of independent if not gentle condition; and had left the green homes of old England and her pleasant firesides to war with fierce wild beasts and the still fiercer Pequots, exacting a hard and scanty subsistence from the soil which he had found covered with 'a howling wilderness.'"

His first wife, the mother of his children, is not named in any known record. Their children were Sarah, born 1649, who married Henry Bennett; Mary, born 1651, who married Aaron Huntley; Stephen, born 1653, who died "the beginning of May, 1660"; Henry, born 1654, who married Susanna De Wolf; Thomas, born April 1656, who married Hannah Brockway; and Rachel, who married John Tanner.

No record of Rachel's birth survives. A deed proves her. On 12 June 1705 "Henry Champion, Sen., of Lyme" gave ten acres of upland at Lyme to "my beloved son-in-law John Tanner ... who was husband to my well beloved daughter Rachell Champion."

Late in life he married a second wife, Deborah. She survived him. His estate was inventoried at Lyme by John Lay and Samuel Marvin, townsman, at a total of eighty-one pounds, eighteen shillings and fourpence. The inventory is dated 16 April 1708 as printed. Deborah swore to it in the probate court at New London on 23 September 1709.

On 26 April 1709 the widow and the heirs signed an agreement. The heirs were his grandson Henry Champion, Henry Bennett for himself and his wife, Aaron Huntley for himself and his wife, and John Wade with his wife, the widow of Thomas Champion. Deborah kept the movable estate, and the heirs took the land and paid the debts he had owed before he married her.

Children

Mary Champion 1651-1732

Sources

Ivy Huntley Horn, "John Huntley of Lyme, Conn.", serialised in Your Ancestors (Orchard Park, N.Y., from 1947), archive.org yourancestorsnat13unse and yourancestorsnat46unse, p. 14

Francis Bacon Trowbridge, The Champion Genealogy (New Haven, 1891), archive.org championgenealog01trow, p. 22, from New London wills, book 3, fol. 131

Francis Bacon Trowbridge, The Champion Genealogy (New Haven, 1891), archive.org championgenealog01trow, p. 23

Francis Bacon Trowbridge, The Champion Genealogy (New Haven, 1891), archive.org championgenealog01trow, pp. 22-24

If Henry Champion is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Henry Champion", https://heirology.com/ancestors/henry-champion-b7409b.