Ancestors

Simon Hoyt

Simon Hoyt's English years are known from two parish registers, one in Dorset and one in Somerset. On 4 November 1617 "Simon Hoyt & Jone Stoodley" were married at Marshwood, Dorset. From the next year children of a Simon Hoyte were baptized at St Andrew's church in West Hatch, Somerset: Walter on 29 November 1618, Nicholas in May 1620, Alexander on 28 December 1623 and Agnes, whose father is written "Symon", on 8 October 1626. Robert Charles Anderson's Great Migration Begins of 1995 identifies this family as the immigrant's. Walter and Nicholas are the names of the eldest sons who came to Windsor with him, and Walter himself gave his age as about 65 in 1684 and about 78 in 1696, which fits a birth in 1618. Other Hoytes were buried at West Hatch in those years: Tamozine in July 1618, Christopher in August 1618, another Tamazine in November 1623, and a man named Michael on 29 January 1623/4. Simon's own parents are not known.

Simon Hoyt came from England to Massachusetts Bay before the great migration of 1630. The Charlestown town records name him among the first settlers of the place. They list "The Inhabitants yt first setled in this place & brought it into the denomination of An English Towne" as Ralph, Richard and William Sprague, John Meech, "Simon Hoyte", Abraham and Walter Palmer, Nicholas Stowers, John Stickline, Thomas Walford the smith, Mr. Graves and Mr. Bright, the minister to the company's servants. The record gives the year as 1628. Those lines were written up in 1664, and Charlestown's historian Frothingham showed that several of its dates run a year early, so 1629 is the likelier year.

The same records say the Spragues "and three or four others" walked "through the woods" from Salem that summer, with Governor John Endicott's approval, to look at the land on the north side of the Charles River. The Indians called it Mishawum. The only English house they found there was the "palisadoed and thatched house" of Thomas Walford, a smith who had been living alone. Only one name stands between the Spragues and Simon Hoyt on the list, so David W. Hoyt, who compiled the family genealogy in 1871, concluded that Simon was one of that small party. The Winthrop fleet arrived the next year, and the new arrivals spread out to Watertown, Dorchester and the other towns around the bay.

Simon took the freeman's oath of Massachusetts in 1631, on the first list of men to do so. A freeman was a church member with the right to vote in the colony. He was soon at Dorchester. In April 1633 he was listed as owning two cows, which obliged him to put up forty feet of fence on the marsh. That October he was one of two men appointed "to see to the fences" of the east field, and in May 1634 one of two to "view the pales" of the north field. In June 1634 the town divided between Goodman Witchfield and Goodman Hoyte eight acres of marsh on the north side of the neck, facing Boston. In February 1635 he was keeping one bull.

By April 1635 he had left Dorchester. His meadow lot there was divided between Roger Williams and Giles Gibbs. "Symeon Hayte" and his wife joined the church at Scituate, on the South Shore, on 19 April 1635. "Goodman Haites" house went up there by October 1636, and by the time the minister listed it he had already sold it to Mr. Bower. A man named Smith at Scituate is called his brother in the records.

From Scituate he went to Windsor, on the Connecticut River. On 28 February 1640 Windsor granted "Symon Hoyt" eighty acres of meadow and upland, and another eighty north of the rivulet, thirty of them for his son Walter. His land lay east of the rivulet, away from the other settlers, and that year he and his family were "freed from watch and ward". Watch was guard duty by night and ward by day; the Hoyts had enough to do guarding their own farm against the Indians. The place kept the name Hoyt's Meadow into the 1870s. His son Benjamin was born at Windsor in 1644. In 1646 he sold the Windsor farm, with dwelling house and barn, to William Thrall.

By March 1649 he was at Fairfield, on the Sound. The town granted him a home lot of two and a half acres, five and a half acres on an island in Sasco Neck that was called "Hoits Island", and more land in the Windsor field and the new field. He also bought a three-acre home lot from John Green, with five more parcels. He moved on to Stamford sometime between 1649 and 1657.

Simon Hoyt died at Stamford on 1 September 1657. The town recorded his death twice, once as "Hoyt" and once as "height". His inventory, taken 9 October 1657, came to 233 pounds. His widow Susanna later married a man named Bates and died before February 1674. His sons Moses, Joshua, Samuel and Benjamin and his sons-in-law Thomas Lyon, Samuel Finch and Samuel Firman divided her estate that year. His other sons Walter, Nicholas and John were probably the children of an earlier wife.

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Cite: Heirology, "Simon Hoyt (d. 1657)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/simon-hoyt-1657-f7b6b7.