The Mayflower Families in Progress (MFIP) pamphlet, Richard
Warren of the Mayflower and His Descendants for Four Generations, 3rd ed.
(1989), compiled by Robert S. Wakefield, Janice A. Beebe, and others, stated
that the wife of Richard3 Church was Hannah Stover. No parents were given, but
after the death of Richard Church in 1704 Hannah was said to have married a
David Bryant in Scituate 31 July 1706.
MB. Colkett, Jr., in Founders of Early American Families (rev. ed.,
1985), p. 299, lists a Sylvester Stover whom I considered but quickly rejected
because he lived and died in York, Maine. Thus I gave scant attention to an
article on Sylvester in the Register (85[1931]: 300-05). I guess that
such premature rejection is the kind of error novice genealogists are prone to
make.
After some months of leaving Hannah Stover on the back burner, I perused the
Register article more carefully. There was my answer, plain to see.
After Sylvester Stover#s death his widow moved to Scituate, where she died in
1722 (will proved 4 September in Plymouth). Sylvester Stover#s will (proved at
York 14 February 1689/90) lists his sons by their names, but groups his
daughters as #the rest of my children.# His wife Elizabeth is more specific
-- she names all her children in her will. The last is# Hannah
Bryant.#
The Mayflower Descendant 8[1906]:205 confirms the date given above
from the MFIP pamphlet for the marriage of Hannah Church and David
Bryant. And finally the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire
(1928-39, reprint 1972, by Sybil Noyes, C.T. Libby and W.G. Davis), p. 667,
states that Hannah, daughter of Sylvester and Elizabeth (Norton) Stover of York,
Maine, appar. m. twice in Scituate, 1st Richard Church 2 Feb. 1696-7, 2d David
Bryant 1 July 1706. Much English ancestry for Hannah's mother, a daughter of
Henry and Margaret (___) Norton, sometime of York, Maine, can be traced in
TAG 16 (1939-40):101-13 (Norton), R.E.C. Waters, Genealogical
Memoirs of the Extinct Family of Chester of Chicheley, vol. 2 (1878), pp.
443-45, 448 esp. (Cranmer), and J.W. Walker, ed., Hunter#s Pedigrees
(Publications of the Harleian Society, Visitations Series, vol. 88 [19361),
pp. 90-91 (Hatfield).
Some of Jane H. Schotland's Mayflower research ("Sylvia Sturtevant and
her Seven Mayflower Lines") recently appeared in Mayflower Quarterly
55(1989):296-97. Interested readers may write Mrs. R.M. Schotland, 3726 N.
Pantano Road, Tucson, AZ 85715.