Hannah Chandler

Our Andover ancestor Hannah Chandler was probably born in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, because that is where her older brother, 6-year-old William, was buried when Hannah was but 3, and that is where his family had been living for generations. She no doubt arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony with her parents and siblings as part of the Great Migration in the 1630s. The date was probably 1634 or 1635.

This was a close-knit family. Hannah's older brother Thomas Chandler, 1628-1703 was the father of John Chandler I, 1655-1721, who married Hannah's daughter Hannah Abbott, 1650-1741, his first cousin. This John's younger sister Sarah Chandler, 1661-1757 became the grandmother of the Samuel Phelps III, 1712-1795 who married John and Hannah's granddaughter Priscilla Chandler, 1713-1778, Samuel's second cousin. Our Hannah's daughter Hannah and her first-cousin husband had two sons, both of whom are are direct ancestors of ours, so that two of her (daughter Hannah's) great-grandchildren (Priscilla Chandler Phelps's son Joshua Phelps I, 1738-1798 and Lois Ballard, 1746-1836) were also married as second cousins. New England apparently had a very restricted gene pool.

Hannah, her siblings, and her half-siblings were part of the reactive, nomadic Cavalier Generation. Her parents, her stepfathers, her stepsiblings (including Francis, who became her second husband), and her first husband, George, were part of the idealistic, puritanical Righteous Generation. Her children and stepchildren were part of the heroic, civic-minded Glorious Generation.