HYDE FAMILY
Genealogical Notes

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Notes for William Hyde.

The name William Hyde first appears at Hartford, Connecticut in 1636. his name is on the monument in the old cemetery at that place as one of the original settlers; and he had lands assigned to him there.

Many families of the name of Hyde had been settled in different parts of England for five or six hundred years prior to the settlement of New England. One of the name, Sir Nicholas Hyde, was chief justice of the court of common pleas in 1660. And a third, Sir Edward Hyde afterwards the Earl of Clarendon, was lord chancellor at the restoration, 1660, and was grandfather of Queen Mary the 2nd, and Queen Ann, and of Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who was one of the provincial governors of New York.

William Hyde the first of Norwich, was a contemporary of Sir Robert Hyde and of the Earl of Clarendon; but was undoubtedly of humbler origin. I have not been able to ascertain from what part of England her came; and to what family he belonged; or where he first landed in America, or the precise time when he arrived here. he probably, however, came over in 1633, with the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the first minister of Hartford; sojourned a short time at Newton, Massachusetts, and removed with him to Hartford, in 1636. The time of his removal to Saybrook is not ascertained, but he owned lands in Hartford as late as 1639. He probably went to Saybrook soon after that, and his daughter was married there early in 1652. No information has been obtained as to the name of his wife, or when or where she died. From the age of the son when he died (forty), he must have been born in 1636. His mother was then living and probably died at Hartford or Saybrook, before the removal of her husband to Norwich, as no account of her account is found upon the Norwich records. The daughter either was born in England, or was married very young; the date of her birth, or her age at the time of her death in 1703, have not been ascertained. (1913)

Norwich, Connecticut was settled in 1660. The 35 original proprietors of that town were the Revered James Fitch, the first minister of that place; Major John Mason, afterwards Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut; Lieutenant Thomas Leffingwell; Lieutenant Thomas Tracy, and his eldest son, John Tracy; Deacon Thomas Agate; Christopher Huntington, and his brother, Deacon Simon Huntington; Ensign Thomas Waterman; William Hyde and his son, Samuel Hyde, and his son-in-law, John Post; Lieutenant William Backus, and his brother, Stephen Backus; Deacon Hugh Calkins, and his son, John Thomas Bowers' John Gager; Thomas Howard; Dr. John Baldwin, and John Pease. Most of these original proprietors of Norwich were from Saybrook and East Saybrook (now Lyme). Hugh Calkins, and his son and son-in-law, and John Pease, John Gager; Nehemiah Smith and Robert Allen, were from New London. Thomas Waterman, and John Bradford were from Marshfield, Massachusetts.

William Hyde was a man of considerable importance among the settlers of Norwich, and was frequently elected as one of the townsmen, or selectmen. He died at Norwich, January 6, 1681. His home lot was devised to his grandson, William Mansfield, a descendent of the latter; and was occupied by him as the site of his dwelling house in 1859.

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