General Notes

Nickname:<NICK> GOODY HAND
Note: From the web page- Who was the Matriarch of the Hoppings inAmerica? http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hopping/rebecca.htmResea rch by Richard Gess, Walter Snel and Judith Hopping The wife of the Immigrant John Hopping is ubiquitously identified as "Goody" (i.e. Goodwife) Rebecca Hand, widow of Roger Smith. Documentary evidence suggests that Smith's widow was actually Rebecca Osborne, daughter of Thomas Osborne (b.1594, d. aft 1677), one of the earliest settlers of East Hampton, Long Island. Multiple documents establish that it was Rebecca, the widow of Roger Smith, who married John Hopping in 1679. In Thomas W.Cooper's (1993) Records of the Court of Sessions of Suffolk County, NY 1670-1688, we see that Rebecca Smith, widow of Roger,was made the administrator of Smith's estate in 1671. In this document her brother is unambiguosly identified as Thomas Jr.Osborne, son of Thomas Osborne. In Jeanne Rattray's East Hampton History, Thomas Sr. Osborne is listed as having daughter Rebecca who was baptized Oct 23, 1642 and died in East Hampton April 10,1704. But if Rebecca was an Osborne, why has she been identified as Rebecca Hand? For our Rebecca Hopping to have been a Hand, she would have had to be either a daughter of a Hand, or a wife. Rebecca is often listed as the daughter of Stephen Hand and Sarah Stratton, but their children are all born between 1661 and1678, too late to be siblings of our Rebecca since she was bearing children between the late 1660s and about 1680. She was widowed in 1671 with children and married our John in 1679. For Rebecca to have been born a Hand, she would have to be Stephen's sister, the daughter of John Hand and Alice Gransden. There is documentary proof that John and Alice had seven sons and two daughters (Alice and Mary), but no Rebecca. She'd have to have been an unrecorded or illegitimate daughter of John Hand.The documentary evidence that Rebecca was the daughter of Thomas Osborne makes this unlikely scenario moot, and it seems at first that we should dismiss the Hand designation altogether. Stillsome facts make this difficult to do. First of all, there was a Rebecca Hand. In 1667 a joint deed of brothers Benjamin,Stephen, and Shamgar Hand (sons of John Hand and Alice Gransden)included a Rebecca Hand as a witness. There are two possibilities for the identity of this woman. Some Hand genealogists have argued that this is Rebecca Stratton Bushnell who is generally accepted to have been the second wife of Stephen Hand. The problem with this suggestion is that she married the Bushnell in 1668 and didn't marry Stephen for another 15 to 20 years. The other possibility is that our own mysterious Rebecca, widow of Roger Smith and wife of John Hopping, had a first marriage to a Hand.The only candidate for such a marriage is John Jr. Hand, son of John Hand and Alice Gransden. A great deal of research by the Hand family has not produced any documentary proof that John Jr.was ever married or had issue, but John Jr. is the only unaccounted for son of John Sr. All of John Jr.'s other brothers have documented marriages and children. There is an undocumented Hand family tradition that John Jr. married Rebecca Stratton Bushnell, but since it has been established that this Rebecca was the second wife of his brother Stephen, this claim has been discounted in Hand publications, and the tradition of a wife named Rebecca dismissed.John Jr. sold his East Hampton property in 1663, moving to Guildford Connecticut. If our Rebecca married him around 1660,she may have been abandoned by him in 1663 without issue, (therei s evidence that divorce based on abandonment were granted on Long Island during that period). She could have remained on good enough terms with the Hand family to have witnessed the deed of his brothers in 1667, still using the name of Rebecca Hand. John Jr. apparently visited East Hampton in 1668, (perhaps to finalize a divorce?). We don't know when Rebecca Osborne m