Richard Lyman, Jr., Hartford Founder

Compiled by Timothy Lester Jacobs, SDFH Genealogist

RICHARD² LYMAN, JR., HARTFORD FOUNDER (RICHARD¹, HENRY^A) was baptized 24 Feb 1617/18 in High Ongar, Essex, England, and died 03 Jun 1662 in Northampton, MA. He married HEPZIBAH FORD abt. 1642 in Windsor, CT, daughter of THOMAS FORD and ELIZABETH CHARD. She was born bef. 15 May 1625 in Dorchester, Dorsetshire, England, and died 11 Apr 1683 in Northampton, MA.

Richard Lyman, Jr. emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from High Ongar, Essex, England, arriving in November 1631, along with his parents and siblings, taking up residence in Roxbury.

He removed to Hartford with Rev. Hooker’s party in 1636. Richard Lyman, Jr. was aged about 22 in 1639, making him of age to be considered a Founder of Hartford. He lived in his father’s house located on the south side of the road from George Steele’s to the South Meadow. In his father’s will of 22 April 1640 only the house lot and two parcels of land were mentioned, so it is reasonable to assume that only the first three lots cited in the Hartford land inventory of February 1639/40 (not recorded until years later) were his, and the remainder were those of his son Richard, viz: seven acres in the South Meadow; an additional two acres in the South Meadow; and six acres of swamp on the east side of the Great River.

Richard, Jr. was chosen to be a surveyor in Hartford on 27 January 1647.

He removed to Northampton, Massacusetts in 1655, dying there 03 Jun 1662.

Genealogy: “Genealogy of the Lyman Family, in Great Britain and America”, Lyman Coleman, Albany, 1872 (The English ancestry section of this genealogy should be ignored, and the balance of it used with caution, crosschecking data with other sources.)