Grace LEWIS

  General Notes:

Thomas Hatch of Barnstable & Some of His Descendants, by Charles Lathrop Pack, page 47:
"A fair formerly held in Biddenden on St. Simon and St. Jude's Day, now on November 8, chiefly for the exhibition of Welsh cattle, may have been the meeting place of Thomas Hatch and his wife Grace, who is said to have been the daughter of a Welsh farmer and to have been skilled in agricultural pursuits. Perhaps she was before marriage Grace Lewis(*) and a second wife.
The story told of her wooing is that, being expert in the use of a sickle, she was assisting with the harvest in her father's field. Two suitors were literally "in the field," and she decreed that her hand should be the award in a trial of skill, each man taking a third to reap and the lady in question taking her third. Was it a matter of chance that the third assigned to Thomas Hatch was next her own? Be that as it may, the story affirms that she cut a little over the line each time at the end of her swath and thus made sure that he would finish first. This tale having been related by a grandson of Thomas Hatch has been handed down through successive generations. "

Grace married Thomas HATCH, son of Arthur HATCH and Margaret Mary MALLET, in 1624-1625 in Biddenden, , Kent, England. (Thomas HATCH was born on 14 Oct 1598 in Biddenden, , Kent, England and died on 21 May 1661 in Barnstable, Barnstable Co, MA.)