1 [Isaac]

Adam Hart

Adam Hart was born, in Lynnfield, Massachusetts near the North Reading line, on February 4, 1666.  He was the youngest son of Isaac and Elizabeth Hutchinson Hart.

About 1703, Adam married Elizabeth Collson (Colston), born about 1677, in Salem, Massachusetts, and the daughter of Adam and Mary (either Brown or Dastin) Colson of Reading.  Adam Hart was made guardian to Mary Collson.” (Genealogical History of the town of Reading, Mass., by Hon. Lilley Eaton, page 85.).  

Before Governor William Phips returned from a ten-month excursion to Maine, where he was fighting the natives, eight Reading, Massachusetts, women were arrested.  Accused were Sarah Rice, Jane Lilley, Mary Taylor, and Elizabeth Hart.  Also arrested were four other women, all of whom belonged to the same family, lived together, and were either spinsters or widowed: Lydia Dustin (grandmother), Sarah Dustin (spinster daughter), Mary Colson (widowed daughter) and Elizabeth Colson (16-year-old granddaughter).

Robinson's, The Devil Discovered, (1991), pp. 344-345, does a good job of clarifying the family profile: Sarah Dustin was the daughter of the widow Lydia Dustin, who is the one who died in prison in Cambridge on March 10, 1693. Lydia Dustin's daughter, Mary (Dustin) Collson, and granddaughter, Elizabeth Collson, were also among the accused. Note that Robinson claims that Lydia was only in her sixties in 1692, b. 1626 in England, while others claim she was in her 80's.

According to vital records in the area, Adam married a second time.  On September 29, 1725, he married Abigail Deal of Woburn, Massachusetts.  After she died on February 9, 1735, Adam married for the third time.  On October 21, 1735, Adam married Dorcas Brown.

Adam died on September 17, 1745, in Reading, Massachusetts.