Joseph Hawley (captain)

Joseph Hawley (1603–1690), may have been born in Parwich, Derbyshire, England, was the first of the Hawley name to come to America in 1629. He settled at Stratford, Connecticut by 1650, becoming the town's first town clerk or record keeper, tavern (ordinary) keeper and a shipbuilder.

The surname of Hawley is one of locality origin, meaning; the one who dwells by the hedged meadow. The Hawley family is of ancient and noble descent, a Lord Hawley being a peer in the reign of King Charles I of England, and members of this family were long seated in the counties of Dorset, Somerset and Derby in England.

The Hawleys were very prominent in the early history of the Colony of Connecticut covering a period of eighty years, members of the family had been seventy times elected to the assembly. They were among the wealthy families of Connecticut and a familiar phrase among the people of Bridgeport, Connecticut used to be: as rich as the Hawleys.

The Hawley Record of 1890 states that Joseph arrived in Boston, Massachusetts around 1629 or 1630 along with Thomas and Robert, who spelled their last name Haule. Thomas and Robert may have been brothers to Joseph or his sons from a first marriage. The Curtiss Genealogy of 1903 states that Hawley sailed to America in the ship Planter in 1635 along with Stratford proprietors Adam Blakeman, William Wilcoxson and William Beardsley. Hawley married his second wife, Katherine Birdseye, in 1646 and moved to Stratford, CT with his young children Samuel and Joseph. The Hawleys raised eight children in Stratford; Samuel, Joseph Jr., Elizabeth, Ebenezer, Hannah, Ephraim, John and Mary. As time passed he became a large landowner and in 1671, stood to be the second highest on the tax list of Stratford. A modest estimate of his holdings would be that he owned 4–5,000 acres. He owned much land in what is now the central business section of Bridgeport.

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