Hannah (Cotton, Phillips) Dyre was the first born child of Josiah Cotton and his wife, Hannah Sturtevant. She married at the early age of sixteen to Captain Thompson Phillips who was wealthy and more than twice her age. Captain Phillips had immigrated from Jamaica to Plymouth in the early 1720s and sailed his schooners between Jamaica and Plymouth trading in fish, raw materials, finished goods and an occasional slave from the West Indies. On 29 December 1729, Phillips was washed overboard and Hannah was widowed at age twenty. The following year, Hannah married another sea captain named William Dyer and moved to Boston with her young daughter, Hannah Phillips. A year later, she contracted small pox and died. Josiah Cotton lamented in his Memoirs that it is “a sad and gloomy day! When a Person so Young and Strong & amiable was so soon & suddenly taken away… The Other (6) Children that I have lost made some Impression on Me, but nothing like this.” Josiah’s Memoirs contain the following elegy,
Whilst Death his awfull Triumphs spreads around,
And Crowded Nations fill ye vaulted ground,
While every rank, & state, & Sex, & age
Feel his keen Shafts, & sink beneath his rage
Mortals prepare to try ye doubtfull state
To yield the battel & resign to fate
Late has ye Monarch with resistless sway
O Cotton, snatched thy first born child away
Gone, gone forever from thy fond caress
No more her much lovd form thy Eyes must bless
Her Absence still thy rising sighs deplore
And in her converse you delight no more
Touchd by thy woe, the muse her tribute brings
And with grave airs in soothing numbers sings
But sacred is ye Muse by Heaven she’s led
To instruct ye living not, to praise ye dead
Ye living hear her tunefull lips rehearse,
No trifling themes nor in ignoble verse
And now be wise, ye blooming young & fair
See your sad picture, & your period here
How soon ye beauties vanish from your forms
Fall into dust & mingle with the worms!
Beneath the horrors of a lonely tomb
In pensive silence and a solemn gloom
Sleeps that fair form in deaths relentless arms
Whose living face once blush’d with endless charms
But ah! no more her Cheeks ye roses wear
Nor on her lovely lips ye smiles appear
Fixt are those Eyes which once divinely roll’d
The Limbs all stiffened & ye veins all cold
That Voice is fled which charmed mankind before
And that soft snowy breast must pant no more
So from your lips the transient breath shall fly
Pale the fresh cheek, & fixt ye rolling Eye
The charming face & beauteous shape be laid
All pale & breathless in ye awfull shade
To deck your Grave the turf shall bloom around
And ye green grass enamel all the ground
And still ye flowery emblem shall display
The youthfull flourish, & the swift decay
Ah, trust no more, ye fair your fading face
Let bright religion court your warm embrace
To her soft beauties be your love inclined
The Deathless beauties of ye immortal mind
So to new charms your waking dust shall rise
And gay in glory glitter up the Skies
In heavenly tunes with fresh delights shall sing
And bloom & blossom in eternal spring
But you fond parents give your tears away
See ye dark end in everlasting day
See ye fair soul on wings of Angels rise
Above the starry concave of the Skies
Now here, now there she rolls her dazzled sight
Struck at the prospect with immense delight
Her down cast Eyes the fulgid Streets behold
And view a pavement rich with gleaming gold
Aloft ye roof framed by ye Almighty hands
Glorious, on adamantine pillars stands
Here splendid thrones confound the aching Sight
And pour abroad unsufferable light
There in high crowns a beamy lustre plays
The twinkling jewels shoot a trembling blaze
The flowing Robes wave on like lambent flames
And flash & sparkle with Celestial gems
Abroad ye fields display their flowery pride
In whose fair bosoms living waters glide
Here the glad Saint in many raptures roves
Through bowers of bliss, & gay immortal groves
Here Jesus shines unutterably bright
And Storms of Glory beat upon the sight
Here Cotton be thy joyfull Prospects given