Lydia Ashley

Female

November 19, 1788

August 17, 1853

Sheffield, MA

Roxbury, CT
Hartford, CT
Harlem, NY
New York, NY

Royal Ralph Hinman (1814)

Lydia Ashley Hinman, born in 1788, was the daughter of General John Ashley and Mary Ballantine Ashley of Sheffield, MA, and the granddaughter of Col. John Ashley, from whom Elizabeth Freeman (Mumbet) successfully attained her freedom in Brom and Betts v. Ashley in 1781. Lydia's marriage to Royal Ralph Hinman took place in 1814. Royal attended Yale in 1804, and had attended the Litchfield Law School from 1805 until 1806. During their marriage Royal was a member of the Connecticut General Assembly from 1814 until 1831, held the office of Secretary of State from 1835 until 1842, and was a noted Antiquarian. Lydia and Royal had five children (four daughters and one son). On August 27, 1853 Lydia passed away.

The Historical Society purchased a needlework embroidery believed to have been ...completed by Lydia Ashley Hinman which links her to the Female Academy. Two labels are affixed to the back of the frame. One is extremely faded, but the following can be made out: “Miss______ School, Litchfield, Connecticut.” The name after Miss appears to include the letters i, e, and c (likely Pierce or Pierce’s). The other label gives a history of ownership: “This embroidered picture was left to Charles E. Babcock by his Aunt Mary H. Bond. He loaned it to his Aunt Katharine H. Hamlin as it is her mother’s work. To be returned [to him] any time he may want it.” The Annual Report of the Connecticut Historical Society from 1897 lists a Mrs. Katharine H. Hamlin as the daughter of Royal Ralph Hinman, a student at the Law School in 1806. Hinman also had a daughter named Mary Elizabeth, who married Thomas H. Bond. Hinman’s other daughter, Lydia Ann, married Charles E. Babcock and had a son named Charles H. Babcock. Assuming that the creator of the label mis-remembered Charles Babcock’s middle initial (it would have been Lydia’s son Charles H. Babcock who was left the embroidery, not her husband), the family relations all point to the Hinman family as the original owners. The embroidery would have been completed by Lydia Ashley Hinman. The Historical Society does not currently have a citation of attendance, but she would have attended during the period when extant records are most incomplete. Nine known students from Sheffield, Lydia’s hometown, attended the LFA between 1813 and 1831.
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Unknown

[We are currently working to update and confirm citations of attendance.]

Trowbridge, Francis Bacon. The Ashley Genealogy. 1896.

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of College Hitsory, Vol. 5. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911.