|
"Samuel Sewall, Chief Justice of Massachusetts, was born, 28 March,
1652, at Bishopstoke, Hants, England, the son of the Reverend Henry and Jane
(Dummer) Sewall, who had already been for a short season at Newbury, in
Massachusetts, New England.
Henry came back to America in 1659, and Mrs. Sewall, with her little family, returned to Newbury in 1661. Samuel, their
second child, studied at Baddesley and Rumsey in old England, and was fitted
by the minister at Newbury for Harvard, where he graduated in 1671. In a
class of eleven he ranked third in social position. He had a bent for the
ministry; but on marrying, 28 February, 1676, Hannah, daughter of John Hull,
the mint master, he turned for three years to the more lucrative form of
public influence, the printer's press, and then as a merchant rose rapidly
in prosperity and public regard.
It was his misfortune to be associated, in 1692, with the
execution of several persons for
witchcraft, that handiwork of the devil, in which all more or less
believed. But he came to feel that the convictions were based on 'spectral
evidence' (testimony of the bewitched that they suffered through apparitions
of absent persons) evidence not valid in law; he publicly confessed his
regret, and ever after showed repentance by fasting and prayer one day in
each year.
Sewall, although he knew little of law, except as laid
down in the Bible, became judge of probate in 1717, and chief justice of the
Superior Court of Judicature in 1718; he retired from both offices in 1728,
and died at Boston 'at half an hour past five in the morning,’ 1 January,
1730. He had been a member of the Council for thirty-three years, and had
held many other positions of varying importance.
Two literary compositions stand out peculiarly as allied
with his name, a diary of Boston's social, political, and religious life,
from 1674 to 1729, very frank and therefore valuable for a study of the
Puritan mind; and a pamphlet, issued in 1700, and entitled 'The Selling o Joseph,’ in which he discusses and condemns men who ‘hold
their neighbors and brethren under the rigor of perpetual bondage,’ and
says: 'There is no proportion between Twenty Pieces of Silver and LIBERTY.’
By his wife, Hannah, the judge had fourteen children, of
whom Samuel, Elizabeth (wife of Grove Hirst), Reverend Joseph, Mary (wife of
Samuel Gerrish), and Judith (wife of Reverend William Cooper), lived to make
their place in the world. Sewall married, second, 29 October, 1719, Abigail,
daughter of Jacob Melyen, and third, Mary, daughter of Henry Shrimpton. Both
were widows of prominence, and in that day marriage of elderly widowers and widows was
held to be a duty not to be neglected. For this reason he sought comfort in
marriage after each bereavement, and his diary narrates in great detail his
courtships, his rebuffs, and his conquests. But Sewall was an able and
distinguished citizen, too much associated in our minds, it is to be feared,
with social events which played only a minor part in the main current of his
life.
Return to Granary Burying Ground Page
|
