JONATHAN SEWALL.

 

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MASSACHUSETTS.

 

The family of Sewall is traced to two brothers, Henry, and William Sewall, both Mayors of Coventry, England, Henry Sewall born about 1544, was a Linen Draper, Alderman of Coventry, Mayor in 1589 and 1606. Died 1628, aged 84. Buried in St. Michael’s Church, Coventry.

Married Margaret, eldest daughter of Avery Grazebrook.

Their son Henry Sewall, emigrated to New England in 1634[1]. He came over “out of dislike to the English Hierarchy[2]” and settled at Newbury. He died at Rowley in 1657, aged 86 years. Married Anne Hunt. They brought with them their son, Henry Sewall[3], born in Coventry, in 1614, died in 1700, aged 86. Married Jane Dummer in Newbury, 1646. He went back to England and resided for some years at Warwick. In 1659 he returned to New England, “his rents at Newbury coming to very little when remitted to England.” His son Stephen was born at Badesly, England, in 1657. He came to New England in 1661, settled at Salem and was a Major in the Indian wars. He died in 1725. Married Margaret, daughter of Rev. Jonathan Mitchell of Cambridge in 1682. They had an only son Jonathan, who was a merchant at Boston. He married Mary, sister of Edward Payne, of Boston. They had a son,

JUDGE JONATHAN SEWALL, the subject of this notice. He was born at Boston in 1728. Graduated at Harvard College in 1748, and was a teacher at Salem till 1756. He married Esther, daughter of Edmund Quincy, Esq.. of Braintree, afterwards of Boston, and sister of Dorothy Quincy, wife of Governor Hancock, and of Elizabeth Quincy, wife of Samuel Sewall, of Boston, the father of Samuel Sewall, Chief Justice of Massachusetts. Jonathan Sewall studied law with Judge Chambers Russell, of Lincoln, commenced practice in his profession at Charlestown. He was an able and successful lawyer. He was Solicitor General, and his eloquence is represented as having been soft, smooth and insinuating, which gave him as much power over a jury as a lawyer ought ever to possess. At the death of Jeremy Gridley, he was appointed Attorney-General of Massachusetts, September, 1767. In 1768 he was appointed Judge of Admiralty for Nova Scotia. He went there twice in that ca­pacity, and remained but a short period.

He was a gentleman and a scholar. He possessed a lively wit, a bril­liant imagination, great subtlety of reasoning and an insinuating elo­quence.

He was an intimate friend of John Adams, they studied together in Judge Russell’s office, and afterwards, while attending court, they lived together, frequently slept in the same chamber, and often in the same bed, and besides the two young men were in constant correspondence.

He attempted to dissuade John Adams from attending the first Con­tinental Congress, and it was in reply to his arguments, and as they walked on the Great Hill at Portland, that Adams used the memorable words, used so often afterwards in 1861 when the ordinance of secession was passed: “The die is now cast, I have now passed the Rubicon; sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country, is my unalterable determination.” They parted, and met no more until 1788. Adams, the Minister of the new republic at the Court of St. James, and the eloquent and gifted Sewall, true to the Empire, met in London, Adams laying aside all etiquette made a visit to his old friend and countryman, he said, “I ordered my servant to announce John Adams, I was instantly admitted, and both of us forgetting that we had ever been enemies, embraced each other as cordially as ever. I had two hours conversation with him in a most delightful freedom, upon a multitude of subjects.” In the course of the interview, Mr. Sewall remarked that he had existed for the sake of his two children, that he had spared no pains or expense in their edu­cation and that he was going to Nova Scotia in hope of making some pro­vision for them.

In 1774, he was an Addresser of Governor Hutchinson, and in September of that year his elegant home in Cambridge (which he rented from John Vassal, afterwards Washington’s head-quarters, since occupied by the poet Longfellow) was attacked by the mob and much injured. He fled to Boston to escape from the fury of the disunionists. He had ably vindicated the characters of Governors Bernard, Hutchinson and Oliver, he was esteemed an able writer, and a staunch loyalist. He was pro­scribed in the Conspirators Act of 1779. He resided chiefly in Bristol till 1788, for the education of his children, then he removed to St. John’s, N. B., having been appointed Judge of Admiralty for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He immediately entered upon the duties of his office, which he held till his death, which occurred September 26, 1796, at the age of sixty-eight. His widow survived him, and removed to Montreal, where she died January 21, 1810.

JONATHAN SEWALL, son of the aforesaid, was born at Cambridge, 1766, was educated at Bristol, England, and afterwards resided at Que­bec, where he occupied the offices of Solicitor and Attorney General and Judge of the Vice Admiralty Court, until r8o8, when he was appointed Chief Justice of Lower Canada, which he resigned in 1838. For many years he was President of the Executive Council, and Speaker of the Leg­islative Council.

In 1832 he received the degree of Doctor of Law from Harvard Col­lege. He died at Quebec in 1840, aged seventy-three. His son Stephen[4] was Solicitor General of the same Province in 1810 and resided in Mon­treal. He died there of Asiatic cholera in the summer of 1832.

SAMUEL SEWALL, son of Henry Sewall and brother of Major Steph­en Sewall, was the first chief justice of Massachusetts. This was the famous Sewall that sat in judgment upon the witches and afterwards repented it, who refused to sell an inch of his broad acres to the hated Episcopalians to build a church upon, who was one of the richest, most astute, sagacious, scholarly, bigoted[5] and influential men of his day, who has left us in his Diary a transcript almost vivid in its conscientious faith­fulness of that old time life, where he tells us of the courts he held, the drams he drank, the sermons he heard, the petty affairs of his own house­hold and neighborhood, and where he advised with the governor touching matters of life and death. He married Hannah, the only child of John Hull, the mintmaster, who it is said gave her, on her marriage, a settle­ment in pine tree shillings equal to her weight. Hull owned a large farm of 350 acres in Longwood, Brookline, which descended to his son-in-law, and was known afterwards as Sewall’s Farm.

Samuel Sewall, son of the aforesaid, married Rebecca Dudley, a daughter of the governor. His son, Henry Sewall, born in 1719, died in 1771, was a gentleman much respected, and a lawyer of prominence. His son,

SAMUEL SEWALL, the subject of this article, was born at Brookline, December 31, 1745. Graduated at Harvard College in 1761. He studied law and settled in Boston. His name occurs among the barristers and attorneys who addressed Governor Hutchinson in 1774, and in the Banishment and Proscription Act in 1778, when his large estate which he had inherited from his ancestors, was confiscated. He went to England, and in 1776 was a member of the Loyalist Club, London. Two years later he was at Sidmouth, a “bathing town of mud walls and thatched roofs.” In 1780 he was living in Bristol, and on the 19th of June amused himself loyally celebrating Clinton’s success at Charleston in the discharge of a two-pounder in a private garden, and three days later was shot at by a highwayman and narrowly escaped with his life. Early in 1782 he was at Taunton, and at Sidmouth. He died at London, after one day’s confinement to his room, May 6th, 1811, aged fifty-six years. He was unmarried.

 

 

LIST OF CONFISCATED ESTATES BELONGING TO SAMUEL SEWALL

IN SUFFOLK COUNTY AND TO WHOM SOLD.

 

To   Edward Kitchen, Wolcott, July 19, 1782; Lib. 135, fol. 113; Land 263 A, 1 qr., in Brookline, Thomas Aspinwall E.; marsh road to Charles River N.E.; Charles River N.; Thomas Gardner and Moses Griggs S. and S.W.; Solomon Hill S. and S.E. ——Land, 16 A. 3 qr., and half of house in Brookline on Sherburn Road and the marsh lane, bounded by Capt. Cook, Samuel Craft and Elisha Gardner.

To   John Heath, Nov. 12, 1782; Lib. 136, fol. 102; Land and buildings in Brookline. 9 A. 33 r., Sherburn Road S.E..; a town way N.E.; Mr. Aker N.W.; a town way S.W.—32 A. 3 r., Daniel White and the pound S.W.; road and Joseph Williams S.E.; Joshua Boylston and William Hyslop N.E.; Sherburn Road N.W.——18 A. 2 qr. 5 r., Samuel White N.W.; John Dean S.W. and S.; a town way S.E.; said Dean N.E.; S. E. and S.; said town way E.; road N.E.—59 A. 3 qr. 4 r., Benjamin White and Dr. Winchester N.E.; Sarah Sharp S.W.; Samuel White and heirs of Justice White S.E.; Benjamin White N.E.; S.E. and N.E.; Sherburn Road N.E.—23 A. 3 qr. 33 r., Ebenezer Crafts and Caleb Gardner N.W.; said Gardner and Benjamin White S.W.; Moses White S.E.; Benjamin White and Moses White N.E.; Moses White S.E.; a town way N.E.—3 A. 28 r., Ebenezer Craft SW.; S.E. and N.E.; the County line N.W.——8 A. 1 qr., 31 r., Daniel White N.W.; the County line S.W.; David Cook S.E.; heirs of Ebenezer Davis N.E.—5 A. 2 qr. 38 r., said Craft N.W.; saw mill meadow W.; William Heath S. and S.E.; Benjamin White and William Hammon N.E.—7 A. 2 qr., 32 r., Edward K. Walcott S. and W.; Benjamin White S.; William Acker S.E.; John Child E.; Charles River N.; Joseph Adams and Daniel White W.—4 A. 26 r., Moses White W., Esquire White, Ebenezer Craft and a creek S.; Nehemiah Davis and heirs of Caleb Denny S.E.; the marsh road N.

To   John Molineux, William Moilneux, Aug. 11, 1783; Lib. 139, fol. 153; Land and buildings in Boston, Newbury St. W.; Daniel Crosby, John Solely and heirs of Benjamin Church deceased S.; land late of Frederick William Geyer E.; Thomas Fair-weather, Sampson Reed, John Homands and Edward Hollowday N.; said Sewall W.; N.; W. and N.

To   John McLane, Dec. 18, 1783; Lib. 140, fol. 207; Land and buildings in Boston, Newbury St. W.; said Sewall S.; E.; S. and E.; Edward Hollowday N.

 

 

THOMAS ROBIE.

 

William and Elizabeth Robie were inhabitants of Boston as early as 1689, when their son Thomas was born on March 20th of that year. He graduated at Harvard College in 1708, and died in 1729. He was tutor, librarian, and Fellow of the college. Be published an account of a remarkble eclipse of the sun on Nov. 27, 1772, also in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, papers on the Alkaline Salts, and the Venom of Spiders (1720-24). The following extract from the diary of President Leverett shows the estimation in which he was held. “It ought to be remembered that Mr. Robie was no small honor to Harvard Col­lege by his mathematical performances, and by his correspondence there­upon with Mr. Durham and other learned persons in those studies abroad.” In mathematics and natural philosophy he was said to have no equal in New England.

His mother was Elizabeth Taylor, daughter of James Taylor, long treasurer of the Province. He went to Salem and established himself in the practice of physic, and married a daughter of Major Stephen Sewall.

THOMAS ROBIE, of Marblehead, was a son of the preceding Dr. Robie. He was a merchant, and married a daughter of the Rev. Simon Bradstreet, who was the great grandson of Gov. Bradstreet, called the Nestor of New England. Mr. Robie was a staunch loyalist, was an Addresser of Gov. Hutchinson, and thus brought upon himself and family the ire of the Revolutionists. They were obliged to leave the town and take refuge in Nova Scotia. Crowds of people collected on the wharf to witness their departure, and many irritating and insulting remarks were addressed to them concerning their Tory principles, and their conduct towards the Whigs. Provoked beyond endurance by these insulting taunts, Mrs. Robie retorted, as she seated herself in the boat that was to convey her to the ship: “I hope that I shall live to return, find this wicked rebellion crushed and see the streets of Marblehead run with rebel blood.” The effect of this remark was electrical among the Revolutionists and only her sex prevented them from doing her person injury. But there were other loyalists in Marblehead who, if not so demonstrative, were not less sincere in this opinion. With fortitude and silence they bore the taunts and insults to which they were subjected, honestly believing that their friends and neighbors were engaged in a treasonable rebellion against their lawful sovereign.

Mr. Robie first went to Halifax, but afterwards to London, Feb. 5, 1776. He passed his time of exile mostly in Halifax, where one of his daughters married Jonathan Stearns, Esq., another refugee; another was married to Joseph Sewall, Esq., late treasurer of Massachusetts.

After the war was over some of the refugees attempted to return to their former homes. During the month of April, 1783, the town was thrown into a state of the greatest excitement by the return of Stephen Blaney, one of the loyalists. Rumors were prevalent that other refugees were also about to return, and on April 24 a town meeting was held, when it was voted that “All refugees who made their appearance in town were to be given six hours notice to leave, and any who remained beyond that time were to be taken into custody and shipped to the nearest port of Great Britain.” Late one afternoon after this action of the town a vessel from the provinces arrived in the harbor. It was soon ascertained that the detested Robie family were on board, and, as the news spread through the town, the wharves were crowded with angry people, threatening vengeance upon them if they attempted to land. The dreadful wish uttered by Mrs. Robie at her departure still rankled in the minds of the people and they determined to give the Robies a significant reception. So great was the excitement that it was feared by many of the influential citizens that the unfortunate exiles might be injured and perhaps lose their lives at the hands of the infuriated populace. During the night, however, a party of gentlemen went on board of the schooner and removed them to a place of safety. They were landed in a distant part of the town and secreted for several days in a house belonging to one of the gentlemen. In the meantime urgent appeals were made to the magnaminity of the turbulent populace, and the excitement subsided.

Mr. Robie went into business again in a limited extent, and died at Salem about 1812, well esteemed and respected. The large brick mansion house of Thomas Robie is situated on Washington street, near the head of Darling street, Marblehead.

SAMUEL BRADSTREET ROBIE, son of the above, of Halifax, was appointed solicitor-general of Nova Scotia in 1815, speaker of the house of of assembly in 1817, 1819-20, member of the council in 1824, and master of the rolls in 1825, and died at that city January, 1858, in his eighty-eighth year.

 

SAMUEL QUINCY

SOLICITOR GENERAL

 

Edmund Quincy, the first of the name in New England, landed at Boston on the 4th of September, 1633. He came from Achurch in Northamptonshire, where he owned some landed estate. That he was a man of substance may be inferred from his bringing six servants with him, and that he was a man of weight among the founders of the new commonwealth appears from his election as a representative of the town of Boston in the first General Court ever held in Massachusetts Bay. He was also the first named on the committee appointed by the town to assess and raise the sum necessary to extinguish the title of Mr. Blackstone to the peninsula on which the city stands. He bought of Chickatabut, Sachem of the Massachusetts tribe of Indians, a tract of land at Mount Wollaston, confirmed to him by the Town of Boston, 1636, a portion of which is yet in the family.

Edmund Quincy died the year after making this purchase, in 1637, at the age of 33. He left a son Edmund and a daughter Judith. The son lived, in the main, a private life on the estate in Braintree. He was a magistrate and a representative of his town in the General Court, and Lieutenant-Colonel of the Suffolk Regiment.

Point Judith was named after his daughter. She married John Hull, who, when Massachusetts Bay assumed the prerogative of coining money, was her mint-master, and made a large fortune in the office, before Charles II put a stop to that infringement of the charter. There is a tradition that, when he married his daughter to Samuel Sewall, afterwards Chief Justice, he gave her for her dowry, her weight in pine-tree shillings. From this marriage has sprung the eminent family of the Sewalls, which has given three Chief Justices to Massachusetts[6] and one to Canada[7], and has been distinguished in every generation by the talents and virtues of its members.

Lieutenant-Colonel Quincy, who was a child when brought to New England, died in 1698, aged seventy years, having had two sons, Daniel and Edmund.

Daniel died during his father’s lifetime, leaving an only son John, who graduated at Cambridge in 1708, and was a prominent public man in the Colony for nearly half a century. He was a Councillor, and for many years Speaker of the Lower House.

He died in 1767, at the time of the birth of his great-grandson, John Quincy Adams, who therefore received the name which he has made illustrious. Edmund, the second son, graduated in 1699, and was also in the public service almost all his life, as a magistrate, a Councillor, and one of the Justices of the Supreme Court. He was also colonel of the Suffolk Regiment, at that time a very important command, since the coun ty of Suffolk then, and long after, included what is now County of Nor folk, as well as the town of Boston. In 1737, the General Court selected him as their agent to lay the claims of the Colony before the home government, in the matter of the disputed boundary between Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire.

He died, however, very soon after his arrival in London, February 23, 1737, of the smallpox, which he had taken by inoculation. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, where a monument was erected to him by the General Court, which also made a grant of land of a thousand acres in the town of Lennox to his family, in further recognition of his public services.

Judge Edmund Quincy had two sons, Edmund and Josiah.

The first named, who graduated at Cambridge in 1722, lived a private life at Braintree and in Boston.

One of his daughters married John Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards Governor of Massachusetts. Josiah was born in 1709, and took his first degree in 1728. He accompanied his father to London in 1737, and afterwards visited England and the Continent more than once.

For some years he was engaged in commerce and ship-building in Boston, and when about forty years of age he retired from business and removed to Braintree, where he lived for thirty years the life of a country gentleman, occupying himself with the duties of a county magistrate, and amusing himself with field sports. Game of all sorts abounded, in those days in the woods and along the shore, and marvellous stories have come down, by tradition, of his feats with gun and rod. He was Colonel of the Suffolk Regiment, as his father had been before him; he was also Commissioner to Pennsylvania during the old French war to ask the help of that Colony in an attack which Massachusetts Bay had planned upon Crown Point. He succeeded in his mission by the help of Doctor Franklin.

Colonel Josiah Quincy, by his first marriage, had three sons, Edmund, Samuel, Josiah, and one daughter, Hannah. His first wife was Hannah Sturgis, daughter of Johns Sturgis, one of his Majesty’s Council, of Yarmouth. His eldest son, Edmund, graduated in 1752, after which he became a merchant in Boston. He was in England in 1760 for the purpose of establishing mercantile correspondences. He died at sea in 1768, on his return from a voyage for his health to the West Indies.

The youngest son of Colonel Josiah Quincy bore his name, and was therefore known to his contemporaries, and takes his place in history, as Josiah Quincy, Junior, he having died before his father, he was born February 23, 1744, and graduated at Harvard College, 1763. He studied law with Oxenbridge Thacher, one of the principal lawyers of that day, and succeeded to his practice at his death, which took place about the time he himself was called to the bar. He took a high rank at once in his profession, although his attention to its demands was continually interrupted by the stormy agitation in men’s minds and passions, which preceded and announced the Revolution, and which he actively promoted by his writings and public speeches. On the 5th of March, the day of the so called “Boston Massacre” he was selected, together with John Adams, by Captain Preston, who was accused of having given the word of command to the soldiers that fired on the mob, to conduct his defence and that of his men, they having been committed for trial for murder. At tha moment of fierce excitement, it demanded personal and moral courage to perform this duty. His own father wrote him a letter of stern an strong remonstrance against his undertaking the defence of “those criminals charged with the murder of their fellow citizens,” exclaiming, with, passionate emphasis “Good God Is it possible? I wilt not believe it!”

Mr. Quincy in his reply, reminded his father of the obligations his professional oath laid him under, to give legal counsel and assistance to those accused of a crime, but not proved to be guilty of it; adding: “I dare affirm that you and this whole people will one day rejoice that I be came an advocate for the aforesaid criminals, charged with the mur der of our fellow citizens. To inquire my duty and to do it, is my aim.” He did his duty and his prophecy soon came to pass.

There is no more honorable passage in the history of New Engand than the one which records the trial and acquittal of Captain Preston and his men, in the midst of the passionate excitements of that time, by a jury of the town maddened to a rage but a few months before by the blood of her citizens shed in her streets.

In 1774 he went to England, partly for his health, which had suffered much from his intense professional and political activities, and also as a confidential agent of the Revolutionary party to consult and advise with the friends of America there. His presence in London coming as he did at a most critical moment excited the notice of the ministerial party, as well as of the opposition. The Earl of Hillsborough denounced him, together with Dr. Franklin, in the House of Lords, “as men walking the streets of London who ought to be in Newgate or Tyburn.” The precise results of his communications with the English Whigs can never be known. They were important enough, however, to make his English friends urgent for his immediate return to America, because he could give information which could not safely be committed to writing. His health had failed seriously during the latter months of his residence in England, and his physicians strongly advised against his taking a winter voyage.

His sense of public duty, however, overbore all personal considera tions, and he set sail on the 16th of March, 1775, and died off Gloucester, Massachusetts, on the 20th of April.

The citizens of Gloucester buried him with all honor in their graveyard; after the siege of Boston, he was removed and placed in a vault in the burying ground in Braintree. Josiah Quincy was barely thirty-one years of age when he thus died.

His father, Colonel Quincy lived on at Braintree during the whole of the war. He died on March 3rd, 1784.

His passion for field sports remained in full force till the end, for his death was occasioned by exposure to the winter’s cold, sitting upon a cake of ice, watching for wild ducks, when he was in his seventy-fifth year.

SAMUEL QUINCY, the subject of this memoir, was the second son of Colonel Josiah Quincy, and the brother of Josiah, Junior, and Edmund. He was born in that part of Braintree now Quincy. April 23, 1735. He graduated at Harvard College in 1754, and studied law with Benjamin Pratt.

Endowed with fine talents, Mr. Quincy became eminent in the profession of the law, and succeeded Jonathan Sewall as Solicitor-General of Massachusetts. He was the intimate friend of many of the most distinguished men of that period, among whom was John Adams. They were admitted to the bar on the same day, Nov. 6, 1758.

As Solicitor for the Crown, he was engaged with Robert Treat Paine in the memorable trial of Capt. Preston, and the soldiers in 1770; his brother was opposed to him on that occasion, and both reversed their party sympathies in their professional position. It was plain to all sagacious observers of the signs of the times, that the storm of civil war was gathering fast; and it was sure first to burst over Boston. It was a time of stern agitation, and profound anxieties. In their emotion Mr. Quincy and his wife shared deeply, and passionately. The shadows of public and private calamity were already beginning to steal over that once happy home. The evils of the present and the uncertainties of the future bore heavily on their prosperity. The fierce passions which were soon to break out into revolutionary violence and mob rule, had already begun to separate families, to divide friends, and to break up society. Samuel Quincy was a Loyalist and remained true to his oath of office, wherein he swore to support the government. His father and brother were revolutionists; as previously stated his brother died on shipboard off Gloucester, seven days after the hostilities had commenced at Lexington, and when his father saw from his house on Quincy Bay, the fleet drop down the harbor, after the evacuation of Boston on March 17, I776, it must have been with feelings of sorrow that the stout hearted old man saw the vessels bear away his only surviving son, never to return again[8]. Such partings were common griefs then, as ever in civil wars, the bitterest perhaps that wait upon that cruelest of calamities.

Samuel Quincy was an addressor of Governor Hutchinson, and a staunch Loyalist. His wife, the sister of Henry Hill, Esq., of Boston, was not pleased with her husband’s course in the politics of the times, and he became a Loyalist against her advice, and when he left Boston, a refugee, she preferred to remain with her brother, and never met her husband again. The following letter written to his brother by Mr. Quincy, during the siege of Boston, will explain his position at that time.

Samuel Quincy was appointed comptroller of the customs in Antigua in 1779.  His wife died in 1782, and he married again while in Antigua to Mrs. M.A. Chadwell, widow of {Hon.} Abraham Chadwell.  In 1789, Mr. Quincy embarked for England, accompanied by his wife. The restoration of his health was the object of the voyage, but the effort was unsuccessful; he died at sea, within sight of the English coast. His remains were carried to England, and interred on Bristol hill. His widow immediately reem barked for the West Indies, but her voyage was tempestuous. Grief for the loss of her husband, to whom she was strongly attached, and suffering from the storm her vessel encountered, terminated her life on her homeward passage.

It was a singular coincidence that two of Mr. Quincy’s brothers died at sea, as he did on shipboard, Edmund, the eldest and Josiah, the youngest brother.

Samuel Quincy had two sons: Samuel, a graduate of Harvard College in 1782, who was an attorney-at-law in Lenox, Mass., where he died in January, 1816, leaving a son Samuel. His second son, Josiah, became an eminent counselor-at-law of Romney, N. H., and President of the Senate of that State.

Mr. Samuel Quincy was proscribed and banished and his property confiscated.

 

Samuel Quincy, Solicitor General of Massachusetts.

Born at Braintree, Massachusetts April 23, 1735.  Died at sea in 1789.

 



[1] Henry Sewall (1576 – 1657) emigrated to New England in 1637.  He joined his son at Newbury, Massachusetts.

[2]  Henry’s dislikes were both political and religious.  Sir Hector Livingston Duff wrote:  “It was during the lifetime of this Henry Sewall that the oppressions and extractions of Charles I reached their maximum, and, unfortunately for Henry, he belonged to precisely that rank of society which had then the most to fear from the rapacity of kings; in other words, he was too wealthy to escape the attention of the royal tax-gatherers, yet, at the same time, without sufficient influence at Court to protest against their depredations with any hope of success.  That he was unmercifully plundered we may be fairly sure, yet it was not alone the pecuniary sacrifices he had to endure that distressed and exasperated him.  Like all his family he was passionately attached to those principles of civil and religious freedom which the Stuarts so consistantly violated.” (Sir Hector Livingson Duff:  The Sewells in the New World, Exeter, 1924, p. 15)

[3] {Rev} Henry Sewall (1614 – 1700) emigrated to New England in 1634.  His father joined him in 1637.

[4] Stephen was Jonathan’s brother.

[5] It is entirely misleading and false to label , Judge Samuel Sewall him as “one of the ... most ... bigoted ... men of his day”.  Samuel was one of the most tolerant and open-minded persons in his community.  In 1700, Judge Samuel Sewall single-handedly laid the foundations for later social reform by publishing the first anti-slavery tract in what was to become the United States.

[6] Chief Justice Samuel Sewall (1757 – 1814), Chief Justice of Massachusetts was a great grandson of {Judge} Samuel Sewall and Hannah Hull.  However, the two other Chief Justices of Massachusetts, Mitchell Sewall (1699 – 1748) and his brother Stephen Sewall (1702 – 1760) were sons of {Major} Stephen Sewall and Margaret Mitchell.  {Major} Stephen Sewall and {Judge} Samuel Sewall were brothers.

[7] Chief Justice Jonathan Sewall III of Quebec (1766 – 1839) was a great grandson of {Major} Stephen Sewall, and was not descended from {Judge} Samuel Sewall.

[8] In a letter dated “London, May 25, 1779” Samuel Quincy wrote:  “It is this day four years since I left Boston, . . .” and in a letter dated “Anigua, Feb. 1, 1782 he wrote:  “. . . in the year 1775, just after the bottle of Lexington, I quitted America for London . . .”  Thus, it appears that Samuel Quincy left Boston, never to return, on May 25, 1775, and not on March 17, 1776 as indicated here.