52 Ancestors 2026: The Ancestor Who Stays With Me – Susannah Shattuck and Her Puritan Life

 

My family timeline is populated by many unforgettable ancestors, but I keep returning to my 8th- or 9th-great-grandmother, Susannah Shattuck. There are so many facets of her life that illuminate both New England history and my own family story.

Susannah was the daughter of William Shattuck, who emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s or early 1640s (some of the dates remain uncertain). William established himself in Watertown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and over time the Shattuck family became part of the circle later known as the Boston Brahmins. Many of William’s descendants were physicians affiliated with Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. One of the family’s greatest contributions to public health, however, came not from a physician but from his 3rd-great-grandson, Lemuel Shattuck. A businessman, politician, historian, and researcher, Lemuel’s interest in accurate records and vital statistics led him to help found both the New England Historic Genealogical Society and the American Statistical Association. He also helped reshape the 1850 U.S. Census and authored a landmark sanitary survey of Massachusetts that contributed to major public health reforms.

For me, though, it is the life of my direct ancestor Susannah that remains most compelling. I have written about her before while exploring the biblical and virtue names favored by Puritan families, but there is much more to her story.

Susannah was the oldest child of William and his wife, also named Susanna, and was born around 1643. By the time she married in 1661, at about eighteen years of age, she had helped raise eight younger siblings—experience that would serve her well throughout her life. She married Joseph Morse, who lived on an adjacent property and was about six years older. They wasted little time starting a family, with their first child, Susanna, arriving about nine months after their marriage.

Their family grew steadily, with six children born at intervals of two or three years. Two things stand out. First, all of the children survived into the eighteenth century. Second, they bore the biblical names typical of the period: Susanna, Hester, Joseph, Samuel, Mary, and Hannah.

Joseph was not as fortunate. He died in 1677 at the age of forty, leaving thirty-four-year-old Susannah with children ranging in age from fifteen to three.

In an era when mortality was a fact of life and life insurance did not exist, widows and widowers often relied on family, community, and remarriage. Susannah was no exception. In 1678, just a year after Joseph’s death, she married John Fay, a widower five years her junior. John’s first wife, Mary Brigham, had died two years earlier at the age of twenty-seven, leaving three surviving children.

The oldest Morse daughters, Susanna and Hester, undoubtedly helped care for their younger siblings and step-siblings. Over the next eight years, Susannah and John expanded their household with four more children: sons David and Gershom, followed by daughters Ruth and Deliverance. Three more biblical names—and one virtue name.

When Deliverance was born, Susannah was about forty-three years old. The name may have reflected the Puritans’ sense of deliverance to a land where they could freely practice their faith—or perhaps Susannah’s own deliverance from childbearing.

Sadly, the couple’s happiness was short-lived. In 1690, only four years after Deliverance’s birth, John died at the age of forty-two. Once again, Susannah found herself responsible for a large and complicated household. Her unmarried daughters Mary and Hannah Morse, along with her stepdaughter Mary Fay, likely helped raise their younger siblings and half-siblings. It was truly a blended family.

For five years Susannah managed on her own, supported by family and community. Then, in 1695, she found companionship once more. Thomas Brigham, brother of John Fay’s first wife, had recently lost his own wife, Mary Rice, who died in May 1695 after bearing ten children, seven of whom survived. Thomas’s widowhood was brief; just two months later he married Susannah.

Once again, Susannah embraced the challenge of helping raise a large household of children. By this time, her youngest daughters, Ruth and Deliverance Fay, were old enough to assist. Susannah and Thomas had no children together, and eventually they experienced what might be called their empty-nest years.

Susannah died in 1717 at approximately seventy-four years of age. Thomas followed eight months later at age seventy-six. Together they had witnessed the transformation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from a struggling settlement into an established society.

Readers may notice that I describe Susannah as either my 8th- or 9th-great-grandmother. That uncertainty is not due to missing records but rather to pedigree convergence. The lines of two of her children eventually merged. A daughter from her first marriage, Hester Morse, is my 8th-great-grandmother, while a son from her second marriage, David Fay, is my 7th-great-grandfather.

Nor was this the family’s only convergence. The final blended household produced another connection when Mary Fay, Susannah’s stepdaughter, married her first cousin Jonathan Brigham. Meanwhile, Susannah’s daughter Deliverance Fay married her second cousin Jonathan Shattuck.

It appears that all of Susannah’s children survived into the eighteenth century. Given the relatively close spacing of the births, could these have been her only children? Did the family enjoy remarkable luck, exceptional health, or enough economic security to avoid some of the hardships faced by their neighbors? We cannot know for certain.

What I do know is that Susannah’s story stays with me. Learning about life helps transform the Puritans from historical caricatures—often portrayed as stern and joyless—into real people who loved, married, grieved, blended families, and persevered through life's many challenges. She almost sounds like one of us.

Picture: 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Puritan, 1899, Art Institute of Chicago

52 Ancestors 2026: A Big Decision – A Common Theme

 

Many of my ancestors made big decisions that led to major changes for their families and for the generations that followed. Their fates were intertwined with the history of our land—from a collection of colonies to a nation—as they contended with the forces that shape history. During our wars of independence and civil conflict, they had to choose sides. Many, like Peter Cossart and Christian Fast, fought for the Patriot cause during the American Revolution. Later, during the Civil War era, decisions were perhaps more personal, with some choosing to fight in the Union Army and others sympathizing with the Confederate cause.

Migration was another defining theme. My immigrant ancestors who arrived in colonial days settled close to the coast, but their descendants moved inland, becoming pioneers who walked the Wilderness Road or traveled the Oregon Trail. Even earlier, they had made the difficult decision to leave their European homelands and sail to the New World—most never seeing again those they left behind.

One common thread linking many of my ancestors was religious conviction. They chose to break with established churches and join the Reformed Protestant movement led by John Calvin (in French, Jehan Cauvin). These believers sought to emulate the early Christian church by rejecting what they saw as traditions accumulated over centuries. Viewing humanity as fundamentally sinful, they distrusted hierarchical authority—whether exercised by princes and kings or by bishops and popes. Unsurprisingly, this movement drew the ire of the established order, and these so-called “heretics” and “traitors” often faced persecution and even death.

In France, Huguenots were driven from their ancestral lands, fleeing to territories controlled by Protestant princes along the Rhine or to the Dutch Republic (Netherlands), which had embraced Reformed Protestantism after separating from the Spanish crown and the Holy Roman Empire. (As an interesting side note, the familiar hymn “We Gather Together” originally celebrated the Dutch victory over Spainish forces in the Battle of Turnhout, not a Thanksgiving feast.) Likewise, French Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) sought refuge in the Dutch Republic.

In England, cracks appeared in the façade of the Church of England, accompanied by persistent fears of creeping Catholic influence promoted by certain royals. Reformed Protestants organized themselves in Congregationalist (Puritan) and Presbyterian (Scottish and Scots-Irish) forms of church governance, with authority resting in local congregations or elected elders.

What did this turmoil mean for my faithful Reformed Protestant who faced persecution by church and state? Staying put was possible, but rarely wise. Refuge in the Netherlands or German states offered safety, yet assimilation remained a risk. For many of them, the New World offered a more hopeful solution. Pilgrim Separatists established Plymouth Colony, while English Puritans founded Massachusetts Bay. There, they attempted to build what they believed was a just society—though fears of losing their special covenant led to episodes such as the expulsion of Anne Hutchinson and the Salem witch trials. 

Huguenots from France and the Spanish Netherlands found common ground with Dutch co-religionists and migrated to New Amsterdam, helping to establish a colony that was less austere but more commercially focused. The search for refuge did not end there. My Quaker ancestors settled in Pennsylvania, seeking religious freedom. Scots-Irish and German settlers also made their way to Pennsylvania, making their way into the Appalachian Mountains. 

In the young republic, some of the descendants of these immigrant ancestors participated in the fervor of the Second Great Awakening, with some even joining new movements such as the Shaker communities emerging across the nation.

Religious conviction was thus a powerful force in the colonial experience. One could argue that their suspicion of aristocratic and royal hierarchies contributed to the spirit that fueled the American Revolution, and that their reformist zeal inspired movements ranging from public education to abolitionism. I sometimes wonder whether my own attraction to nonconformity and the pursuit of higher ideals is a trait passed down through the generations since my refugee ancestors first found their way to these shores.

Picture: Anonymous (France), John Calvin, www.catharijneconvent.nl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82311289

52 Ancestors 2026: A Breakthrough Moment – Off to a Good Start

My first breakthrough moment came soon after I began my genealogical journey of discovery, probably during my first visit to the local Family History Center. A volunteer helped me navigate their computer system, introducing me to the records available through the International Genealogical Index (IGI—rich with records) and the Ancestral File (AF—filled with compiled family trees).

At the time, I had a book on the Fast family line and began exploring maternal lines that were poorly documented. A few searches led to dead ends—at least initially—but eventually I found a promising match for my third-great-grandmother, Hannah Robbins Day. She was described as “a native of New York,” with parents, Samuel and Hannah (Robbins) Day, who were natives of Vermont and Massachusetts. One published history described her pedigree as being from “New England stock.”

This was not just a name match—she was listed with the correct husband, John Jay Fast—and her information appeared in the Ancestral File. Suddenly, generations of New England ancestors emerged. Having New England roots often means access to well-researched lines, and this discovery led to one revelation after another. These ancestors were part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: the Puritans, famous—or infamous—for their deeply Reformed Protestant faith, their failed attempt to reform the Church of England, and their determination to establish what they hoped would be a “City on a Hill” in the New World. Names such as Fay, Joslin, Larkin, Cleveland, Morse, Hale, and Shattuck suddenly tumbled out of my family tree.

Many of these New England lives are preserved not only in family genealogies but also in broader American histories, including figures such as John Hale of Salem witch trial fame. I also found evidence of their religious convictions in the names they gave their children. Over time, I began to see my ancestors in a new light. The Puritans are often viewed through a narrow stereotype, yet New England also gave rise to public education and to revolutionary and reform movements. My own family became part of the westward migration across the Midwest, linking these early settlers to later chapters of American history.

Today, with the rise of the internet and shared FamilySearch trees, discoveries like this can be just a few clicks away. Thirty years ago, however, it required digging through libraries and records—though even that was an improvement over road trips and writing letters to churches and courthouses. It will be nice to experience more breakthroughs, but having one so early in my research journey was truly inspirational. 

52 Ancestors 2025: Earliest Ancestor, or What Do April Showers Bring?

 

According to 23andMe, my earliest ancestors were in Africa—hunting, gathering, and surviving long enough to produce many, many generations. Over time, their descendants moved to northwest Europe and eventually crossed the Atlantic to the New World. As for named ancestors, one family researcher traced the des Marets (Demarest) line back to a 10th-century count and various Crusaders. But according to a post on a genealogy bulletin board, the hired genealogist may have followed a tenuous link to satisfy eager clients. So, rather than chase medieval nobility, I decided to focus on the earliest immigrant ancestor I could verify, and that search led somewhere more fruitful.

I already knew about Joris Rapelje, who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1624 with the earliest Dutch/Huguenot settlers, and I was familiar with several Puritan ancestors who came in the 1630s. But could some of the hints in the FamilySearch tree pointing to even earlier immigrants be accurate? It was time to trust—but verify.

In researching my Oregon Trail ancestor, Jairus Abijah Bonney Jr., I found a published genealogy that extended four generations beyond him. Since Jairus came from New England, I hoped to benefit from the region’s well-kept church and civil records. The line led to Jairus Abijah Bonney Sr., a Revolutionary War patriot, then to his father, Perez Bonney, and finally back to Perez’s grandfather, the immigrant Thomas Bonney. Born around 1604 in England, Thomas came to Massachusetts aboard the Hercules in 1634 and eventually settled in Duxbury.

Perez Bonney, born March 10, 1709, was one of the family’s early chroniclers; however, there’s some confusion in his account about how many American generations preceded him. So I turned to the lineage of his wife, Ruth Snow. Ruth was the daughter of James Snow and Ruth Shaw. James’s parents, Joseph Snow and Hopestill Alden, caught my attention. Joseph was the son of William Snow (born in England in 1627 and brought to the colonies as an 11-year-old indentured servant) and Rebecca Brown, who was born in Plymouth Colony in 1631. That name sounded promising. And indeed: Rebecca’s father was Peter Browne—a Mayflower passenger. As far as I can tell, he’s my earliest confirmed immigrant ancestor. Not bad!

But the name Alden rang another bell. Could there be more Mayflower connections? Sure enough, Hopestill Alden descended from one of the most well-known and prolific families in Plymouth Colony. Her father, Joseph Alden, was born in 1627 in Plymouth and was the son of none other than John Alden and Priscilla Mullins—both Mayflower passengers.

John Alden, made famous by his descendant (and my cousin) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was a cooper by trade. Whether or not he served as a messenger for Myles Standish is up for debate, but his role in the colony was significant. He arrived on the Mayflower as part of the crew but chose to stay, signing the Mayflower Compact rather than returning to England. He went on to hold several elected offices and was the last surviving signer of the Compact.

Priscilla Mullins had her own story of resilience. During the harsh winter of 1620–1621, she lost her parents and brother when she was about 18 years old. Despite this, she persevered and eventually married John Alden. Together, they had ten surviving children and many, many descendants and are my 10th-great-grandparents.

Much has been written about these early settlers. The ideals behind the Mayflower Compact, and the romanticized image of the first Thanksgiving (thanks in large part to Longfellow), still echo in our culture today. When I first began researching my family’s history in the late 1990s, I had a breakthrough with the lineage of Hannah Robbins Day, wife of John Jay Fast. Unlike many maternal lines, Hannah’s ancestry extended many generations into the early Massachusetts Bay Colony, linking me to several prominent New England families.

More recently, I discovered that the wife of Hannah’s son, William Marion Fast, also had deep New England roots. William married Louisa Jane Bolon in 1862, and her maternal line revealed even more connections to Plymouth Colony and the Mayflower. Another line in this side that was revealed is that of John Bigelow, who was reported to have sailed in the Winthrop fleet of Puritans that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

A common theme among these New England ancestors is that they became farmers and gradually moved west after the American Revolution. Like many others, they followed familiar migration routes into Ohio, Illinois, and eventually Missouri. They were farmers and part of the fabric of their communities, but their American and New England roots ran deep.

Photo: Unknown author - https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/nby_teich/id/21342, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67029417

52 Ancestors 2025: Favorite Name, or, “What’s in a Name, Anyway?” Puritan Style

 

It’s hard to pick a single favorite name in the family tree, though I’ve always found it interesting how often the name “David” appears throughout our history. As I explored my New England lines, I was drawn to some of the more unusual names that emerged—names like Hepzibah and Deliverance. That led me to dig a little deeper into several generations of colonial ancestors from Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

My New England ancestors were Pilgrims and Puritans, that is, English Reformed Protestants who emigrated from England seeking religious freedom. As followers of John Calvin, they emphasized Biblical scholarship and literacy, and naming children was a serious matter. They often chose names straight from scripture, hoping their children would live up to the virtues of Biblical prophets and leaders. A child named David, for instance, had big shoes to fill. They also favored virtue names like Faith and Hope, which are still seen today. Names associated with saints or those with Latin or Germanic roots, more common in Catholic or Anglican traditions, were typically avoided, as they clashed with the Puritan ethos (but that’s a theological rabbit hole for another time).

Let’s start with my family—the children of Edward Fay and Sarah Joslin (birth years in parentheses). Their children, born in the mid-18th century, reflect a blend of traditional Puritan and evolving naming trends. Among the more Biblical names: Hepzibah (1740), Sarah (1742), Israel (1744), Abijah (1748), Joanna (1749), Eunice (1751), Nathan (1757), Elijah (1759), David (1761), and Solomon (1764). But there are also outliers like Luther (1745) and Edward (1747), which may suggest shifting preferences or family influences.

The mother in the family above, Sarah Joslin, my 6th-great-grandmother who was born in 1721, appears to come from a particularly pious background. Her parents, Israel Joslin and Sarah Cleveland, gave their children names that ranged from scriptural to aspirational. Among her siblings: Elizabeth (1723), Martha (1732), Nathaniel (1726), and Israel (1735/36). But four daughters carried virtue names: Patience (1720), Submit (1729), Thankful (1739), and another Patience (1740/41). That second Patience was likely named in memory of the first, who died young—a common 18th-century practice. Interestingly, the second Patience was born just four months after her father’s death. Perhaps her mother saw the child as both a legacy and a symbol of continuity.

Now let’s turn to another Puritan woman who has long intrigued me: Susannah Shattuck, who was born in 1643 and was the daughter of William Shattuck, one of my immigrant ancestors. Around 1661, she married Joseph Morse, whose father (also Joseph) had arrived in New England in 1634. Susannah and Joseph had seven children: Susanna (1663), Hester (1664), Joseph (1667), Samuel (1670), Mary (1672), Hannah (1674), and Jonathan (1675/76). Sadly, Joseph died in 1677, leaving Susannah a widow with young children.

She later married John Fay, another widower and a few years her junior. He brought four children of his own—John (1669), David (1671), Samuel (1673), and Mary (1675)—from his marriage to Mary Brigham, who had died in 1676. Together, John and Susannah had four more children: David (1679), Gershom (1681), Ruth (1684), and Deliverance (1686). When John died in 1690, Susannah, still relatively young, had raised a blended family of over a dozen children. She eventually married once more, to widower Thomas Brigham, the older brother of John Fay's first wife, Mary Brigham, and the couple lived to old age.

What makes Susannah remarkable—beyond raising this large, blended family and having three husbands—is that she’s both my 8th- and 9th-great-grandmother. Her Morse and Fay descendants later intermarried, bringing both lines back together.

Looking at her children’s names, we see a strong preference for Biblical choices—until the final child, Deliverance, a classic Puritan virtue name. “Deliverance” reflects the Biblical yearning for freedom from bondage, a theme that resonated with the persecuted English settlers in Massachusetts Bay. They found spiritual deliverance in the New World, though not moral perfection—evident in their treatment of Native peoples and the tragic events of the Salem witch trials.

Family history, like American history, is rarely pure or simple. But among these New England ancestors were people who valued education, faith, community, and industry. And from their small, windswept villages and rocky farms came ideals that helped spark revolutions and reform movements in the generations that followed.

Photo:

Pilgrim's Grace by Henry Mosler, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA

52 Ancestors 2025: Historic Event – The Salem Witch Trials

 

This week’s topic, “Historic Event,” is a tricky one because my family history is deeply tied to the New World—spanning the American Revolution, Civil War, westward expansion, and, if online genealogies are correct, even the Mayflower. One surprise I discovered early on during my lunch break visits to the Family History Library was my deep Puritan roots, with family names like Shattuck, Joselyn, Larkin, Fay, Morse, Day, Cleveland, and Hale.  

One family that caught my attention was the Hales, among the earliest Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. My 9th-great-grandfather, Deacon Robert Hale, arrived in 1630 as a carpenter and acquired several parcels of land in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He and his wife, Joanna, had nine children, including Joanna Hale, who married John Larkin (my 8th-great-grandparents) in 1664. They settled in Charlestown, but John died young in 1678 at age 38. Joanna, then about 31 years old, later married William Dodge and moved to Beverly, Massachusetts.  

It seems Joanna and William moved to Beverly shortly after their marriage, possibly to be near her older brother, John Hale, who was the first pastor of the First Parish Church in Beverly. Beverly was just a short boat ride from Salem and the two communities were closely connected. During the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, John Hale initially supported the court’s actions—until his own wife was accused of witchcraft. This shocking turn led him to reconsider his stance, and he later published his influential book, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, in which he examined the hysteria and its consequences.  

We don’t know Joanna Hale Larkin Dodge’s personal views on the trials. However, given that her family was well-established in Beverly and likely attended her brother’s church (the only church in town), it’s safe to say she and her children witnessed these events firsthand. The Hales, Larkins, and Dodge were interconnected through marriage, and the aftermath of the trials surely impacted the next generation. Sadly, Joanna passed away in 1693, but she left behind a legacy woven into the fabric of 17th- and 18th-century New England.