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 2025: Disappeared—The Children

 

It is not uncommon in family research to find relatives who seem to have dropped out of the records under mysterious circumstances. Yet, what struck this genealogist (and father) with a professional interest in public health is the recurring pattern of infant and childhood mortality throughout my family history. The evidence is everywhere: large families in the 17th and 18th centuries, the reuse of names for children who died young, and mothers who themselves died in childbirth.

For this post, I chose to focus on the 1900 and 1910 censuses and the listings of my ancestors in Barton County, Missouri. Why these censuses? Because in these years, mothers were asked not only how many children they had, but also how many were still living.

The inclusion of these questions reflects a growing national interest in public health at the turn of the century. The United States was expanding, and cities were swelling with people. Coastal and river regions, particularly in warmer climates, were plagued by yellow fever and malaria. In Kentucky—a major pathway for many of my ancestors—the rise of Lexington as a trans-Appalachian “Athens of the West” was abruptly halted by a cholera epidemic in 1833. As cities grew, the problems of waste disposal and sanitation became impossible to ignore.

By the mid-1800s, public health reforms were gaining momentum. In Massachusetts, Lemuel Shattuck (my 5th cousin, five times removed) championed sanitation measures. In London, John Snow famously linked cholera to contaminated water at the Broad Street pump. Advances in germ theory by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and others, along with improvements in medical education, underscored the importance of separating water supplies from human and animal waste. Cities—especially overcrowded and impoverished neighborhoods like New York’s Lower East Side—saw the highest levels of childhood mortality, but rapid improvements followed.

What about rural Barton County, Missouri? Farms allowed for cleaner separation of wells, outhouses, and animal pens. Milk from cows on the farm was commonly boiled. Crowding was not an issue, but access to medical care was limited. Vaccines for childhood illnesses did not exist, nor were antibiotics available to treat bacterial infections.

Even so, mortality among children was a reality. Many of the older mothers among my ancestors lost between one and three children. We don’t always know how old the children were when they died, but we can imagine the grief. The mothers who had babies at the turn of the century and later may have seen some improvement, though I’d need to dig into statistics before drawing conclusions—that would be the subject of a scientific study, not a blog post.

The family photo at the top of this post, taken around 1909, shows my grandparents, Virgil and Marietta (Yount) Cassatt, with my Aunt Alta Mae. According to the 1900 census, Virgil's mother Susan lost 3 of her 6 children, and Marietta's Mary mother lost 2 of her 7 children. Together, Virgil and marietta had six children who survived infancy, but they also lost a 9-day-old baby boy, Frank, in 1907, and another newborn son in 1925. Their daughter Alta grew up, married, but died in 1942 at age 34 after a two-week illness. On my maternal side, a young uncle, Stephen Claire, died of appendicitis at age 6.

Today, we benefit from sanitation systems, vaccines, antibiotics, and hospitals equipped to care for the youngest and most vulnerable. Looking back, we can see how much progress has been made through public health, science, and medicine. Large families were the norm in those days, yet even with strong faith, supportive families, and close-knit communities, our ancestors deeply felt the pain of losing their children. Though some of these children may have lived only briefly, their memories endured.

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