Samuel Sewall (1652-1730)

He was born in Hampshire, England, and in 1661 came with his family to Newbury, Massachusetts. His mother Mrs Jane (Dummer) Sewall, was a first cousin of the first American-born silversmith, Jeremiah Dummer, father of William Dummer, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts. Sam Sewall graduated from Harvard (1671) and became a prominent merchant in Boston before being appointed a Member of the Governor's Council and then Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature. In 1692, he was one of the Judges that presided over the infamous Salem Witch Trials that resulted in 19-executions. However, he later confessed in public that he had made, "a grave error in condemning those tried in the Salem proceedings".

Sewall is also well-known for the diary he kept for fifty years (presently held by the Massachusetts Historical Society) and for his vociferous opposition to slavery, backed up by his publication of The Selling of Joseph in 1700. In 1676, he married Hannah Quincy Hull, daughter of John Hull, Minter of Coins for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and grand-daughter of Col. Edmund Quincy, of Braintree, Massachusetts. They were the parents of fourteen children, of whom only six (listed above) survived to adulthood. Among his many descendants he counts Louisa Alcott May, author of Little Women.