Samuel sewall short biography summary

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