Loving Parents? Part 2: Samuel Sewall (1652-1730)

Reading time: 7 minutes

Around 1575, the French philosopher Montaigne remarked that he had lost two or three children as babies “if not without grief, yet without much repining.” He has often been  reproached for using these words: how could anyone show so much indifference about the death of his children that he did not even know how many of them had died? However, historians such as Ariès saw this as evidence for their claim that in the 16^th and 17^th  centuries the death of very young children was not the sort of calamity for parents it would now be. In their own families people had become accustomed to deaths of their baby-brothers and -sisters. One in every four children died before their first birthday. According to Ariès, this meant that parents became less attached to their young children. Consequently they accepted child death more readily and their grief was less intense.

The focus of this series of short essays is the question whether parents in the 17^th century  parents felt greatly attached to their very young children and whether they felt great grief when their children died at so young an age. Now, a number of extensive 17^th century diaries have been preserved, and they may give us some clues for trying to find some tentative answers. After Cotton Mather (Part 1), we now turn to his friend and fellow townsman: Samuel Sewall.

Samuel Sewall – 1652-1730

Samuel Sewall was a merchant and for over 30 years also a judge in Boston, at the time a port of about 10,000 inhabitants. The three largest cities in those days were much bigger: Amsterdam had 200,000 inhabitants and Paris and London almost 500,000. Sewall was a busy man: for decades he was also the captain of the so-called militia, though it was generally known that he was a very poor shot. It is unbelievable that he had time to keep an elaborate diary of about 1,100 pages in print.

Sewall married three times. He survived not only two of his wives, but also eleven of his fourteen children. Sewall was strict Puritan and just like Cotton Mather, he saw the hand of God in everything that happened, including the deaths of his children. This Puritan view of God’s intervention was evident, for instance, in a conversation he once had with Cotton Mather. One day when there was a thunderstorm, Cotton told him that the homes of ministers were struck by lightning more often than other people’s homes. Cotton wondered what God’s motives were.

Sewall wrote one of the first pamphlets against the slave trade and slavery. “How terrible it is, the filth and death, if not murder, caused by the ships that bring large numbers of wretched men and women here. People who are forced by us to become slaves.” Since one in five households in Boston had slaves, it was to be expected that he was in for a lot of  criticism. For example, a supporter of the slave trade came up with a paradoxical argument: “Africans have the advantage of being allowed to live among Christians.” But then again, the author of this hypocritical phrase was a slave trader by profession.

Deaths of Sewall’s Children John, Henry and Hullie

His first three children died before they were two years old when they died, two of them were still breastfed. On April 1, 1677,Sewall gives a detailed account of the birth of his son John. He was sitting in the living room, together with his father-in-law,  when they suddenly heard the newborn baby crying. For the first week, John was suckled by a wet-nurse, but soon after that by Hannah herself. Sewall explains that one of his wife’s nipples rather small, but that after a week the baby fed on this nipple as well. John, however, died on September 11, 1678: a year and a half young. We do not know how Sewall reacted to the death of his child, because his entries from 1677 to February 1685 have not been preserved.

On December 7, 1685, Henry was born but he died within two weeks later. On December 17, Sewall reported that ‘Little Henry’ was unwell, and two days later he prayed for Henry “because he was very ill”. Actually, that was one of the few things to be done, for doctors were powerless most of the time in these days. On December 21, Sewall got up at 4 in the morning: “The faint and moaning noise of my child forces me up to pray for it.” The following day late at night: “Child makes no noise save by a kind of snoaring as it breathes”. They continued to watch over it and at dawn Henry died: “He fell asleep, I hope in Jesus, and that a Mansion was ready for him in the Father’s House.” Two days later ‘little Henry’ was buried. Sewall: “The Lord kindly humble me in respect of all my enmity against Him, and let His breaking my image in my son be a means of it.” Thus, this very strict Puritan saw Henry’s death as a trial if not as a punishment from God.

His son Hull was born on July 8, 1684, and died in June 1686, six months after Henry’s death. After Hull’s birth there are several references to Hull’s poor health, such as on December 17, 1685: “Little Hull has a convulsion fit as he lay with me in bed.” In the following month, Hullie again suffered from febrile seizures, this time for an extended period,  after which he was very tired. In February the proud father had reported that Hullie had spoken his first word: “apple”, with grandma as a witness. In June 1686 Sewall wrote: “My dear son Hull died.” The little boy was almost two years old. After the death of his son, Sewall wrote: “The Lord sanctify this Third Bereavement.” Sewall wrote nothing about the cause of Hullie’s death and there is no mention of his grief. But he must certainly have grieved a lot, if only because he had paid so much attention to his child and had felt love and pride of the boy.

High Infant Mortality Cause of Marital Problems?

When Sewall’s granddaughter Mary died in 1712, her aunt of the same name, had died in childbirth two years previously at the age of 19, the same year (1710) in which his  granddaughter Rebecca had died. In Sewall’s case, the deaths of his own children actually coincided with those of his grandchildren. He usually arranged the funerals of his grandchildren, with great care. Sewall’s eldest son Samuel Jr. was married to Rebecca, the daughter of the governor of the British colony of Massachusetts, of which Boston was the capital. They had five children between 1703 and 1711, four of whom soon died prematurely. One of these four young children was de girl Rebecca, who died in 1710, five years old.

To make matters worse, in 1712 their little daughter, Sewall’s granddaughter Mary died, barely one year old. On Christmas Day 1711, Mary was already ill and Sewall had visited her. “I comforted my son and daughter as best I could and prayed with them,” he said. After Mary’s death, the parents were left with one little daughter, born in 1710.

A few months after Mary’s death, Sewall found his son Samuel Jr. sick in bed, and he was taken by his father to his parent’s home. “He told me in tears that all the grief (as a result of the disagreement with his wife Rebecca) would be his death,” Sewall wrote. On two occasions, Sewall tried to get Rebecca to talk about the problems in their relationship, but to no avail. “She said she was doing her duty and had suffered a lot.” This last phrase must have referred to the arguments with her husband Samuel, but could also refer to the deaths of four of their children. Sewall did not elaborate.

Had he even asked himself whether the deaths of all those children played a role in the estrangement between the two parents? Had it not occurred to him because this was something he and his wife Hannah and many other parents had also gone through, with all sorts of consequences? Or had he advised Rebecca (which he had) to talk to her minister for that very reason, so that her spiritual guide could explain about God’s providence? It is tantalizing, at times, but impossible to order your diarist to discuss questions that come to mind while reading him.

A Loving Father

We may conclude that Sewall did not keep aloof from his babies: he could not ignore Henry’s sighing and moaning. He took his darling ‘little Hull’ to bed with him, and did not hand him to his nanny. The grief over the other children has already been mentioned, as well as his help to Samuel Jr. and his attempts to act as a mediator between him and his wife Rebecca.

All in all, it is hard to imagine how anyone could experience so many deaths of loved ones ad not be engulfed by grief. Three months after the death of Hannah, his first wife, he started contemplating the idea of remarrying, because of his loneliness. Soon after that, he started looking for a suitable candidate.

Given the uncertainty he may have felt as a Puritan, as to whether his children would go to heaven, one may wonder to what extent his faith was a consolation. Cotton often begged God desperately to save his children. When, on the other hand, Sewall writes “I hope he rests in God” after the death of yet another child, without any subsequent entreaties, he gives the impression that he is not particularly concerned about it. It may well be that Sewall relied more on the grace of a good God than Cotton Mather did.

Sources: M. Halsey Thomas (ed.) The Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674-1729 (2 vols. New York 1973); David D. Hall, “The Mental World of Samuel Sewall”, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society Vol. 92 (1980) p. 21-44 (downloaded from: www.jstor.org); Richard Francis, Judge Sewall’s Apology. The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of a Conscience (London 2005); Eve LaPlante, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall (New York 2007).

Translated by Ite Wierenga