Jane Dumer and Henry Sewall married on 25 March 1646 in Newbury.[1]
Henry died on 18 May 1700 in Newbury, in his 87th year. Jane Sewall, the widow of Henry Sewall, died on 07 January 1700/1.[2]
Jane Drummer/ Dummer was born in Bishopstoke, Hampshire on March 17, 1626, a daughter of Alice Archer and Stephen Dummer. In 1638, when Jane was about eleven, her family came under the scrutiny of the royalist authorities, who suspected that they were planning to embark on a crossing to America. Their home was searched for contraband to no avail (although apparently lots of provisions for their journey were noted), and they duly sailed from Southhampton on the ship Bevis of Hampton, which belonged to Jane’s uncle Richard Dummer. They were accompanied by Richard, his own family, servants, and wards. So it appears we are looking at someone with a relatively privileged background; but even with servants on hand the crossing from England to America was not an easy one, particularly for children.
The Dummers settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, where Jane married Henry Sewall shortly after her 20th birthday in 1646. The young couple were apparently given 500 acres of land back in Coventry as a wedding gift from the Sewall family. The following year, for reasons I am struggling a bit to pin down (the excuse was that the climate didn’t agree with them, but it seems that nobody really believes that), Jane and Henry returned to England along with Jane’s parents and settled back in Bishopstoke, where they started a family.
Henry went again to Massachusetts in 1659 to settle his father’s estate, but political changes – specifically, Charles II’s imminent return to the throne – led to his deciding to remain there. In 1661 he sent word to Jane to summon her back across the Atlantic again, this time with five small children and two servants in tow. Samuel, who was nine at the time, later recalled their journey on the Prudent Mary in a letter to his own son:
I like this evocative account very much; it gives a real sense of the combined excitement and anxiety that must have preceded the embarkation. The little detail about the treat of raisins and almonds – just the kind of tiny thing that children remember – and the rushing around to shepherd everyone into “Pool Waggons”, followed by a spell in unfamiliar lodgings and then eight slow weeks at sea with sundry animals; it’s so vivid. For Jane, this journey would have meant guiding her children through an experience she herself must have recalled from her own childhood, as well as anticipating her reunion with the husband she had not seen for so long. Their youngest child, also called Jane, was only eighteen months old, so it appears likely (although I don’t know the exact date of Henry’s 1659 crossing) that Henry had never seen her.
Jane and Henry went on to have three more children after settling in Newbury once more. I haven’t got a copy of Samuel Sewall’s diaries or any other biographical material, so I really don’t know much about Jane’s life in the years that followed. Henry died in 1700 at the age of 86, and Jane the following year at 74. The epitaph on the stone marking their grave concentrates on Henry, referring to Jane as “his fruitfull vine”:
Mr. Henry Sewall, sent by Mr. Henry Sewall his father in ye ship Elsabeth & Dorcas (Capt. Watts Commander) arrived at Boston 1634, winter’d at Ipswich, help’d begin this plantation 1635, furnishing English servants, neat cattel, & provisions. Married Mrs. Jane Dummer, March ye 25, 1646. Died May ye 16, 1700, Etat 86. His fruitfull vine, being thus disjoin’d, fell to the ground January ye 13 following, Etat 74. Psal. 27, 10.
Jane had outlived her eldest child Hannah, my direct ancestor. But Samuel was alive to mourn his mother, and once again we have a record of his thoughts, this time in the form of his elegy at her burial.
Laurel Ulrich in Good Wives[5] cites the penultimate sentence of this speech, which I’ve underlined above, in her chapter on the childbearing years of colonial women. Her point is that, whatever Jane’s other virtues, Sewall’s emotion at the loss of his mother seems to have been focused primarily on her care of him in infancy. (Sewall himself had by this time become, as discussed in Judith Graham’s book Puritan Family Life,[6] a far from stereotypical Puritan father; he and his wife Hannah were by all accounts affectionate, understanding parents to their many children.)
Jane Dummer therefore goes down in history not as an anonymous early New England settler, but as a devoted mother – one whose love for her children apparently stayed with them and, in Samuel’s case anyway, influenced their own family lives. She must have played many other roles throughout her long and eventful life, and I wish I could learn more about her character, her opinions on the years of political turmoil she witnessed, her three ocean crossings, and her part in the founding of a colony. For now, though, I can’t.
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D > Dummer | S > Sewall > Jane (Dummer) Sewall
Categories: First Parish Burying Ground, Newbury, Massachusetts