WHITNEY-L Archives

From: "Mike and Annette Poston" <>
Subject: [WHITNEY-L] Sewall as a first name
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:12:40 -0500

The recent query about the obituary of Sewall Whitney and Jan Whitaker's
reply has raised a question in my mind. [Of course, it relates to the
ever-elusive Jabez Whitney.]

Sewall is a known surname in Maine. By the early 1800s, people were
applying surnames as given first or middle names even though the surname was
not that of a relative. Earlier than that, it almost always meant that the
name was that of kin. John Wheeler of Chesterville (now Franklin County)
named his youngest daughter Jane Sewall Wheeler (b. 1897), presumably for
Dummer Sewall, a pioneer of Chesterville and the local justice of the peace.
Jane's elder sister, Abigail Milk Wheeler, married Jabez Whitney in 1804.
Sewall and Wheeler are not believed to be kin. Are there other Sewalls who
were prominent in Maine in the early 1800s? If Sewall Whitney had been born
in Chesterville instead of Buxton, I could understand where the name might
come from (there were two Whitney brothers living in Chesterville), but it
is not obvious to me where Sewall Whitney got his name.

Any thoughts?

Mike Poston
Rockville, Maryland

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• [WHITNEY-L] Sewall as a first name by "Mike and Annette Poston" <>