• General Notes

  Susannah ........, also known as Susannah Wolterton, was the wife of the emigrant, Nathaniel Merrill. For many years she was thought to be the sister of Gregory Wolterton of Hartford, Conn. Later research shows that she probably is the daughter of Gregory's wife, Susannah (Unknown) by a previous marriage.
  
  From "A Merrill Memorial" by Samuel Merrill, Cambridge, MA 1917-1928
  
  After the death of Nathaniel Merrill his widow married Stephen Jordan (or Jourdain). Nathaniel Merrill, son of Nathaniel and Susanna Merrill, gave a deed, under date of 16 Aug 1661, to Peter Godfrey of Newbury, in which the phrase occurs, "after the decease of my mother Susanna Jordan," and
  out of this fact the error regarding the maiden name of Nathaniel's wife grew.
  
  The conjecture has been advanced, and it has even been stated as a fact, that the wife of Nathaniel Merrill was Susanna Wilterton (or Wolterton.)
  
  Gregory Wilterton of Hartford was childless: Susanna Merrill of Newbury was a widow with five sons and a daughter, most of them in their minority. It would have been natural for Gregory Wilterton under these
  circumstances to write to his kinswoman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and offer a home and modest fortune to one of the boys. But Gregory Wilterton may have been a more distant relative, or merely a friend. Until other evidence is brought forward the conscientious genealogist must say that the maiden name of Nathaniel's wife in unknown.
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  The surname of Nathaniel's wife, Susanna, is somewhat in question. Nothing is known about her ancestry. The name Wolterton (sometimes spelled Wilterton) has been generally assumed to be her name because Gregory Wolterton of Hartford, CT, made Susanna's "second son, John Merrill, his residual legatee and principal heir, and Wolterton would not have made an Essex County, Massachusetts man his heir unless there was a strong relationship between them and so he was evidently John Merrill's uncle and brother of Susanna." Mary L. Holman, "Ancestry of Charles Stinson Pillsbury and John Sargent Pillsbury", Vol 1 (1938); Vol. 2 (1938), p. 1037. Also, we find the suggestion that John Merrill, a young man of 19 years of age at the time of the death of his father, went to Hartford, CT, and was adopted by Gregory Wolterton. "It seems unlikely that John would have made such a (long) journey, separating himself for a lifetime from home and kin, unless to make a home with another kin." Samuel Merrill, "A Merrill Memorial", p. 160. But none of this is conclusive, and assigning the name Wolterton to Susanna is purely speculative at the moment.

Details of Susannah's family with Nathaniel Merrill

Details of Susannah's family with Stephen Jorden