Sewall (Samuel) is born in Hampshire, England.

The son of Henry and Jane (Dummer) Sewall, Samuel Sewall emigrates with his family to Massachusetts, grows up in Newbury, and arrives in Boston in 1661. He graduates from Harvard College, marries Hannah Hull in 1676,* lives near today’s 450 Washington Street, and works initially for his father-in-law, John Hull, a silversmith and mint master. Sewall serves on the Court of Assistants, Provincial Council, as a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692,* and chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1718-28). He becomes well known for writing an apology for his actions in Salem in 1696,* an antislavery tract in 1700,* and a diary published in 1973,* which prompts Henry Cabot Lodge to subsequently call him “The Puritan Pepys.” Sewall dies in January 1730, and is buried in Granary Burying Ground.