♀Katherine Satchfield

Katherine Satchfield (baptized 27 May 1569 – buried 13 September 1627) was a Londoner, the second wife of the mercer Thomas Horton and the mother-in-law of Roger Conant, the Devon-born salter remembered as the leader of the Old Planters^W who began Salem. She died in the London house of her son-in-law, a parish clerk, within four days of making a will that remembered her daughter Sarah, Roger Conant’s wife. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Sarah Horton (1598–1678).

Family and marriage

She was a daughter of Gilbert Satchfield and his wife Anne, and was baptized at St Peter Cornhill, London, on 27 May 1569. Her father died in 1578. When her widowed mother made her will on 20 June 1586, she left “Katherine Satchfield my daughter” fifty pounds.

Thomas Horton and Katherine Satchfield were probably married in the late 1590s; she was his second wife, and their daughters Sarah and Parnell Horton were born about 1598 and 1600. Thomas already had five children by his first wife, Margaret Culverwell. In his will of 6 March 1615 he called her “Catherine Horton my wellbeloved wife” and left Sarah and Parnell fifty pounds apiece. He died before the will was proved in January 1620/1.

Widowhood and death

Roger Conant and Sarah Horton were married at St Ann Blackfriars^W, London, on 11 November 1618. On 25 February 1622/3 Parnell married James Wallis at St Lawrence Jewry. Wallis was the parish clerk^W of St Margaret Moses^W, Friday Street, where Katherine’s stepdaughter Margaret Horton’s husband, Richard Culverwell, was the minister.

On 9 September 1627, “sicke in body”, she made her will, naming “my loveing daughter Sara Connant wife of Roger Connant” and two of Sarah’s children, Caleb and Sara; Sarah was by then most likely in New England with her husband. Four days later the parish register of St Margaret Moses recorded that “Mrs. Katharine Horton, widow of Mr. Tho: Horton, Mercer, was brought out of her son-in-law his house (James Wallis the parish Clark …) and was buryed in the Church the thirteenth of September 1627”. Her will was proved in the Consistory Court of London on 13 October 1627.

Notes

Her identification

Robert Charles Anderson identified her in 1993 (“The Conant Connection: Part One”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 147, pages 234–239). The article prints her baptism from the register of St Peter Cornhill, her mother’s will, Thomas Horton’s will, her burial entry and her own will in full; its second part (volume 148, 1994) traces the Culverwell family. The records spell her name Katherine, Katharine and Catherine.

Dates that are estimates

The late-1590s marriage and the birth years of Sarah and Parnell are Anderson’s estimates; no marriage record is known. That Sarah had gone to New England by 1627 is inferred from Roger Conant’s crossing in 1623 or 1624 and the birth of their son Lot in New England about 1624.