♀Sarah Horton

Sarah Horton (about 1598 – before 1 March 1678) was a Londoner who married Roger Conant, the Devon-born salter remembered as the leader of the Old Planters^W who began Salem, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, in 1626. She went with him to New England, and early in 1640 Salem gave their son Roger twenty acres as “the first borne Child in Salem”. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Lot Conant (1624–1674).

Family and marriage

She was born about 1598, a daughter of Thomas Horton, a London merchant, and his second wife, Katherine Satchfield; her father died in 1621. Her mother’s will, made in London on 9 September 1627, remembers “my loveing daughter Sara Connant wife of Roger Connant” and two of Sarah’s children, Caleb and Sara. Her family is said to have given Roger a wide circle of Puritan connections in England.

Roger Conant and Sarah Horton were married at St Ann Blackfriars^W, London, on 11 November 1618. Their first two children were baptized at St Lawrence Jewry: Sarah on 19 September 1619, who was buried there on 30 October 1620, and Caleb on 27 May 1622.

New England

Roger crossed to New England in 1623 or 1624, and Sarah and the boy Caleb probably came with him and shared his short stays at Plymouth, Nantasket and Cape Ann before he led the move to Naumkeag, at the site of Salem, in the autumn of 1626. In the list of members of the church at Salem made late in 1636 she appears as “Sarah Connant”, and she and Roger are said to have both signed its renewed covenant in 1637. About then the family moved to Roger’s farm at the head of Bass River, the part of Salem later set off as Beverly.

Roger and Sarah had nine children. Sarah and Caleb were born in London; the other seven were born after the family came to New England. Caleb died a bachelor “beyond seas” before November 1633. When Salem granted land in 1637 the household numbered nine.

In November 1660 she and Roger gave evidence together at the Salem court about the marriage of James Bedde, “marryed of late to the widdow Eliot”. According to the family genealogy, Roger deeded the Bass River homestead to his son Lot in November 1666, and on the same day Lot leased the house, orchard and garden back to Roger and Sarah for their lives, at a yearly rent of “one Indian corne”. She is not named in Roger’s will of 1 March 1677/8 and had most likely died before it was made.

Notes

Her parents

The 1887 History and Genealogy of the Conant Family could not discover her parentage. Robert Charles Anderson identified her in 1993 (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 147) as the daughter of Thomas Horton, a London merchant, by his second wife, Katherine Satchfield, and The Great Migration Begins follows him. Her mother’s will of 1627, which names her as Roger Connant’s wife, is known here from a transcription made after that article. Her birth year is Anderson’s estimate.

Sources

• The marriage at St Ann Blackfriars and the London baptisms and burial of her children are printed from the parish registers in the 1887 genealogy.
• The 1636 church list, her deposition of November 1660 (Dow’s Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, volume 2, page 265) and the inference that she died before her husband’s will are from The Great Migration Begins. The 1637 covenant, the 1666 deed and lease and the household of nine are from the 1887 genealogy; the grant to her son Roger as the first child born in Salem is printed there from the Salem book of grants.
• That she sailed with Roger, and the family’s moves before Salem, are inferred from his own movements and from her son Lot’s birth in New England about 1624.