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     Elizabeth Price was the daughter of Maj. Walter Price and Freestone Turner.¹ Elizabeth Price married, as her second husband, Mitchell Sewall, son of Major Stephen Sewall and Margaret Mitchell, on 20 January 1742/43 in Salem, Massachusetts.^1,2 Elizabeth Price was buried on 17 May 1758 in Salem, Massachusetts.³

     Major Samuel Sewall was baptised on 24 November 1689 by Mr. Higgins of Boston.³ He was born on 24 November 1689.³ He was the son of Major Stephen Sewall and Margaret Mitchell. He was a a ship-chandler of Boston. 1720 Artillery Company; 1734 Captain, Artillery Company; 1733 Major in the Boston regiment. Active in town affairs and served on important committees.^4,5 Major Samuel Sewall married Catherine George, daughter of John George and Lydia Lee, on 1 January 1716/17 the marriage being conducted by Dr. Cotton. The bride's name is spelt How in the record.⁴ Major Samuel Sewall made a will on 11 January 1753.⁵ He died on 5 May 1757 in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of 67 s.n.p. his two step-sons having drowned in 1727/28.^4,5 Probate was granted on 6 May 1757 his wife Katherine was executor. Legatees: to my brother and sister, Stephen Sewall, and Mehetable Robie, and to my wife Katherine, all the rest of my estate.⁵

     Stephen Sewall was born on 14 December 1702 in Salem (McKeough has 12 Dec 1702; Titcomb has 18 Dec 1704 as does the Encyclopedia of American Biography).¹ He was the son of Major Stephen Sewall and Margaret Mitchell. Stephen Sewall was baptised on 20 December 1702 by Rev. W. Noyes.² He graduated in 1721 from Harvard.¹ Between 1726 and 1739 he was a Librarian and tutor. Achieved such renown for his knowledge of the law gained through private study that he was appointed a justice of the Superior Court in 1739 at Harvard.³ He was a last Attorney General of the Province of Mass. before the Revolution. (Memo on the McClellan Family tree has him as Attorney General of Canada).² He was appointed in 1752, Chief Justice of the Province of Mass., and served in that capacity and as a member of the council for the rest of his life.

Of his years as a judge, one colleague wrote, "Quickness of apprehension and a capacity to look thoroughly into a subject were united in him in the highest degree I ever saw in any of my acquaintances." Of his general temperament, another biographer commented, "His donations to the poor were very frequent and liberal...more than he could well afford; for the salaries of the judges were then quite small ... he must have been a great economist ..."⁴ He died on 10 September 1760 in at his residence, Boston, at the age of 57 "dies estate insolvent"; "died bankrupt, probably through involvement in his brother's (Jonathan) speculations" according to a letter written by President John Adams. Died a bachelor.^2,5

     Jonathan/2 Sewell was born on 24 August 1729 in Boston, Massachusetts.¹ He was the son of Jonathan/1 Sewall and Mary Payne. Jonathan/2 Sewell was baptised on 31 August 1729.¹ He graduated in 1748 from Harvard ranked fifteenth in a class of twenty-nine.¹ He married Esther Quincy, daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy and Elizabeth Wendell, on 21 January 1764 in Braintree, Massachusetts, (m. intention, though with a date of 1760 is recorded in the vital records).² Taught school in Salem until 1756 ; then studied law with Judge Russell, and opened an office in Charlestown. While attending Court, he and John Adams lived together, frequently slept in the same chamber, and often in the same bed. He courted the maiden he married several years ; and it was his habit to go to her father's on Saturday and remain until Monday ; and Mr. Adams was generally invited to meet him on Sunday evening. And, besides, the two young men were in constant correspondence. About the year 1767 Mr. Sewall was appointed Attorney-General. The friend already mentioned remarks that, as a lawyer, his influence with judges and juries was as great as was consistent with an impartial administration of justice; that he was a gentleman and a scholar; that he possessed a lively wit, a brilliant imagination, great subtlety of reasoning, and an insinuating eloquence.
In 1774 he was an Addresser of Hutchinson, and in September of that year his elegant house at Cambridge was attacked by a mob and much injured. He fled to Boston for refuge. His name appears among the proscribed and banished, and among those whose estates were confiscated. He attempted to dissuade Mr. Adams from attending the first Continental Congress; and it was in reply to his arguments, and as they walked on the Great Hill at Portland, that Adams used the memorable words: " The die is now cast; I have now passed the Rubicon ; swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country is my unalterable determination." They parted, and met no more until 1788. The one, the high-souled, lion-hearted Adams, had a country, and a free country; the eloquent and gifted Sewall lived and died a Colonist. It is thought that Sewall originally sympathized with the Whigs, and that he was won over to the other side by the address of Hutchinson, after some dissatisfaction with the Otises relative to the estate of his uncle, a deceased Chief Justice of Massachusetts. He is said to have adhered to the Crown at last, as did thousands of others, from a conviction that armed opposition would end in certain defeat, and utter ruin to the Colonies.
In 1775 Mr. Sewall went to England, and was in London previous to July 20th of that year. Early in 1776 we hear of him, in company with several other exiles, " bound to the theatre to see the Jubilee"; next as a member of the Loyalist Club, for a weekly conversation and a dinner; and later, as having a home in Brompton Row. In 1777 we find him at Bristol, and on terms with the celebrated political divine, Dean Tucker, who considered the Colonies a burden to England, and had the courage to advise the Ministry to "cast them off". The next year he was at Sidmouth ; but again at Bristol in 1779 and the year after. While in England he wrote to his fellow-exile, Curwen, " The situation of American Loyalists, I confess, is enough to have provoked Job's wife, if not Job himself; but still we must be men, philosophers, and Christians; bearing up with patience, resignation, and fortitude, against unavoidable suffering." The friendship between Jonathan and John was never interrupted while both lived. In 1788 Mr. Sewall went to London to embark for Halifax, and they met at once, — the Whig laying aside all etiquette to make him a visit. " I ordered my servant to announce John Adams, was instantly admitted, and both of us, forgetting that we had ever been enemies, embraced each other as cordially as ever. I had two hours' conversation with him in a most delightful freedom, upon a multitude of subjects." In the course of this interview, Mr. Sewall remarked that he had existed for the sake of his two children ; that he had spared no pains or expense in their education ; and that he was going to Nova Scotia in hope of making some provision for them. He did not long survive; " evidently broken down by his anxieties," adds Mr. Adams, " and probably dying of a broken heart." At this time Mr. Sewall had been appointed Judge of Admiralty for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and soon after entered upon his duties. In " McFingal" it is asked, —

" Who made that wit of water-gruel
A Judge of Admiralty, Sewall ?³ "

Jonathan/2 Sewell was appointed on 17 October 1768, judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court for Lower Canada by Commission under the Great Seal of the High Court of Admiralty of England. In fact this was published in the Annual Register as being the 27 November 1768.⁴ He died on 27 September 1796 in St John, New Brunswick, Canada, at the age of 67.⁵ He was buried on 28 September 1796 at the Loyalist Burying Ground (McKeough cites a brass plate in Trinity Church, St. John, New Brunswick saying that he is interred in Judge Putnam's vault).⁶

     Esther Quincy was born on 26 November 1738 in Braintree, Massachusetts.³ She was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy and Elizabeth Wendell.^1,2 In 1759 Jonathan first met Esther on a boating party.⁴ Esther Quincy married Jonathan/2 Sewell, son of Jonathan/1 Sewall and Mary Payne, on 21 January 1764 in Braintree, Massachusetts, (m. intention, though with a date of 1760 is recorded in the vital records).⁵ Esther Quincy died on 21 January 1810 in Montreal, Canada, at the age of 71.⁶ She was buried on 25 January 1810 in Mount Royal Cemetry, Montreal.^7,2

     Chief Justice Jonathan/3 Sewell was born on 6 June 1766 in "in the old family mansion", Cambridge, Massachusetts.¹ He was the son of Jonathan/2 Sewell and Esther Quincy. Chief Justice Jonathan/3 Sewell was baptised on 16 June 1766 at Lechmere House on Brattle Street. He married Henrietta Smith, daughter of Chief Justice Hon. William Smith and Jennet Livingston, on 24 September 1796 in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Quebec, by licence from His Excellency General Prescott. Rev. Alexander Spark officiated. Present:- Janet Smith (her sister), William Grant, Stephen Sewell (his brother), G. Germaine and S. Franklin.² Jonathan Sewell was born into a prominent and cultivated Massachusetts family and, with his younger brother, Stephen, grew up on the love and encouragement of his parents. His loyalist father, attorney general of the colony, earned the enmity of American patriots, and on 1 Sept. 1774 a terrified eight-year-old Jonathan witnessed the sack by a patriot mob of the family mansion in Cambridge. Within a week the Sewalls moved to Boston; a year later they arrived in London. In 1778 the family settled in Bristol, where they adopted the English spelling of the family name, Sewell. Jonathan discovered a talent for the theatre, and his performance in a school play impressed the celebrated actress Sarah Siddons, who described him as "Dame Nature's chosen son." He had innate abilities in music and painting as well, and his father found that he had "impetuous and penetrating" powers of mind. Edward Winslow later described him as "one of the finest lads I ever saw."

After briefly attending Brasenose College, Oxford, Jonathan left England in early 1785 under the care of Attorney General Jonathan Bliss of New Brunswick to study law with an old family friend, Solicitor General Ward Chipman. To improve his courtroom skills Sewell founded in St. John the Forensic Society, a student club that debated moot points of law. He also got an apprenticeship in conservative politics as a campaigner for the government party, of which Chipman was a leader. In October 1787 he was appointed registrar of the Vice-Admiralty Court. The following May he was called to the bar, and he soon had a clientele. His family had been reunited in St. John, but in the summer of 1789 he moved to Quebec, where there was greater scope for his abilities.

That October, thanks to strong recommendations from Chipman and Judge Joshua Upham, Sewell acquired his lawyer's commission. He quickly found that Scottish and Canadian barristers monopolized civil litigation, and he was contemplating a move to Montreal when, in October 1790, he was appointed attorney general of the province of Quebec pro tempore. The position eventually went to James Monk, but, boosted by the temporary appointment, Sewell's private practice flourished. Its growth was also due to Sewell's rapid mastery of French civil law, with which he had been unfamiliar on his arrival. Sewell's success partially reflected his acceptance by Quebec's British community. Its members embraced him even more readily after he became a protégé of Prince Edward Augustus, who, impressed by Sewell's proficiency as a violinist, engaged him to lead an amateur orchestra in regular musical evenings. Sewell acquired the most recent works of European composers and for one concert composed new verses to "God save the King" which would create a sensation in 1800 when sung on a London stage by the actor Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan after an attempted assassination of George III. Sewell's social relations were not only cultural; in September 1793 he had baptized "a natural child" named John St Alban Sewell.

Sewell shared the moderately liberal views of his social entourage. He promoted the efforts of Chief Justice William Smith to establish a non-denominational university, opposed slavery, and was a firm believer in habeas corpus. Although a staunch defender of the royal prerogative, he supported a balanced constitution with an important role for an elected house of commons. He welcomed the granting of an assembly for Lower Canada by the Constitutional Act of 1791 (but regretted the division of the province) and in 1792 published An abstract from precedents of proceedings in the British House of Commons to guide the assembly's deliberations.

In 1793 Governor Lord Dorchester (Guy Carleton) and Smith obtained Sewell's appointment as solicitor general and inspector of the king's domain. With Monk, Sewell analysed and worked to suppress a series of militia riots in 1794. Both men demonstrated a tendency, widespread among British inhabitants, to view the rioters as pawns of French revolutionary and American agents. After Monk's elevation to the bench in 1794 Sewell prosecuted the unfinished cases – demonstrating considerable leniency, in accordance with Dorchester's prudent policy of treating political offenders lightly. In 1795 Sewell took a leading role with Chief Justice William Osgoode and Montreal lawyer Arthur Davidson in successfully opposing legislation that would have opened the legal profession to unqualified persons. On 9 May 1795, thanks to Dorchester and Osgoode but over the opposition of Monk, who detected a serious rival in this "Going Man," Sewell was appointed attorney general and advocate general. He was named judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court in June 1796. The office of the attorney general was an important one in the Lower Canadian administration. In addition to drafting government regulations and legal instruments, the attorney general prosecuted cases of all sorts, including those involving state security. With the aid of Montreal merchant and magistrate John Richardson, among others, Sewell established an intelligence network that would function for more than a decade with relative effectiveness. When a series of riots broke out in 1796–97 over a new road act, Sewell reported to Governor Robert Prescott that they were orchestrated by French emissaries who were seconded by demagogic politicians such as Joseph Papineau and Jean-Antoine Panet, both groups playing on "pretended grievances" and on the "profound Ignorance" that was "too surely the Characterisk of the Canadians." On Sewell's recommendation, arrests were made at Quebec and troops sent to Montreal to stiffen the resolve of timid magistrates. At Quebec 23 of the 24 persons indicted, and at Montreal 11 of the 13 tried, were convicted; the sentences were light but the conviction rate impressed.

Imbued with the loyalists' sense of the fragility of the social order and fearing that the colony was to be invaded by a French fleet, Sewell drafted what became the Better Preservation Act of 1797. It suspended habeas corpus, in some cases on mere suspicion of undefined "treasonable practices." In addition, this cleverly worded statute authorized imprisonment of assemblymen to permit the incarceration of the Panet–Papineau faction should the invasion materialize. In May 1797 the arrest of the American David McLane for treason offered the possibility of making an example. Sewell prosecuted, and in the course of building up a strong case he was party to dubious transactions that compromised the justice of the proceedings. Following McLane's execution there were no more riots. Clearly mob action, and the fear that it might become organized and strengthened by a discontented militia, undermined Sewell's moderately liberal views.

Sewell's approach to ordinary criminal cases contrasted strikingly with his treatment of security issues. No blurring of the law to serve the royalist cause altered his respect for the rights of the accused or his belief that penal law must be interpreted restrictively; indeed, on more than one occasion he agonized over the fate of helpless individuals caught in the system. Of the nearly 400 indictments Sewell drafted between 1793 and 1802, only 170 were of Canadians and 43 of women.

Sewell spent much of his time writing an astonishing array of legal opinions for the government. Almost all are models of clarity, convincingly argued and well supported by authorities. Most display a concern to protect the rights of the crown; his insistence on support from legal authorities worked to the detriment of land claims by Indians who rarely had "any Title or any other evidence Whatever" sufficient to impress him.

Sewell was aware of the distinction between an opinion grounded in law and one based on policy preference, but in certain areas – and in none more frequently than ecclesiastical affairs – he crossed the line between the two. When dealing with the Church of England he normally confined himself to legal authorities and more than once, to the dismay of his intimate friend Anglican bishop Jacob Mountain, they led him to "an Opinion which I adopt against my will." Although he considered that the Church of England in the colony lacked in law certain rights essential to its functioning (such as the legal existence of parishes), he did believe it to be an established church. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, Sewell asserted that policy dictated the exercise of a royal supremacy he believed was sanctioned in law, and he argued that a supposed lack of legal recognition of the church by British law should be exploited to oblige it to accept royal supremacy. Initially convinced that the church was "merely tolerated," by 1801 he had come to fear "with too much certainty" that it had, in fact, been established by the Quebec Act of 1774. To Lieutenant Governor Sir Robert Shore Milnes he expressed the opinion that, given the independence of the church and the ignorance and superstition of the population, the influence exerted over the inhabitants by the clergy and the bishop was "immense" and "highly dangerous." However, he added, "to direct (the bishop) is to direct all," and since the root of the executive's problems in the colony was, he felt, a lack of sway over the people, the control of the church was the best means to obtain it. The government must therefore use its "right of nominating the Bishop, the Coadjutor and the Parish priest which it assumed by the conquest of Canada but has never yet exercised."

In the spring of 1805, encouraged by Milnes, Sewell engaged coadjutor bishop Joseph-Octave Plessis in discussions designed to bring Bishop Pierre Denaut to request legal recognition of his position and of his church in return for his own recognition of royal supremacy. Ultimately, Denaut's decision to petition the king for legal recognition of his office in the form of letters patent under conditions to be determined by the crown constituted a tactical victory for Sewell. When Denaut died in early 1806, Sewell, along with Civil Secretary Herman Witsius Ryland, tried in vain to persuade the administrator of the colony, Thomas Dunn, not to accept Plessis as bishop, or Bernard-Claude Panet as his coadjutor, until the crown had replied to Denaut's petition. Despite recurrent reminders from Sewell, Mountain, and Ryland, the British government never responded.

Executive influence over the Canadian population could also be obtained, Sewell believed, through control of education, so, with Mountain and Milnes, he worked out the details of a scheme for government-financed and -directed elementary schools in the countryside staffed by loyal Canadian teachers who would instruct habitant children in the English language and the blessings of British rule. He drafted the government bill, which, amended by the assembly to impotence with respect to the education of Canadians, established the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning in 1801.

For Sewell, the anglicization of the population was essential if the colony was to be kept under British rule. This could be advanced more rapidly by encouraging massive immigration, particularly of Americans. Unfortunately, the seigneurial system discouraged immigration, and Sewell provided Milnes with opinions as to the legal means available to make the system so onerous that the population itself would be induced to seek conversion to freehold tenure.

The role of the attorney general being in part political, in 1796, shortly after his appointment, Sewell had obtained election to the assembly for William Henry (Sorel), one of two ridings in which British inhabitants constituted the majority. In the house he was often called on to draft bills, but with regard to government business he normally played a role secondary to that of leaders of the English party such as John Young and Pierre-Amable De Bonne. He supported the party, except on two controversial issues – the financing of prisons in 1805 and the expulsion of Ezekiel Hart, a Jew – in which his legal opinions obliged him to break rank. He remained in the assembly until 1808 Sewell continued in private practice while attorney general. His official function enabled him to transmit quickly to his clients the latest information on pending legislation; but he was aware of possible conflicts of interest, and on at least three occasions refused private business on that ground. By the early 19th century he probably had the foremost practice in the colony, his clients being largely prominent businessmen, office holders, and seigneurs. In the early 1800s he defended Young when Young was sued for debt by Catherine Le Comte Dupré; his successful plea that French law had been modified by practice since the conquest was interpreted by Canadian nationalists as an attack on the Canadians' legal tradition. Sewell took under his wing aspiring lawyers such as Edward Bowen, James Stuart, Jean-Thomas Taschereau, and Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, instilling in them a great respect for the forms of the law.
According to Aubert de Gaspé, Sewell treated his clerks like his own children. Sewell was a highly attentive father; on one occasion, for example, he protested angrily when a son in school received corporal punishment, a means of discipline he abhorred. In 1805 Sewell moved his burgeoning family into a mansion he had had built just inside the Porte Saint-Louis. Valued at some £4,000, it helped to introduce into Quebec the Palladian architecture then popular in Britain and the United States. The Sewells entertained constantly at dinner parties and were highly prized guests in the best British and Canadian homes. Sewell was a member of the exclusive Barons' Club and was an active shareholder in the Union Company of Quebec, which in 1805 built the Union Hotel as a focal point of social life at Quebec. Sewell much preferred Quebec's high society to that of Montreal, which he found scandalous and frivolous. He particularly deplored the coldness shown to their wives by Montreal's businessmen, with "their male clubs, companies, & coffee houses." Trois-Rivières was a social "purgatory" and afforded him as attorney general "more occupation speaking comparatively than the whole district of Montreal."

On 22 August. 1808 Sewell was appointed chief justice of Lower Canada in succession to Henry Allcock. It was a post he had been seeking since 1801 with the assistance of a battery of influential people. Immediately after taking office, he consulted with his colleagues on ways to systematize and streamline court procedures, and in 1809 he published orders and rules of practice for the Court of King's Bench at Quebec and for the Court of Appeals. Monk followed suit in Montreal two years later. Sewell attended to his judicial duties assiduously; from 1809 to 1823 he was present on 90 per cent of all court days during which he was in the colony. He was a highly competent criminal-law judge, fair except where the colony's security was concerned. His addresses to grand juries, often published, were model lectures on complex fields of law.

Sewell generally believed serious crime to be increasing among the Canadians and, like many of his judicial contemporaries, he maintained that it took root in immorality. Following late 18th-century orthodoxy, he considered that any fundamentally dishonest or immoral act was a misdemeanour, even though not covered by law. He constantly inveighed against taverns, gambling houses, and brothels – "public Seminaries of Depravity" – holding that they introduced misery and disease into the lives of the working classes, whose social utility was diminished in consequence. He was slightly in advance of his time in his concept of punishment. No adherent to the selective-terror school of theologian William Paley, he drew inspiration from Sir William Blackstone's Enlightenment-inspired attacks on what Blackstone called the "multitude of sanguinary laws." Sewell's sentences were designed to prevent crime rather than punish the guilty and he felt that it was the certainty, not the severity, of punishment that deterred crime. He was even known to spare penitent parties a record and imprisonment in the company of hardened criminals. He believed capital punishment necessary for violent or potentially violent crime but found it a terrible ordeal to pronounce. On occasion he stretched the evidence so as to invite acquittal for non-violent property crimes carrying the death sentence, and in some cases, including convictions for murder, he intervened to save a prisoner from the gallows. To the end Sewell would persist in efforts to lessen recourse to the death penalty through reduction in the number of crimes punishable by death and through transportation of felons; however, he was thwarted by the indifference of the assembly and the Colonial Office.

Compared to criminal cases, civil suits were a pleasure for Sewell. He had a tendency to favour the crown whenever the political interests of the government were deeply engaged, but if his judgements are not entirely impartial, they are remarkable for their clarity of expression, their search for general principle, and the depth of scholarship that underpins them. Sewell probably did more than anyone to professionalize the administration of civil justice prior to codification of civil law in 1866.

As chief justice, Sewell took a seat on the Executive Council in September 1808. For £100, the salary of an ordinary councillor, he presided over all committees of the whole, all committees on questions of state, the committee of public accounts until 1818, the land committee until 1828, and the Court of Appeals. The governor referred most matters to the council and generally accepted its advice; since often no more than six councilors were present and Sewell was by far the most faithful in attendance, he held great sway over the government. He was called to the Legislative Council in September 1808 and in January 1809 he became its speaker. Able, despite being speaker, to debate and vote (twice in the case of a tie) and again extremely faithful in attendance, he ultimately exercised an influence over it comparable to that of Louis-Joseph Papineau in the assembly.

Sewell's roles made him easily the most powerful official in the colony after the governor. His influence was particularly evident during the administration of Sir James Henry Craig. In 1809, as opposition to Craig's policies was expressed with ever-increasing virulence in Le Canadien, the newspaper of the Canadian party, Sewell, as chief justice, warned a grand jury that the "Liberty of the press," like all civil liberties, was subject to "the good of the community" and that "whensoever the press is prejudicial to the public weal It is abused." A year later he was among the executive councilors who advised Craig to seize Le Canadien and to detain Pierre-Stanislas Bédard and others connected with it on suspicion of treasonable practices under the Better Preservation Act. Although politically involved in Bédard's arrest, he had no compunction about acting in his judicial role to preside over a court that rejected Bédard's application for habeas corpus. This kind of mixing of politics and judicial administration had been condemned as unconstitutional by the British parliament in 1806, and in Lower Canada it brought criticism from the bar. Confident in Sewell's control of the court system, Craig was able to intimidate a formerly fractious assembly.

In May 1810, at Craig's request, Sewell analysed the political ills of the colony. They arose, he believed, "1st From the French predilections in the great Mass of the Inhabitants, and 2ly From want of Influence and power in the Executive Government." "The great links of connection between a Government and its subjects are religious, Laws and Language," he asserted. Those links did not exist in the colony. British and Canadians nurtured a "national antipathy," and since no "incorporation of two such Extremes can ever be effected," he concluded "the Province must be converted to an English Colony, or, it will ultimately be lost to England." To achieve this objective, he again urged encouragement of large-scale American immigration, conversion from seigneurial to freehold tenure, and construction of Craig's Road to open up the Eastern Townships. Confiscation of the Sulpician estates would finance government-controlled education and a declaratory act of parliament would confirm royal supremacy over the Roman Catholic Church. Political reform was needed. Sewell recommended imposing a higher property qualification for voters and members of the assembly, convinced that a combination of British "industry and perseverence," Canadian "Idleness," and the manner of bequeathing property characteristic of each group would ensure to British colonists the bulk of landed property. To accelerate anglicization he recommended "an incorporate union of the Two Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada" which would leave each province its existing system of laws. Craig supported all of Sewell's proposals except union; later, however, he came to accept the idea of union.

Britain did not endorse Sewell's program. Craig's replacement, Sir George Prevost, attempted to conciliate the Canadian party. The change was not to Sewell's liking, but following the advent of war with the United States he was agreeably surprised to find the Canadians evincing "universally a sincere and loyal desire to assist in every way for the defence of the Country," and he exercised a moderating influence within the English party. In July 1812 he made a major contribution to the war effort by proposing the army bills scheme, generally attributed to Young, who had, rather, recommended a provincial bank; Sewell's scheme, which was adopted, placed the issuing of currency in imperial military hands.

In January 1814 the relative political calm in the colony was shattered when the assembly attacked the rules of practice published by Sewell in 1809 and by Monk in 1811. Following the lead of Stuart, Sewell's former pupil, who for personal reasons had developed a "rancorous hatred" towards him and his brother Stephen, the assembly impeached Sewell and Monk, in part on the grounds that some of their rules constituted legislation and that the judges had thereby usurped the role of the assembly. More than three-quarters of the assembly's charges were political, however, Sewell being accused particularly of poisoning Craig against the Canadians, attempting "to extinguish all reasonable freedom of the Press," and promoting "American dominance." Sewell was soon in "a state of pitiable distress," noted Assistant Civil Secretary Andrew William Cochran; although he was "a man of great talent, his feelings are fine and his nerves weak." The other judges and the Executive Council quickly declared themselves included in the indictments relating to the rules of practice. Sewell and Monk were thrown together to prepare a defence with the assistance of Richardson. Sewell, it was decided, would defend their cause in London.

In early June 1814 the entire Sewell family left for England. At the Colonial Office Sewell quickly learned that the political charges against him would not even be considered: to heed them, Colonial Secretary Lord Bathurst claimed, "would be to admit that a councillor was responsible for the acts of a Governor (which is) contrary to every principle." The rules of practice were referred to the Privy Council for examination. In his defence Sewell asserted that the assembly's ultimate objective was the "revolutionary project" of "transferring the Executive Power and Prerogatives of the Crown, to the Legislative." The crown had therefore to rescue its judicial and administrative officers from dependence on the elected body. Sewell transformed his own defence into an attack on Prevost's conciliatory administration. In the end Prevost attributed his recall more to Sewell's efforts than to possible displeasure over his conduct of an attack on Plattsburgh, N.Y., in 1814. In June 1815 the Privy Council announced that none of the rules of practice was unconstitutional. In 1818 they would be reprinted without change.

Meanwhile, Sewell had turned to other matters. The War of 1812 had made colonial defence a primary concern in London. To address it, in November 1814 Sewell sent to Prince Edward Augustus, now the Duke of Kent, a plan for union of all the British North American colonies. The Canadians, he now realized, would fight the Americans as long as they could retain their language, laws, and religion under British rule. But effective resistance to the more powerful enemy could be achieved, he thought, only by the combined efforts of all the colonies. Initially, he envisaged a central executive and legislature, with each colony retaining a lieutenant governor and an executive council. Sewell's proposals sought to reinforce the crown and executive at the expense of the legislature and to free judicial and administrative officials from harassment by elected assemblies. No doubt criticism of the small place he left to the central, legislature induced Sewell to modify his plan by adding provincial legislatures to handle strictly local matters. His scheme was then apparently published in 1814 as A plan for the federal union of British provinces in North America. It was a product of the New England loyalist mind; like a federal plan drafted by his father in 1784, and contrary to another proposed by his New Yorker father-in-law, it sought to achieve stability by excluding the masses from the political process rather than by admitting them into it.

Sewell arrived back at Quebec on 4 July 1816 to a rare salute from the fortress. With him he brought a highly flattering letter from Lord Bathurst instructing Governor Sir John Coape Sherbrooke to promote Sewell's interests. Sherbrooke warned Bathurst that "an infatuated dislike amounting almost to detestation" of Sewell "pervades all classes," particularly the clergy. Thanks to the governor's skilful management, however, the assembly even voted Sewell a salary of £1,000 as speaker of the Legislative Council in return for the council's agreeing to make permanent Papineau's equivalent salary as speaker of the assembly.

Throughout his long involvement in public life Sewell had remained active socially. In December 1808 he had assumed the patronage of a literary society formed by Aubert de Gaspé and other young men of Quebec. He promoted the theatre and attempted in vain to persuade Plessis to lift his prohibition of it for Catholics. In October 1818 he was appointed to the board of the Royal Institution. A few months later he chaired a meeting of the managers of the Quebec Dispensary. Long a subscriber to the Agriculture Society, in 1819 he donated to it a fine imported cow and her bull calf.

Sewell's re-engagement in the maelstrom of Lower Canadian politics from 1816 did nothing for his health. In July 1820 an alarmed Governor Lord Dalhousie (Ramsay), cognizant of "how large a space (Sewell) fills in the direction of public affairs," warned Bathurst that "a Complication of disorders, arising from intense study, and anxiety of mind appears to have broken his Constitution." Dalhousie developed an exceptional friendship and political relationship with his urbane, conservative, and well-informed chief justice. In November 1820 he told Bathurst that "as my Confidential adviser in the . . . administration of the Government, I turn to him on all occasions of difficulty." None the less, Sewell's unpopularity with the assembly induced Dalhousie to contemplate replacing him as speaker of the Legislative Council with Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Nathaniel Burton in order to improve the productivity of the legislature. The change was not made, however.

In the 1820s, as his numerous sons came of age, Sewell's nepotism gave the Canadian party new reasons to detest him and promoted in Dalhousie the only serious reservation he had about the chief justice. The governor was particularly upset in late 1822 when Sewell, in a politically reckless move, jumped at the position of sheriff of Quebec for his son William Smith. Predictably, the assembly attacked the appointment as prejudicial to the administration of justice. Nevertheless, only Dalhousie's firmness discouraged Sewell in 1826 from pursuing his strenuous efforts to have another son, Robert Shore Milnes, appointed protonotary for the district of Quebec.

It was as an office holder, in fact, that Sewell approached the issues of the day. With regard to financial matters, for example, he insisted that salaries be the priority item of payment on the civil list and, taking a line in opposition to his merchant colleagues in the English party, in 1821 he combatted, unsuccessfully, incorporation of the Quebec Fire Assurance Company, the Quebec Bank, and the Bank of Montreal. Again it was as an office holder that Sewell responded to a growing sentiment in the early 1820s, particularly among Montreal merchants, for a legislative union of the Canadas. He gave Dalhousie a copy of his plan of 1814 for federation, but the governor rejected it as according too much influence to the crown and executive and likely to provoke a furious reaction from the assembly. In any case Dalhousie too preferred a legislative union of the Canadas, and he supported just such a scheme in 1822. Sewell, however, warned the Colonial Office that the proposed plan was arousing hostility among the Canadians. Once more he put forward his project for federating all the colonies. Undersecretary Robert John Wilmot-Horton had Sewell's proposal published in 1824 along with one by the attorney general of Upper Canada, John Beverley Robinson, under the title of Plan for a general legislative union of the British provinces in North America. Meanwhile, in early 1823, Sewell had urged Dalhousie not to allow a clause respecting religion to be included in any union bill, for fear of provoking the Canadians; rather, he suggested the negotiation of a "Concordat," on the basis of Denaut's petition, whenever a successor to Plessis had to be appointed.

Sewell's opposition to the proposed legislative union of the Canadas in 1822 was noticed in the assembly (he had engineered defeat of a motion for it in the Legislative Council), and at the end of the session of 1823 Dalhousie recorded that "the whole House of Assembly in body has dined at the private house of the Chief Justice"; only Papineau declined. Under the temporary administration of Burton in 1824–25 the political tensions that had characterized Dalhousie's administration decreased to such an extent that even Papineau was constrained to exchange invitations with Sewell. However, Burton's efforts to appease Canadian nationalists made the chief justice uneasy. In early 1825 Sewell suggested the rejection of Papineau as speaker of the assembly, but Burton refused. When Burton worked out a compromise supply bill with the house, Sewell abstained from voting on it in the Legislative Council; although he disliked the bill, he believed that it was politically and constitutionally acceptable and so strongly supported in council that a negative vote on his part would have been useless. Disenchanted, Dalhousie later accused him of "trimming and manœuvring."

Sewell was more clearly conciliatory towards the Canadians while on the bench in the early 1820s. Before a grand jury in 1822 he applauded the growing acceptance of both French civil and English criminal law as "the triumph of good sense over national prejudice." When the post of advocate general came open in early 1823 he recommended that it be reserved for "a Canadian gentleman of the first standing at the Bar." Sewell's influence in improving the quality of the judiciary remained strong, but his presence in court declined for reasons of health. At the same time the judicial system was increasingly taxed. The number of causes handled by the provincial courts of King's Bench had swelled from 1,103 in 1808 to 3,409 in 1826. In 1828 Sewell warned Dalhousie that the courts had become overwhelmed.

The bench had other problems. The refusal of the assembly from the early 1820s to provide what the judges deemed reasonable pensions to Monk and Isaac Ogden spurred them, led by Sewell, to seek financial independence of that house. Appealing to the Colonial Office, they invoked the necessity for an independent judiciary and also requested appointment during good behaviour rather than royal pleasure. Sewell argued that the colonial judiciary had matured to such a point that the judges should be placed on the same footing as their British counterparts. The Colonial Office agreed to the change of tenure on condition that the assembly guarantee a satisfactory salary and pension. The assembly, on the other hand, demanded that the judges be excluded from the councils and sought to use the establishment of a fixed salary and pension as a springboard for its claim to control crown revenues. The independence of the judiciary, consequently, became one more issue of controversy in the 1820s and 1830s.

Sewell's place in the social and cultural life of Quebec continued to grow. In 1824 he was obliged to purchase the Union Hotel for £4,215 at a sheriff's auction in order to protect his large investment in it. Having no desire that he or his sons go into business, he leased the hotel. The same year he won the Royal Institution's prize for service to education, and in 1825–26 acted as president of the institution. At Dalhousie's urging, he and his brother-in-law, William Smith, had been instrumental in founding the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in 1824. Named a vice-president in March 1824, he gave the society's first paper in May, a study of French law before 1663 as it applied to the colony. He was president of the society in 1830 and 1831.

Sewell, whose wife was Presbyterian, supported St Andrew's Church financially, but was an active, devout Anglican. For many years he presided over the Quebec branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and he was a leading member of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. By 1824 the cathedral was too small and Sewell offered to build a chapel of ease on condition that he and his heirs could name the incumbent. Bishop Mountain accepted the offer and Sewell named as incumbent his son Edmund Willoughby. Sewell purchased a lot on Rue Saint-Stanislas and had the building, called Holy Trinity chapel, constructed on the model of Ranelagh Chapel in London. He spent more than £3,500 on the building which, opened in November 1825, could seat 800. Dalhousie pronounced it "neat," but found Edmund Willoughby "unfit & unqualified."

In June 1826 Sewell and his entire family became extremely depressed by the death of a 12-year-old daughter. Leaving his three eldest boys to manage his affairs, he took his wife and other children to England and the Continent. The family arrived in London in early August, and three weeks later Sewell was received by Bathurst at his estate in Cirencester. Immediately afterwards the Sewells embarked for France and Belgium. In Calais Sewell was taken by the mayor for a Frenchman, and in Paris he bought 600 volumes of French law for the Advocates' Library at Quebec. By the end of September the family was back in London.

Sewell made frequent trips to Cirencester and spent many hours at the Colonial Office, being consulted on behalf of the Royal Institution, the provincial judges, and Dalhousie. Although he presented Dalhousie's views on Burton's supply bill, he admitted the bill's validity. He persuaded the Colonial Office to accede to the assembly's demand that Britain reimburse the colony for the defalcation of Receiver General John Caldwell, but the Treasury refused to pay. He learned that the ministry would not consider major constitutional reforms as Dalhousie wished; however, he obtained authorization for the governor to borrow from unappropriated funds under the assembly's control to pay expenses, a major gain for the executive.

The Sewells returned to Quebec in late spring 1827. The rest had restored Sewell's combativeness. He virtually wrote the provocative speech with which Dalhousie opened the legislature in late 1827 and successfully advised the governor to take the momentous step of refusing the assembly's election of Papineau as its speaker. Not surprising, he was the subject of strong attacks in petitions drawn up in 1828 by Patriote constitutional committees. To a charge that the public had little confidence in the Court of King's Bench at Quebec, he replied that in 20 years only 153 of 4,000 decisions had been appealed and one-half of those solely to delay execution. Sewell's identification with Dalhousie extended to chairing a committee to erect a monument to James Wolfe and Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, which the governor viewed as a testimonial to his own administration.

Dalhousie was replaced at the head of the government in 1828 by Sir James Kempt, who in March 1829 negotiated with the assembly a supply bill modelled on that passed by Burton in 1825. Sewell whole-heartedly backed the measure, even employing his double vote in the Legislative Council. Late in 1829 Papineau thought that "the chief justice would like to make peace in his old age." Indeed, when in 1830 it became clear that the Colonial Office accepted the exclusion of the judges from the Executive Council in partial fulfilment of a demand by the assembly that they be excluded from both councils, Sewell readily offered his resignation; it was accepted on 14 October. He remained speaker of the Legislative Council, but in a supposedly non-partisan advisory capacity.

Nevertheless, Sewell viewed Kempt's administration as fuelling "the ponderous Car of Democracy" at the expense of the royal prerogative. Increasingly he registered his dissent from conciliatory votes in the Legislative Council, and in 1834, after years of debate, that body finally deprived him of his double vote and left him only the right to break ties. In 1831, however, he had successfully rallied opposition there to the fabriques bill. Earlier that year, when the council, acting under doubtful legal authority, had arrested the Patriote editors Ludger Duvernay and Daniel Tracey for having published articles critical of it, Sewell had reprimanded the two men before sending them to jail. Subsequently the Quebec Court of King's Bench refused them a writ of habeas corpus. These incidents provoked public outrage. A crowd, singing "La Marseillaise" and "La Parisienne," marched to Sewell's mansion; recalling the mob of 1774, Sewell was frightened.
The hardening of Sewell's political views in the late 1820s and early 1830s was probably a reaction to the radicalization of the Patriote party and was reflected in an opinion expressed to Governor Lord Aylmer (Whitworth-Aylmer) in November 1834 that no more Canadians should be appointed to the bench. Aylmer heeded Sewell's advice, but his successor, Lord Gosford (Acheson), did not. In the mean time, Sewell's tireless efforts on behalf of his sons – three Sewells were on the establishment of the Legislative Council in 1832 – were satirized in a popular Patriote song, "C'est la faute à Papineau." Sewell played only a minor role during and after the rebellions of 1837–38 because most of the disturbances occurred in the Montreal district. In court he articulated an extreme royalist interpretation of the law of treason, but he issued writs of habeas corpus, before that recourse was suspended, to a number of Quebec Patriotes, including politician Augustin-Norbert Morin and the painter Joseph Légaré. He was reappointed to the Executive Council by Governor Lord Durham (Lambton) in June 1838, but he remained only until Durham's departure in November. In his report Durham singled out Sewell's federal plan of 1814.

Meanwhile, in declining health, Sewell had resigned as chief justice on 20 Oct. 1838. He was replaced by Stuart. Sixty-two members of the bar underlined in an address the progress that their profession had made under Sewell's leadership. Indeed, Sewell's reputation as a judge and legal thinker had reached into the United States: he had been consulted in 1822 on the preparation of a penal code for Louisiana; eight years later he was elected to the prestigious American Philosophical Society; in 1832 Harvard University conferred on him an honorary lld; in 1835 the Massachusetts Historical Society elected him a corresponding member; and about 1839 the American Jurist and Law Magazine (Boston) commented that Lower Canadian cases "derive their chief interest from the learned judgements of that enlightened and accomplished Jurist Chief Justice Sewell."

During the 1830s Sewell had continued to add threads to the cultural fabric of Quebec. In 1831–32, to save another substantial investment, he had purchased Nicolas-François Mailhot's Royal Circus and hotel. He transformed the circus into a theatre, employing local artists such as Légaré to do the decoration, and then leased it. Known as the Theatre Royal, it opened in February 1832 with a benefit play for the poor, Sewell himself apparently having written the welcome address, which underlined the moral and social vocation of the theatre. The venture did not thrive, but the successive lessees bore the brunt of the losses. Sewell also founded a quartet with himself and Archibald Campbell as violinists, Louis-Édouard Glackmeyer as flautist, and J. Harvicker as cellist; they gave concerts, cultivated a taste for classical music at Quebec, and formed a generation of amateur musicians. Finally, Sewell gave lodging in 1838 to the Italian miniaturist Gerome Fassio, with whom he conversed in fluent Italian.

Sewell's family life had remained idyllic, occasionally burdened by his depressions, but more often lightened by his humour. In old age, as in youth, he wrote poems "For Mrs Sewell My own dear Jewell," and to the end he generously supported his children in financial or other difficulties.

Somewhat above the average height at five feet seven inches, handsome, intelligent, witty, and bilingual, Sewell was an attractive man. Aubert de Gaspé considered him "one of the most estimable men I ever knew." Unlike many of his contemporaries in the tight, personal world of Lower Canadian politics, he was not mean-minded. Although painfully sensitive to criticism, he could stand back philosophically and look at politics with humour. When his office as speaker of the Legislative Council was turned into an orderly room for a militia regiment, he wrote:

We know the Assembly was always in fact
A disorderly House to the Letter
And 'tis firmly established by many an act
That their Speakers own Room was no better.
The reverse in the Council, The whole world have seen
There order was ever in Bloom
And the Speaker's apartment, at all Times has been,
And still is, an orderly Room.

Order and the means of establishing it were the judicial and political objects of this loyalists' son, traumatized early in life by mob disorder and later profoundly troubled by the seeming bloody chaos of the French revolution. Sewell feared the potential tyranny of the people unrestrained by religion, education, and the ownership of property. Neither the French language nor the French law disturbed him, for he mastered both, and he was not a religious bigot; but the Canadians in their masses, in their presumed ignorance and malleability at the hands of demagogues or priests, frightened him in their potential for revolution or despotism.

His own family and the means of establishing it were scarcely less important in Sewell's mind. He was prepared to suffer terrible attacks to ensure the future of his sons in Lower Canada, and in this determination he represented a class of office holders who had decided to make the colony their country. A man of subtlety and suppleness – for which Ryland detested him – Sewell was less rigid in action, if not views, than many of his colleagues in the English party. At the same time he suspected conciliatory governors of wanting to buy peace and an honourable retirement to Britain or advancement at the expense of the British colonial population. Advocating a well-ordered administration of justice, oligarchic rule by British colonists, anglicization of the colony, and maintenance of the royal prerogative, Sewell attempted to erect the four walls of a fortress that he believed would protect the British community; he thus shared the "garrison mentality" of more rigid colleagues. In addition, through his participation in the founding of social organizations and in his efforts to foster a cultural life in the colony, Sewell helped to form a collective conscience in the colony's British population. Reinforced by immigration and economic growth after the War of 1812, they gradually moved out of their defensive shell and attempted to fashion a colonial society in their own image. This development, resisted by Canadian nationalists, may have been an important underlying factor leading to the rebellions of 1837–38.

F. Murray Greenwood and James H. Lambert in Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Jonathan Sewell is the author of An abstract from precedents of proceedings in the British House of Commons (Quebec, 1792); Orders and rules of practice in the Court of King’s Bench, for the district of Quebec, Lower Canada (Quebec, 1809); Rules and orders of practice in the provincial Court of Appeals (Quebec, 1811; 2nd ed., 1818); A plan for the federal union of British provinces in North America (London, 1814); An essay on the juridical history of France, so far as it relates to the law of the province of Lower-Canada . . . (Quebec, 1824); and, with John Beverley Robinson, Plan for a general legislative union of the British provinces in North America (London, (1824)), repub. in General union of the British provinces of North America (London, 1824).³

In 1832 he received an Honorary LL.D. from Harvard. (Information from Professor Charles Donahue, Jr.).¹

Chief Justice Jonathan/3 Sewell died on 11 November 1839 in Quebec City at the age of 73.⁴ He was buried on 15 November 1839 in new family vault in the burial ground of St. John suburb, Quebec City, a monument depicting him, sculpted in London at a cost of £600, was erected by Harriet in Holy Trinity chapel. He died intestate, but Harriet was guaranteed one-third of the estate by her marriage contract; the remainder was divided equally among the ten surviving children and two orphaned grandchildren (counting as one). Sewell’s mansion reflected not only the wealth of its former owner but also his views and tastes: a picture of Dalhousie graced a nursery wall, two violins lay in the study, the wine cellar was plentifully stocked, and the library boasted 1,476 volumes (of which 1,120 were on law, politics, or public administration). The estate also included 14 properties in Upper Town (almost all acquired in the 1830s), a country seat at Auvergne, land on the Rivière Saint-Charles, and large tracts of wild land, which Sewell had begun to settle, in Ham and Tingwick townships. With landed properties worth £20,692, bonds in England worth £16,020, a large deposit in the Quebec Bank, and accounts receivable, his estate had a value of £39,209 after deduction for bad debts.^4,5 He was re-interred circa 1870 at Mount Herman Cemetery, Sillery, Quebec.⁵ (J.E.C. Brierly in Simpson: Bigraphical Dictionary of Common Law states that he had 22 children, issue of his marriage with Henrietta).⁶

     Jonathan Mitchell Sewall was born on 17 August 1748 in Salem, Massachusetts. He was the son of Mitchell Sewall and Elizabeth Price. "A lawyer of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, popular in his own day as a verse-writer. His verse is for the most part forgotten, but his song, War and Washington, is yet remembered . . . ." (Oscar Fay Adams, A Dictionary of American Authors, 337 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899))

"Sewall, Jonathan Mitchell . . . lawyer and occasional poet, was born in Salem, Mass., and reared in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was a grand-nephew of Samuel Sewall the diarist. His parents died during his early childhood and he was adopted by a bachelor uncle, Stephen Sewall, chief justice of Massachusetts, who died when Jonathan was twelve years old. Young Sewall is reputed to have been a student at Harvard, although there are no official records of this or any other schooling. After clerking in a store, he studied law in a Portsmouth office, was admitted to the bar, and appointed register of probate for Grafton County, New Hampshire, but it is not known that he ever took office

He practiced law in Portsmouth until his death, and took a prominent part in the civic and literary life of the town. He became well-know as a Revolutionary War poet, and besides achieving a local reputation for appropriate epitaphs, composed a number of laudatory poems to Washington - notably, his Eulogy on the Late General Washington, published in 1800." (Stanley J. Kunitz & Howard Haycraft (eds.), American Authors 1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American Literature, 683 (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1938))

Sewall studied law under Judge John Pickering of Portsmouth. He is reputed to have been "an extremely modest man", and many of his writings were printed anonymously. Principal among these anonymous productions are a Fourth of July oration, delivered in Portsmouth in 1788, and later printed at the request of the citizens (this was the first Independence Day oration delivered at Portsmouth); and The Versification of Washington Farewell Address, published in 1798. He wrote many epigrams, epilogues, and poems of a political cast, besides his patriotic lyrics. He also wrote paraphrases of Ossian and an Eulogy on George Washington, delivered at St. John's Church, Portsmouth, Dec. 31, 1799. His Miscellaneous Poems with Specimens from the Author's Manuscript Version of the Poems of Ossian, was published in 1801. He was a noted wit and much sought after for his social qualities. It is said that his last years were darkened by intemperance. In politics he was a federalist. Nothing can be learned of his immediate family, except that a daughter survived him

It is said that his talents became eclipsed and his days shortened by an appetite for drink.

Poetry:
Jonathan Mitchell Sewall, Verses occasioned by reading the answer of the president of the United-States, to the House of Representatives, requesting certain papers relative to the treaty with Great-Britain (Boston: (s.n.): Printed in the year 1797)

___________________, A versification of President Washington's excellent farewell-address, to the citizens of the United States (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Printed and sold by Charles Peirce, at the Columbian bookstore, no.5, Daniel-Street, 1798)

__________________, Eulogy on the Late General Washington (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Printed by William Treadwell, 1800) ("pronounced at St. John's Church, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, 31st December, 1799. At the request of the inhabitants") (28 pp.)

__________________, Miscellaneous Poems: With several specimens from the author's manuscript version of the Poems of Ossian (Portsmouth: William Treadwell, & Co., 1801)

Songs:
Jonathan Mitchell Sewall, "Gen. Washington: a new favourite song, at the American camp: To the tune of the British grenadiers (United States: s.n., 1776?) (1 sheet) ("A New song: to the tune of "British grenadiers." Boston: Sold (by Thomas and John Fleet) at the Bible and Heart in Cornhill, (1776)) (1 broadside)("A favorite song at the Columbian Camp, in the late glorious and victorious struggle for liberty," Printed and sold at the Printing Office in Salem: by Ezekiel Russell, 1776) (broadside)

___________________, "Songs for the celebration of American independence, 1806," (1806) (1 sheet)

Oration:
Jonathan Mitchell Sewall, An Oration, delivered at Portsmouth, New-Hampshire, on the fourth of Uly, 1788: being the anniversary of American independence. / By one of the inhabitants (Portsmouth (New Hampshire.): Printed by George Jerry Osborne, for the subscribers, 1788)

Writings:
Jonathan Mitchell Sewall, A Parody on Some of the Most Striking Passages in a Late Pamphlet, entitled "A letter to a Federalist" (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Printed at the Oracle Press, 1805) (Vernon H. Quincey, esq. (pseud.))

Bibliography:
A.M. Payson & A. Laighton, "The Poets of Portsmouth," Port Folio (June 25, 1808).


Jonathan Mitchell Sewall married firstly Sarah Wood on 14 November 1774 in Haverhill, New Hampshire.¹ Jonathan Mitchell Sewall married secondly Sarah March.² Jonathan Mitchell Sewall appears on the census of 1790 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with one boy under sixteen and five females.³ He died on 29 March 1808 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the age of 59 (Hazlett giving the day previously).^4,1

     Henry Sewall was born on 8 March 1719/20.² He was the son of Samuel Sewall and Rebecca Dudley.¹ Henry Sewall was baptised on 20 March 1720.³ He graduated in 1738 from Harvard.⁴ He was a said to be "devoting himself to agriculture."⁴ He was a Justice of the Peace for the County of Suffolk.⁴ He married Ann White, daughter of Samuel White and Anna Drew, on 18 August 1743.⁴ Henry Sewall died on 29 May 1771 in Brookline, Massachusetts, at the age of 51 "the worthy descendent of an ancient and honourable family. He had a natural aversion to the noise and vanity of the world, and preferred the silent walks of private and retired life; where he exhibited with an animal lustre, the virtues of the father, friend, and neighbour. He was cheerful in his disposition; gay without levity; rich without pride; and without ostentation an honest man". Essex Gazette.^5,6 He was buried in Walnut Street Cemetery, Brookline, Massachusetts.³

     Ann White was born on 28 March 1724 in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Samuel White and Anna Drew.¹ Ann White married Henry Sewall, son of Samuel Sewall and Rebecca Dudley, on 18 August 1743.² Ann White died on 5 January 1755 in Brookline, Massachusetts, at the age of 30.³

     Samuel Sewall was born on 2 May 1715 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Rev. Dr. Joseph Sewall and Elizabeth Walley. Samuel Sewall graduated in 1733 from Harvard. Merchant of Boston.¹ He was a Deacon of the Old South Church of which his father was Pastor.² He married Elizabeth Quincy, daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy and Elizabeth Wendell, on 18 May 1749 in Boston, Massachusetts, the service was conducted by the Rev. Joseph Sewall D.D.^3,4 Samuel Sewall died on 12 January 1771 or 19 January 1771 of an apoplectic fit at the house of the Rev. Mr. Prentice of Holliston, Mass. where he was boarding.^5,6

      Loyalist and absentee.³ Elizabeth Quincy was born on 15 October 1729.² She was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy and Elizabeth Wendell.^1,2 Elizabeth Quincy married Samuel Sewall, son of Rev. Dr. Joseph Sewall and Elizabeth Walley, on 18 May 1749 in Boston, Massachusetts, the service was conducted by the Rev. Joseph Sewall D.D.^3,4 Elizabeth Quincy died on 15 February 1770 at the age of 40 years and four months.^5,6

     Stephen Sewall was born on 18 August 1708 in Newbury, Massachusetts.¹ He was the son of Henry Sewall and Elizabeth Titcomb. Stephen Sewall graduated in June 1731 from Harvard B.A.² He was a schoolmaster "an eminent teacher of youth" at Newbury.^3,4 He married Ann Little, daughter of Tristram Little, on 27 December 1739 in Newbury, Massachusetts, however she is listed in the VRs as Mrs Ann Little.^3,5 Stephen Sewall died on 18 September 1795 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, at the age of 87.^3,6

     Hon. David Sewall was born on 7 October 1735 in York, Maine.^1,2,3 He was the son of Capt. Samuel Sewall and Sarah Batchelder. He graduated from Harvard, Bachelor of Arts, 1755, and Master of Arts July 1758; ranked tenth in a class of twenty-five. Studied law with Judge William Parker of Portsmouth, New Hampshire (whose daughter it was that he later married) and was admitted to the bar at the Superior Court of the Massachusets Bay at York in the June term 1763. Practiced in York where he was the only college-educated lawyer in the county. He was collector of excise for York County, and on 28 May 1766 was appointed Register for the probate of wills for York county; appointed Justice of the Peace, 4 November 1767 and sworn into office 6 January 1768. He was councillor for the Province of Maine, 1766-77; justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts, 1777-81, and judge of the Supreme judicial court, 1781-89. He was an elector at large for Massachusetts in 1789, and was judge for the U.S. District Court of Maine, 1789-1817. The honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by Bowdoin College in 1812. He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical society; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a trustee of Bowdoin College, 1794-1815.¹ Hon. David Sewall married firstly Mary Parker, daughter of Hon. William Parker and Elizabeth Grafton, on 17 December 1762 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.⁴ Hon. David Sewall married secondly Elizabeth Langdon, daughter of Rev. Dr. Samuel Langdon and Elizabeth Brown, on 2 November 1790 at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire.⁵ Hon. David Sewall retired from public life in 1818.⁶ He died on 21 October 1825 in York, Maine, at the age of 90 s.p. or 22 October according to his gravestone.^3,7

     Major Samuel Sewall was born on 14 September 1724 in York, Maine, or 24 Sep. 1724 (Sinnett gives 24 October 1724).^1,2,3,4 He was the son of Capt. Samuel Sewall and Sarah Batchelder. Major Samuel Sewall died on 23 July 1815 in York, Maine, at the age of 90 he was unmarried.^1,5 An inscription on a stone in the old burying ground in York, on the west side of York River reads "In memory of Maj. Samuel Sewall, an architect of the first class, from whose fabrications great benefit has resulted to society. He was benevolent, hospitable and generous without ostentation and pious without enthusiasm. He died July 28, 1815, ae. 91."⁶

Little is known about the enigmatic "jack-of-all trades" Samuel Sewall, who built everything from coffins to cradles in town in the late 1700s, but local history buffs are slowly unraveling the mystery. Locals, historians, and even some of Sewall’s descendants packed into the York Public Library’s meeting room last week to hear Old York Historical Society’s curator Tom Johnson present these findings in a brown bag lecture called "Samuel Sewall: The Man and His Work."

Sewall was born in York in 1724 to a father of the same name and his mother, Sarah Bachellor Titcomb. He died on July 23, 1815, at the age of 91, and was buried in his family’s plot on Southside Road, near the Elizabeth Perkins House, one of the many structures in town to which his craftsmanship has been attributed. The Sewall House, which is thought to be his house, is across the street, facing Seabury Road, on Sewall’s Hill. Other structures he built or furnished between the 1740s and 1780s include the First Parish Church, on York Street; the Moulton-Bennett House, on York Street; the Ramsdell House, on Lindsay Road; and the Grow-Steedman House, on Clark Lane. However, said Johnson, the edifice that was truly the "Rosetta Stone" for the identification of Sewall’s work was the Sayward-Wheeler House, on Route 103, which was named after its owner, the wealthiest merchant in town at the time, Jonathan Sayward.

"The talents of Samuel Sewall were rediscovered by scholarly researchers in 1977, when Myrna Kaye and Brock Jobe, of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, identified him as one of the workers on Jonathan Sayward’s house in York Harbor," said Johnson. A Sayward diary entry dated Nov. 10, 1761, notes paying "Samuel Sewell the joiner 45 pounds old tenor toward work on my house," and led to inquiries of molding profiles within the home, which linked Sewall to similar crafts in town. "These molding profiles, in turn, were found to be identical in profile to moldings on a number of furniture pieces in the house," said Johnson. "Thus, for the first time since the 18th century, bridging Sewall with his cabinetwork." Johnson said the most interesting piece found in the Sayward-Wheeler House is a high chest, which has a number of moldings crafted from the same planes in the parlor. To add to the uniqueness of each of Sewall’s projects, he made his own tools and templates, making many of the cuts and curves in local wooden antiques identifiable with his name. "From this first identification has resulted the credible attribution to over 50 known pieces of furniture to Sewall, ranging from sophisticated highboys ... to relatively simple drop leaf tables," added Johnson.

Distinctive corner cupboards, or beaufats, as they were called in the 18th century, are thought to be one of Sewall’s "hallmarks", said Johnson, along with his pilasters with fluting and stop-fluting, pegged drawer bottoms, massive back base brackets, and "horse bone" legs. At a local auction two years ago, Johnson uncovered what may have been his most exciting discovery yet. On the side of the bottom drawer of a Northeast Chest, made of unfigured maple and the familiar top and bracket cut-outs, was a color card of stain finishes used by Sewall. "Every known piece of Sewall furniture, with an original finish I’ve looked at since we found this, have matched one of these colors," he said. These designs are beacons signaling Sewall’s work, but some furniture that has been uncovered reveals only hints of these schemes, leading Johnson and others to believe that they were cut and fashioned by a different hand.

While doing some research on Sewall’s genealogy, Johnson came across an unattributed file stating that his father Samuel Sewall Sr., "had been trained as a furniture maker in Boston." From this, historians now conclude that Sewall learned much of his skill from his father, and that some of the pieces found, which do not exactly match the son’s craftsmanship, may be the work of an older Sewall. "Samuel the younger would have naturally picked up a number of his father’s framing and finishing methods, but with maturation, might have changed some of them to suit his needs and skill," said Johnson. It’s difficult to draw these conclusions, however, because little of Sewall’s physical evidence exists, and few of his personal belongings have been uncovered.

Local private collections include two of his needlework wallets embroidered with his name, pewter plates associated with his ownership and use, and an original survey transit made by him. The tripod to the transit was given to OYHS a year after the Old Gaol Museum first opened in 1900, and the group also has an English gold-cased watch, and a sabre sword which was presented to Sewall by the local militia for his services during the War of 1812, when he was in his late 80s. These artifacts, and others, are currently on display downstairs at the York Public Library.

Of course, Sewall wasn’t known only for his woodworking expertise, he was also celebrated for his engineering work on Sewall’s Bridge, which still spans the York River today. "It was the first pile-driven drawbridge built and engineered in America, in 1761," said Johnson. "This didn’t happen in the leading metropolitan areas of engineering and scientific thinking, such as Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, but it was here in York. In fact, the Boston engineers were so impressed by the design that they brought Sewall to the growing city and had him build a near-duplicate of the structure over the Charles River in 1785-86." Records show that the design influenced similar bridges in New England, and even one in Paris, France. Though the bridge has been reconstructed several times since its creation, five original pieces from the structure are now housed at the OYHS, and many other residents have obtained the relics as well.

Sewall never married, leaving no known descendants that any historian knows of, but as Johnson said, "his brothers and uncles raised large families and the name lives on in town."

by Marci Hait
mhait@seacoastonline.com
The York Weekly, March 3 2004.

     Colonel Dummer Sewall was born on 12 December 1737 in York, Maine, (or 17 Dec. 1737).^1,2,3,4 He was the son of Capt. Samuel Sewall and Sarah Batchelder. When he was 19 years old Dummer Sewall enlisted in the Provincial Army, and served at the reduction of Louisburg where he was appointed ensign. On his return he was promoted to lieutenant and ordered to Canada, where he served in the army under General Wolfe and General Amherst until the conquest of the French possessions in North America was complete, participating in the battles which culminated in the conquest of Québec, 1759.

After his marriage he moved to that part of Georgetown, Maine which was later incorporated into the city of Bath. The date of this move is given as 1762. He built a log house on the eastern side of what is now the High Street in Bath, this was opposite the spot where later on he built the large and commodious home which is still standing. As soon as hostilities were threatened with Great Britain he was selected by the people of his district is one of the Committee of Safety and he was associated with Brigadier Samuel Thompson in the performance of these duties. He was also a delegate to the provincial Congress which assembled at Watertown, Massachusetts and by the council administrating the affairs of the state he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment commanded by Colonel Samuel Mc Cobb. With this regiment he marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts and joined the Continental Army under Washington, soon after he was appointed Muster Master of the district of the Maine, the duties of which he performed during the remainder of the war. He was a magistrate at Lincoln County, Maine appointed by the first governor of that state and continued as such by successive appointments until his death. He was also for many years a special justice the Court of Common Pleas for Lincoln County. Shortly after the adoption of the Constitution of Massachusetts Colonel Sewall was elected senator from Lincoln County, he was a member of the Convention of 1788 which was called by the State to ratify the Constitution of the United States and was one of the Committee of Compromise appointed at the suggestion of General Hancock towards the close of the session to consider and report such amendments as would make the proposed form of government more acceptable. Without those the Constitution would not have been ratified by the Convention.

He was the first postmaster in Bath, serving during the period from the establishment of the regular mail until 1805. He was deeply interested in educational matters and was one of the first Overseers of Bowdoin College and served as trustee and treasurer of the college from 1799 until he resigned in 1806. He was a deeply sincere and religious man, and was one of the founders and a Deacon of the Winter Street Congregational Church in Bath when it was called the Old North Church. Over 300 of his family letters written in the last 35 years of his life have been preserved and give a vivid picture of his own spiritual nature and his keen interest in religious matters. He was noted for his amiable temper, his generous heart, his decisive character, his sound judgment and for more practical matters and for his great helpfulness.⁵

Colonel Dummer Sewall married Mary Dunning, daughter of William Dunning and Deborah Donnell, on 18 December 1760 in York, Maine, conducted by the Rev. Mr. Isaac Lyman. The Vital records, 1779-1903 Bath, give a date of 16 December at Bath.⁶ Colonel Dummer Sewall died on 6 April 1832 in Bath, Maine, at the age of 94 (DAR gives 1833 and Maine Fam. Vol 3 p. 249 gives 4 April 1832 whilst Sinnett gives 5 April 1832).^1,2,4,7

     Rev. Samuel M. Sewall was born on 6 April 1772 in Bath, Maine.¹ He was the son of Colonel Dummer Sewall and Mary Dunning. Rev. Samuel M. Sewall married Mary Lombard, daughter of Joseph Lombard and Hannah Booker, on 27 October 1794.^1,2 He was a Ordained to the pastoral charge of the congregational church in Summer, Maine and for more than 40 years a preacher of the gospel.³ Rev. Samuel M. Sewall died on 15 March 1851 at the age of 78.³

      First Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages at Harvard.¹ Professor Stephen Sewall was born on 4 April 1734 in York, Maine.^1,2 He was the son of Nicholas Sewall and Mehitable Storer. Professor Stephen Sewall graduated in 1761 from Harvard A.B., A.M. 1764. Taught school in Cambridge, Mass., was librarian at Harvard, 1762-63 and instructor in Hebrew 1761-64.¹ He married Rebecca Wigglesworth, daughter of Rev. Edward Wigglesworth and Rebecca Coolidge, on 9 August 1763 in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, there was a child of the marriage, who died in infancy.^1,3 He was a Whig representative in the general court in 1777. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the author of: Greek and Latin poems in the "Pietas et Gratulatio" (1761); Hebrew Grammar (1763); Funeral Oration in Latin on Edward Holyoke (1769); Funeral Oration in English on Prof. John Winthrop (1779); Latin version of the first book of Edward Young's "Night Thoughts" (1780); Carmina sacra quce Latine Graoeceque condidit America (1789); Scripture Account of the Shechinah (1794); and The Scripture History Relating to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (1796).¹ Professor Stephen Sewall died on 23 July 1804 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 70 after a long and gradual decay.⁴

     Henry Sewall was born on 26 March 1727 in York, Maine.^2,3 He was the son of Nicholas Sewall and Mehitable Storer. Henry Sewall married Abigail Titcomb, daughter of Joseph Titcomb and Sarah Batchelder, on 8 December 1749 in York, Maine, the marriage was performed by Jeremy Moulton.⁴ Henry Sewall died on 2 November 1792 in York, Maine, at the age of 65.⁵ He was buried in The Old Grave Yard, York, the inscription on his gravestone reads "In memory of Mr. Henry Sewall, Bricklayer, Who departed this Life Nov 2d 1792 in the 66th year of his age. He was an Honest man and a Christian .....⁵ "

     Abigail Titcomb was born on 20 October 1718 in Newbury, Massachusetts.¹ She was the daughter of Joseph Titcomb and Sarah Batchelder. Abigail Titcomb was living in Newbury, Massachusetts.² She married Henry Sewall, son of Nicholas Sewall and Mehitable Storer, on 8 December 1749 in York, Maine, the marriage was performed by Jeremy Moulton.³ Abigail Titcomb was buried in The Old Grave Yard, York, "Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Abigail, widow of Mr Henry Sewall and daught of Mr Titcomb of Newbury, who died July 27th 1777 aged 77. a patient and exemplary Christian."⁴
She died on 27 July 1797 in York, Maine, at the age of 78 (Sinnett gives a date of 27 July 1798) but the death is reported in the 19 August 1797 edition of The Oracle of the Day.^4,5

     John Sewall was born on 6 July 1716 in York, Maine.^1,2 He was the son of Nicholas Sewall and Mehitable Storer. H