“Carried Miss Suky Sheaffe to Hampton”

In early 1769 William Sheaffe, Deputy Collector of Customs for Boston, refused permission for his daughter Susannah and Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth to get married. After all, as I described yesterday, they had just met the previous October, and she was only fifteen.

But, according to Sheaffe family traditions recorded by Lorenzo Sabine, Susannah had had an ally:

Her governess, to whom she entrusted her grief, espoused her cause, and favored immediate union; and the result accordingly was, the flight of the three to Rhode Island, where the loving pair pronounced their nuptial vows.

Usually Boston couples eloped across the border to New Hampshire if they wanted to marry in secret, and indeed that’s where the merchant John Rowe said Ponsonby and Susannah went in his diary entry for 21 Apr 1769:

Capt. Molesworth of the 29th. carried Miss Suky Sheaffe to Hampton.

But Rowe may just have been guessing. The young printer John Boyle also noted this marriage in his “Journal of Occurrences in Boston” on 27 April, perhaps the day they returned to Boston.

Ponsonby and Susannah Molesworth had a child baptized at Trinity Church on 23 Feb 1770. They called this boy William Carr Molesworth, honoring the colonel in charge of the 29th Regiment (as well as, arguably, the Deputy Collector).

Ten days later, a corporal from Capt. Ponsonby’s company, William Wemys, and several other soldiers from the 29th were caught up in the shooting that became known as the Boston Massacre. To defuse tensions, army commanders moved the whole regiment to Castle William, and then to New Jersey, and eventually to Florida.

Capt. Molesworth went with them, but what about his young wife and child? A incomplete genealogy of the family says that Ponsonby and Susannah Molesworth had a child named Eliza about 1772—perhaps in Boston. But maybe the young wife traveled with her husband. In any event, Sabine concludes:

Molesworth sold his commission [and retired from the army] in 1776, and in December of that year was in England with his wife. Their married life proved uncommonly happy; and they lived to see their children’s children.

Which makes us think how relatively rare it was in that time to see one’s grandchildren grow to a significant age. Susannah died in 1834, Ponsonby sometime before that.

Back in Boston, William Sheaffe “died of a fit of the Palsey” in November 1771, in the words of artist Henry Pelham. He left his widow and several other children in poor straits.

COMING UP: What happened to the Sheaffes?

Capt. Molesworth Falls in Love

According to Sheaffe family tradition, which was apparently first published in the 1864 edition of Lorenzo Sabine’s American Loyalists, Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth spotted Susannah Sheaffe on the first day he arrived in Boston, 1 Oct 1768.

He was marching his company of the 29th Regiment off their transport ship and up Long Wharf. (See those little red figures in the print above?) She and her little sisters were watching from the balcony of their house. And he immediately fell in love.

That’s a lovely “How I Met Your Grandmother” story. And even in the spotty genealogical records of colonial Boston, we can find some more detail to fill it out.

Susannah’s father was William Sheaffe, born in 1705 in Charlestown. He became Deputy Collector of Customs for the port of Boston, a mid-level position which meant he usually ended up doing all the work for less pay. (Especially in the 1750s, when the Collector was Sir Harry Frankland, who was busy chasing barmaids.)

Sheaffe was also the Customs official who handled writs of assistance following the latterly famous court case that we discuss at the Old State House on Wednesday. Sheaffe tried to help search Daniel Malcom’s house in 1766, as described back here. He never seems to have become as unpopular as some of his colleagues, but it wasn’t an easy job.

On 1 Oct 1752, Sheaffe married Susannah Child at Trinity Church. He was in his later forties, twice widowed, and she was in her very early twenties. Seven months later, their first child was baptized at the same church; this little William didn’t survive to adulthood.

In the spring of 1754 Susannah Sheaffe was born, followed by the usual pattern of one child every one to three years until their mother reached menopause. Three died young, and eleven survived to adulthood. (The best recreation of their family tree, though still missing little William, appeared in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1971.)

Susannah was thus fourteen years old when Capt. Molesworth reportedly spotted her. The family lore says that she had just turned fifteen when the captain asked for her hand in marriage. William Sheaffe thought that was too young, and refused.

TOMORROW: The young couple find help from an unexpected source.

(Picture of the British army landing in 1768 above courtesy of the Boston Public Library’s Flickr collection. http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/ / CC BY 2.0)