Francis Grant - Susannah Coombs Family Group

What We Know About This Family

An Overview of Their Lives

Susannah Coombs was the daughter of a fisherman who like many others in early Marblehead owned a lot of land. She and Francis Grant married and had several children, almost all of whom grew to adulthood and had families of their own. We have records of the births and marriages of the children, but as is frequent, not the deaths. Francis left a will that named his five surviving children: Henry, John, Mary (the last born), Sarah, and Jane. He left one-sixth of his estate to the children of his recently deceased son, Francis, Jr., but interestingly nothing to the grandchildren of his other deceased children. Susannah survived him.

About the Children

• Mary Grant married Thomas Dodd. They had one child in March 1692 before she died soon after he was born. Thomas married Abigail Pickworth the following year, and they had eleven children. He died in 1720, and Abigail survived him.


• Susannah Grant and her husband Thomas White, shoreman, had five children. She predeceased her father, who died in 1718. and he married the widow Mary, the widow of George Girdler who had sons by her first marriage. When Thomas died, he owned a dwelling house and one acre of land at the ferry. Mary survived him.


• Sarah Grant married a man named John Merritt, Jr. As far as I can determine, he is not descended from Nicholas Merritt of our tree. They had four children before he died in 1711.


• Jane/Jean Grant had five children with each of her two husbands (for a total of ten). Sadly, a few died young.


• Elizabeth Grant is a POSSIBLE child of Francis and Susannah. A baptismal record exists for Elizabeth, d. of Francis; however, if she was a child of this couple, she would have been the only one with a baptism record. The others all had BIRTH records. There is a death record for an Elizabeth Grant in Aug 1717. Her father did not list her as one of his five surviving children in his will written 22 Feb 1717. Since he wrote his will before August, I suspect she was not a child of this couple, but I've included her as a possibility because the baptism record exists.


• Mary Grant, the last child of Francis and Susanna, was born a year following the death of their eldest child, Mary Grant Dodd. The second Mary married a man named Mark Pitman, who as far as I can determine, is not related to our ancestor Mark Pitman who was killed at the Battle of Bloody Brook in 1676. Mary was one of her father's five surviving children when he wrote his will in 1717.

Proof of Relationship

Proof of relationship is is established in the vital records and the will of Francis.

What Else We Need to Learn

The goal of this project is to trace every line of ancestry to the arrival of its first immigrant to America. The basic information of each couple is considered complete when we know the dates of birth, marriage, and death for both spouses. their parents' names (or whether they were the immigrant), and the child or children in our ancestry line.

The research on this family is compete.