Hannah Griffin (1702-1753)
Hannah Griffin is our 7th great grandmother by the following path: RWA → Fred Pemberton Abbott → Mary Emma Knowles Abbott → William W. Knowles → Emeline Foss Knowles → Ichabod Foss → Mary Dow Foss → Benaiah Dow → Hannah Griffin Dow
While gathering records for this section of the family, I came across the transcription of the death record for Hannah Griffin which listed her cause of death as suicide. I tried to investigate the rates of suicide in colonial America, but was not able to find any good information about this. All the articles I located dealt with the criminal aspects of committing suicide (property of the person could be seized) and the moral proscriptions. There are occasional references in death records to suicide as the cause of death, but it seems uncommon for this to be listed as a cause of death. I am not sure if this reflects that suicide was rare or if it was just never listed as the cause.
I then started to try to reconstruct what I could of Hannah’s life to try to understand her suicide.
Hannah was the fourth oldest child of John Griffin and Susannah Brown. As was common in that era, Susannah Brown died following the birth of her fifth child when Hannah was just three years old. As was also the custom of the time, John Griffin remarried within the year and had five more children with his second wife.
Hannah married Philip Dow in 1724 in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Philip’s mother had also died when he was 2 years old. The first of Philip and Hannah’s nine children was born in Massachusetts and then the young family relocated to Kensington, New Hampshire where eight more children were born. Sadly, seven of these nine children did not survive childhood each of those seven children dying between 2 and 6 years of age. This included two of her children dying on the same day in 1736 and two of her children dying in the same week of June 1749. The two children who died in 1736 likely died during an epidemic of what was then called “throat distemper” but is now thought to be respiratory diphtheria. The History of Rockingham County offers this description of the epidemic:
The Epidemic that Started in Kensington: In the midst of their prosperity, the town was suddenly visited by a terrible disease, called "the throat distemper." It commenced in June, 1735, and in about fourteen months 113 had been taken away by it, ninety-six of whom were under ten years of age. Of this disease the town record says, "This mortality was by a kanker quinsy, which mostly seized upon young people, and has proved exceeding mortal in several other towns. It is supposed there never was the like before in this country." Professor William Franklin Webster, of this town, when in Germany, found in a "medical work the statement that the first recorded instance of this disease in the whole world was in this town," Livingston, N. H. Of the first forty persons seized with it not one recovered. It is now supposed that it was a malignant type of diphtheria, which soon visited many other towns in the vicinity, and was fearfully destructive in its ravages. (p. 495)
Although early deaths were common in the colonial era, the deaths of this many children in a single family was uncommon. It is hard to know the role these tragedies played in Hannah’s suicide, but it is not hard to imagine that the deaths of seven children contributed to her depression and her suicide.
Following Hannah’s death, Philip Dow married the widow Sarah Ayers Freese. Sarah had five children from her first marriage, one of whom died in early childhood. Sadly, two of her surviving four children died in October 1754 shortly after her marriage to Philip Dow. It is not known what became of Philip Dow as there are no death or probate records for him.
Our ancestor is the oldest child of the family, Benaiah Dow.
Family group sheet for Phillip Dow and Hannah Griffin: http://sites.rootsmagic.com/colonialgenealogy/family.php?f=1182
Hazlett, Charles A. (1915). History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens. Chicago, IL: Richmond-Arnold Publishing.