Family name origins & meanings
- English : variant of Sewell.
- Samuel Sewall (1652–1730) came with his parents from Bishop Stoke, Hampshire, England, to Newbury, MA, as a nine-year-old boy. In 1676 he married Hannah Hull, a wealthy heiress, and in 1681 he was appointed printer to the Council in Boston. He served as a judge in the infamous Salem witchcraft trials of 1692—the only one of the judges to admit publicly that he had been wrong. In 1700 he published The Selling of Joseph, which argues that all men are created equal and presents theological arguments against slavery.