Ancestors

Rev. Nathaniel Huntting

Nathaniel Huntting was born at Dedham in Massachusetts on 15 November 1675, the second child of John Hunting and Elizabeth Payne. His grandfather, Elder John Hunting, had been the first ruling elder of the Dedham church. He took his degree at Harvard College in 1693. In September 1696 he came from Boston to East Hampton on Long Island as a preacher, and he was ordained minister of the church there on 13 September 1699.

He married Mary Green of Boston. They had six children, Nathaniel, Edward, Samuel, Jonathan, Mary and John. Their son Deacon John Huntting was the father of Clemens Huntting, who married Jacob Sherrill, a grandson of the Sherrill immigrant.

He was minister of the church and the keeper of its records, and his hand survives in the town's history through the register he kept. On 25 April 1719 he entered the death of the Sherrill immigrant in the form that has puzzled genealogists since: 1719, April 25, Goodman Sherry, aged above 70 years, died. A compiler working in 1932 spent two pages weighing that phrase against a rival statement of the man's age. He concluded that above 70 was too loose a formula to overturn the alternative, since taking it literally would make the immigrant's wife seven years older than her husband.

In the throat distemper he kept the mortality list himself, and the same hand wrote of his own granddaughter: 'Mary, the daughter of my son Nathaniel Huntting, died of ye throat distemper, P. M. a little before midnight, aged 3 years, 3 months & 21 days, an extraordinary pleasant child to me & all others.'

He died on 21 September 1753. His successor entered the death in the same book: 'Died, the Revd. Mr. Nathaniel Huntting, in ye 76 year of his age. Had been Minister in this Place for 50 years. The Revd. Mr. White, of Southampton, Preached his Funeral Sermon, in which his Learning & Virtue was celebrated.' By the Dedham birth date he was seventy seven, and the town's own account gives him fifty four years as its minister.

If Rev. Nathaniel Huntting is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Rev. Nathaniel Huntting (1675-1753)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/rev-nathaniel-huntting-1675-1753-d5b456.