THE HUNTINGTON FAMILY STORY

The Huntington family traveled to Boston as part of the Great Puritan Migration that occurred between 1620-1640. In early May, 1633, Simon and Margaret (Barrett) Huntington, of Norwich, Norfolk, England, left for New England with their five children.

The couple had married on May 11, 1623, in St. Andrews Parish, Norwich, and had five children together: Christopher, Thomas, Ann, Simon Jr. and Henry (who died in infancy in 1632). They left England for a combination of factors including Simon’s citation for nonconformity in 1629.

The merchant family sailed on the sleek "Elizabeth Bonaventure," out of Yarmouth, the first week in May and arrived in Boston, MA around June 15, 1633. Simon had died en route of smallpox. Margaret and her fatherless young children settled at Roxbury. In late 1634, or early 1635, she married widower Thomas Stoughton of nearby Dorchester. Both of these settlements were a part of Governor John Winthrop’s Massachusetts Bay Colony

Sometime in the spring of 1636, the blended Stoughton/Huntington family was among the large group of Dorchester residents who moved to the remote Connecticut River settlement of what would be called Windsor, CT. Margaret died in 1665.

William, the eldest child, likely the son of Simon by a previous marriage, was on his own by about 1640, and lived in various New Hampshire and Massachusetts Merrimack River settlements including Amesbury, MA. He died in 1669.

When of age, sons Christopher and Simon moved from Windsor to Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River, in 1649. In the spring of 1660, they were among the first proprietors of the English group that settled what would be named Norwich, CT, on land purchased by Major John Mason from Chief Uncas, of the Mohegan tribe, the year before. Christopher died in Norwich in 1691. Simon died in Norwich in 1706.

Thomas, the last of Margaret’s sons to leave Windsor, moved in 1663 to Branford, CT in New Haven Colony. Then, he followed his influential father-in-law, Jasper Crane, to found the last English puritan-based settlement of Newark, NJ in 1666. He died there in 1685.

Based on a surviving letter from Peter Barrett to Christopher Huntington, Ann was still living in Windsor, in 1649, and had not married.

Over the decades, the progeny of William, Christopher, Thomas, and Simon dispersed throughout The United States and beyond. It is estimated that 95% of all North American Huntingtons are descended from these four sons.

SOURCES: Norfolk Parish Registers (PD 165/1,31); the Bishop’s Visitation of the Diocese of Norwich 1629; John Winthrop, History of New England: 1630-1649, Ed. by James Hosmer, LLD, Vol. 1; “James Cudworth to John Stoughton,” December 1634 cited in the New England Genealogical Register, April 1860 (American Ancestors); Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 database and newsletters (American Ancestors); First Church Roxbury Records 1630-1956, seq. 48. (Harvard University); Peter Barrett to Christopher Huntington, April 20, 1650, Connecticut State Library and Charles Manwaring’s A Digest of Early CT Probate Records, R.S. Peck and Co., 1902, 44-46; Saybrook, CT Records, Amesbury, MA Records, Windsor Land Records, Newark, NJ Records.

Last Updated: January 2026

Click on images to enlarge

The Suckling House, Norwich, England, birthplace of Margaret Barrett Huntington Stoughton (1595-1665).

Now serving as a cafe, this was once the Great Hall of the Suckling House, Norwich, England

St. Simon and St. Jude Church, site of Simon Huntington's nonconformity to the rules of The Church of England (1629)

A rough sketch plan of Windsor, CT c.1630s