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Colonial America

Mehitable Gunn Fenn Camp

A Daughter of Milford's Founding Generation

Born1641

Mehitable Gunn Fenn Camp (1641–1730)

Biography

Mehitable Gunn belonged to the first generation of the Gunn family born in New England. Baptized at Milford on May 2, 1641, she was the daughter of Jasper Gunn, the physician, teacher, deacon, and founding free-planter, and Christian Gunn, whose 1690 will provides some of the clearest surviving evidence of the family they established.1

Her life joined three households present at Milford’s beginning. She was born into the Gunn family, married into the Fenn family, and later married into the Camp family. Each had participated in the creation of the settlement. Through Mehitable, the relationships first formed around the meetinghouse and common fields became ties of marriage, inheritance, and descent.

No letter, diary, or personal account preserves Mehitable’s voice. Her life must be reconstructed from church entries, marriage records, wills, and later genealogical work. Those records do not reveal her thoughts, but they show a long life extending across nearly the first century of Milford’s history. She married twice, became the mother of nine children, endured the deaths of her first husband and several children, and remained part of a widening family network until her death in 1730.

Born with the Settlement

Mehitable was born at Milford about 1641, scarcely two years after the community was established along the Wepawaug River. The surviving church record documents her baptism on May 2, 1641; it does not provide a separate date of birth.1 An alternative baptismal date of May 24 appears in some older genealogical accounts, but the May 2 reading is accepted by the stronger modern compilations and should be used unless the original manuscript establishes otherwise.

Her childhood unfolded while Milford was becoming a durable town. The meetinghouse stood at the center of religious and civic life. Around it lay household lots, common fields, meadows, mills, roads, and the harbor. Survival depended upon cooperation. Families worshiped together, maintained fences and roads, shared access to land and water, and gradually became joined through marriage.

Jasper Gunn had arrived in New England aboard the Defence in 1635. After a period in Roxbury, Massachusetts, he became one of Milford’s free planters in 1639. He later moved his household to Hartford, where he practiced medicine and operated the town mill, before returning to Milford. Mehitable therefore may have spent part of her childhood at Hartford, although Milford remained the family’s enduring home.

Christian Gunn appears less often in official records, as was customary for seventeenth-century women. Her surviving will, dated May 6, 1690, nevertheless places her at the center of a large extended family. In it she named her daughter “Mehetabell Campe” and remembered several Fenn grandchildren. The will confirms Mehitable’s relationship to Christian, her two family connections, and her second married name.2

Marriage to Benjamin Fenn

On December 21, 1660, Mehitable married Benjamin Fenn Jr. at Milford. The town record identifies him as the son of “Mr. Benjamin” and her as the daughter of Jasper Gunn.3 Mehitable was about nineteen years old; Benjamin was approximately twenty.

Benjamin had been baptized at Milford on September 20, 1640. His parents were Deacon Benjamin Fenn Sr. and Sarah Baldwin Fenn. The elder Benjamin Fenn was one of Milford’s original settlers and became an important public figure in the New Haven Colony. He represented Milford in the colonial General Court, served as a magistrate and colonial assistant, and participated in the political life that eventually joined New Haven to Connecticut.4

The marriage of Mehitable and Benjamin united two households whose histories reached back to Milford’s beginning. They had not crossed the Atlantic together, but their families had taken part in the same work of settlement. Their marriage carried those relationships into the first generation raised in the town.

Benjamin and Mehitable had nine children. Their household linked the Gunn family to the next generation of Fenns and, through the later marriages of their children, to the Clark, Hine, Welch, Waters, and Stilson families. The record is incomplete for several of the children, and some birth years remain approximate, but the surviving evidence supports the following family:5

  1. Benjamin Fenn, born about 1661 or 1662; died at Milford on August 29, 1732. He married Sarah Clark and later served as a deacon.
  2. Mary Fenn, born about 1667 and baptized at Milford on July 7, 1667; died June 20, 1701. She married John Hine at Milford on July 4, 1684.
  3. Joseph Fenn, born about 1667; died in 1690. He married Esther Welch, a member of another early Milford family.
  4. Sarah Fenn, born about 1668. She married Thomas Waters at Hartford on May 19, 1696.
  5. Susannah Fenn, probably born about 1670. Little reliable information about her later life has been established.
  6. Mehitable Fenn, born about 1672. She carried her mother’s name into the next generation.
  7. Hannah Fenn, born during the 1670s. She was living when her grandmother Christian Gunn prepared her will in 1690.
  8. Samuel Fenn, born during the 1670s and apparently died young, probably by 1690.
  9. Martha Fenn, born about June 1677; died in 1722. She married Hugh Stilson in 1698.

The names are given here without imposing false precision upon uncertain dates. Milford church and town records establish some events; others survive chiefly through compiled family studies. The sequence and exact birth years should remain open to correction if additional original records are located.

The family appears with unusual clarity in Christian Gunn’s will. Christian gave Bibles to her grandsons Benjamin and Joseph Fenn and left clothing, linen, and other property to Hannah, Martha, and Susannah Fenn.2 The bequests were practical, but the Bibles carried particular meaning. In a Puritan household, a Bible represented faith, literacy, memory, and the transmission of obligation from one generation to the next.

Benjamin Fenn died at Milford on April 29, 1689, after more than twenty-eight years of marriage.6 Mehitable was about forty-eight. Some of their children had reached adulthood; others had died young or remained within the family household. His death brought one stage of her life to an end, but not her connection to the community built by Milford’s founding families.

Marriage to Nicholas Camp

Mehitable later married Nicholas Camp Jr., son of Milford founder Nicholas Camp Sr. The exact date has not been found, but the evidence places the marriage within a narrow period. Nicholas’s first wife died in August 1689. By May 6, 1690, Christian Gunn’s will identified her daughter as “Mehetabell Campe.” Mehitable and Nicholas therefore married between those dates, when she was about forty-nine—not in 1700, as some later family accounts have stated.27

Nicholas Camp Jr. was born about 1630 and came to Milford as part of the Camp household. His father, Nicholas Camp Sr., was an original settler in 1639. The younger Nicholas became a landholder and public figure in his own right and served as a deputy to the Connecticut General Court during the early 1670s.7

Like Mehitable, Nicholas had already raised a family. His first wife, the widow of Nathaniel Briscoe, is called Sarah Beard in the principal compiled genealogies, although her given name has been questioned in more recent research. Nicholas and his first wife had several children. His marriage to Mehitable therefore united two mature households rather than beginning a new one. No children are known from their marriage.

Remarriage after widowhood was common in colonial New England. A household was both a family and an economic unit. Marriage restored companionship, combined property and labor, and created new obligations among children, stepchildren, and grandchildren. Mehitable entered the Camp household as a wife, stepmother, and grandmother while maintaining her Gunn and Fenn relationships.

Nicholas prepared his will on December 31, 1705 and named his wife Mehitable. He died at Milford on June 10, 1706.8 Mehitable was widowed for a second time and survived him by more than two decades.

Three Founding Families

Mehitable’s life demonstrates how a settlement became a community. Her father, Jasper Gunn, belonged to Milford’s original company of free planters. Her first husband was the son of Benjamin Fenn Sr., an original settler and colonial magistrate. Her second husband was the son of Nicholas Camp Sr., another member of the founding company.47

These connections were not merely genealogical. Early Milford depended upon households that could work the land, maintain the church, raise children, settle estates, care for widowed relatives, and sustain relationships across generations. Public offices and land divisions established the visible structure of the town. Family labor and family alliances made that structure endure.

Mehitable stood near the center of that network. Born a Gunn, she became the mother of the next Fenn generation and later joined the Camp household. The family story moved through her even when it no longer carried the Gunn surname.

Death and Legacy

Mehitable died in 1730, probably at Milford, at approximately eighty-nine years of age.9 The precise date of September 2, 1730 appears in modern online trees, but it has not yet been traced to a contemporary town, church, probate, or gravestone record. Her burial place is likewise not securely documented. Both the exact date and the often-repeated burial in Milford Cemetery should remain provisional.

By the end of her life, Mehitable had outlived both husbands, her parents, several siblings, and at least some of her children. She had lived from Milford’s first uncertain years into a period when the settlement had become an established Connecticut town with multiple generations of descendants.

Her record is largely relational: daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, widow. That does not make her life peripheral. Those relationships were among the principal structures through which property, belief, identity, and memory passed in colonial New England. Through nine Fenn children and their descendants, Mehitable extended the Gunn inheritance into many families whose names differed from her own.

Her life gives particular meaning to a central principle of The Gunns in America: the Gunn name is the spine, not the skin. The story continued wherever descendants carried its experiences, obligations, and inheritance. Mehitable Gunn Fenn Camp belonged to Milford’s founding generation by birth and to three founding families by blood and marriage. Her life was one of the ways the settlement endured.

Timeline

  • About 1641 — Born at Milford in the New Haven Colony.
  • May 2, 1641 — Baptized in the First Church of Milford.
  • About 1647 — Probably moved with the Gunn household from Milford to Hartford.
  • By 1660 — The Gunn family had returned to Milford.
  • December 21, 1660 — Married Benjamin Fenn Jr. at Milford.
  • About 1661–1677 — Nine known children born to Benjamin and Mehitable.
  • April 29, 1689 — Benjamin Fenn died at Milford.
  • Between August 1689 and May 6, 1690 — Married Nicholas Camp Jr.
  • May 6, 1690 — Identified as “Mehetabell Campe” in Christian Gunn’s will; several of her Fenn children also received bequests.
  • December 31, 1705 — Named as wife Mehitable in Nicholas Camp’s will.
  • June 10, 1706 — Nicholas Camp died at Milford.
  • 1730 — Died, probably at Milford; the exact date and burial place remain unproved.

Family

Parents

  • Dr. Jasper Gunn (1607–1670/71) — Physician, teacher, mill operator, deacon, and founding free-planter of Milford.
  • Christian Gunn (d. 1690) — Jasper’s widow and the woman whose will identifies Mehitable as her daughter. Christian’s maiden name has not been proved.

First Husband

  • Benjamin Fenn Jr. (1640–1689) — Son of Milford founder Deacon Benjamin Fenn Sr. and Sarah Baldwin Fenn; married Mehitable on December 21, 1660.

Children of Benjamin and Mehitable Fenn

  • Benjamin Fenn (c. 1661/62–1732) — Married Sarah Clark; served as a deacon.
  • Mary Fenn (c. 1667–1701) — Married John Hine.
  • Joseph Fenn (c. 1667–1690) — Married Esther Welch.
  • Sarah Fenn (b. c. 1668) — Married Thomas Waters.
  • Susannah Fenn (b. c. 1670) — Later history not firmly established.
  • Mehitable Fenn (b. c. 1672) — Later history not firmly established.
  • Hannah Fenn (b. in the 1670s) — Named in Christian Gunn’s 1690 will.
  • Samuel Fenn (b. in the 1670s) — Apparently died young.
  • Martha Fenn (c. 1677–1722) — Married Hugh Stilson.

Second Husband

  • Nicholas Camp Jr. (c. 1630–1706) — Son of Milford founder Nicholas Camp Sr.; landholder and deputy to the Connecticut General Court. He married Mehitable between August 1689 and May 6, 1690.

Children of the Second Marriage

No children are known from Mehitable’s marriage to Nicholas Camp.

Siblings

Mehitable belonged to the Milford family of Jasper and Christian Gunn that included Nathaniel, Jobamah, Abel, Daniel, and Samuel Gunn. Exact birth order and some dates vary in older genealogies because the surviving church and civil records are incomplete.

  • Jasper Gunn
  • Christian Gunn
  • The Founding of Milford — planned article
  • Christian Gunn’s Will — planned document feature
  • The Fenn Family of Milford — planned article
  • The Camp Family of Milford — planned article
  • Chapter 7: The First American Generation — companion book chapter

Sources & Further Reading

  • Abbott, Susan Woodruff, and Jacquelyn Ladd Ricker. Families of Early Milford, Connecticut. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1979. Entries for Gunn, Fenn, and Camp.
  • Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634–1635. Vol. 3, G–H. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2003, 167–71.
  • Camp, John Frederick Jr., and Newton Grier Parke II, compilers, with Donald Lines Jacobus. Ancestry and Descendants of Frederick Tracy Camp and His Wife Marion Fee. 1968, 1–2.
  • Connecticut. Milford vital and church records. Baptism of Mehitable Gunn, May 2, 1641; marriage of Benjamin Fenn and Mehitable Gunn, December 21, 1660.
  • Gunn, Christian. Will dated May 6, 1690; proved December 1, 1690. New Haven probate records.
  • Savage, James. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England. Vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860–62, 152.
  • Torrey, Clarence Almon. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Entries for Benjamin Fenn and Mehitable Gunn and for Nicholas Camp and Mehitable Fenn.

Research Notes

  1. Birth and baptism. Mehitable was born about 1641. The surviving Milford church record establishes her baptism on May 2, 1641, not a separate date of birth. Some older accounts give May 24 as the baptismal date. The original manuscript should be inspected before quoting the entry in a final scholarly edition.
  2. Mother. Christian Gunn’s will identifies Mehitable as her daughter. Christian’s maiden surname remains unproved and should not be supplied as Baldwin in this biography.
  3. First marriage. The Milford record gives December 21, 1660 and explicitly identifies the couple through their fathers: Benjamin was the son of Mr. Benjamin Fenn, and Mehitable was the daughter of Jasper Gunn.
  4. Children. Nine children are attributed to Benjamin and Mehitable in the principal compiled records. Dates for several are inconsistent or reconstructed. The names are retained, but uncertain dates are deliberately qualified.
  5. Second marriage. The marriage to Nicholas Camp did not occur in 1700. Nicholas’s first wife died in August 1689, and Christian Gunn’s will calls her daughter “Mehetabell Campe” on May 6, 1690. The marriage therefore occurred within that interval, when Mehitable was about forty-nine.
  6. Second husband. Mehitable’s second husband was Nicholas Camp Jr., not John Camp. Nicholas’s will and the principal Camp genealogies support the identification. Any website page naming John Camp as her husband should be corrected.
  7. Nicholas Camp’s first wife. Older genealogies usually call her Sarah Beard, the widow of Nathaniel Briscoe. Her given name has been questioned in more recent research. This question concerns Nicholas’s earlier family and does not alter his marriage to Mehitable.
  8. Children with Nicholas. No children are known from Mehitable’s second marriage. Both spouses were mature widowed parents when they married.
  9. Death. The year 1730 is accepted in compiled genealogies, but no contemporary death or probate record was located during this review. The precise date of September 2, widely reproduced online, should remain provisional.
  10. Burial. No original burial entry or securely identified gravestone has been verified. Milford is probable, but a specific cemetery should not be stated as fact without additional documentation.

Endnotes

Footnotes

  1. First Church of Milford records, baptism of Mehitable Gunn, May 2, 1641, cited in Susan Woodruff Abbott and Jacquelyn Ladd Ricker, Families of Early Milford, Connecticut (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1979), Gunn family; Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634–1635, vol. 3, G–H (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2003), 168. ↩ ↩2

  2. Will of Christian Gunn of Milford, dated May 6, 1690, proved December 1, 1690, New Haven probate records. Christian names her daughter “Mehetabell Campe,” leaves Bibles to grandsons Benjamin and Joseph Fenn, and makes bequests to Hannah, Martha, and Susannah Fenn. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Milford vital records, marriage of “Benjamin Fenn (son of Mr. Benjamin)” and “Mehetabell Gunn (daughter of Jasper),” December 21, 1660; cited in Abbott, Families of Early Milford, and Clarence Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700. ↩

  4. James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860–62), 152; Abbott, Families of Early Milford, Fenn family. ↩ ↩2

  5. Abbott, Families of Early Milford, Fenn family. The family list is also summarized in the FamilySearch Family Tree profile for Mehitable Gunn, which should be treated as a finding aid rather than as independent proof. ↩

  6. Milford vital records, death of Benjamin Fenn, April 29, 1689; Abbott, Families of Early Milford, Fenn family. ↩

  7. John Frederick Camp Jr. and Newton Grier Parke II, compilers, with Donald Lines Jacobus, Ancestry and Descendants of Frederick Tracy Camp and His Wife Marion Fee (1968), 1–2. The study identifies Nicholas Camp Sr. as an original Milford settler and Nicholas Jr. as the husband, first, of Sarah (Beard) Briscoe and, second, of Mehitable (Gunn) Fenn. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Abbott, Families of Early Milford, 182; will of Nicholas Camp, dated December 31, 1705; gravestone record for Nicholas Camp, died June 10, 1706. ↩

  9. Abbott, Families of Early Milford, Gunn and Camp families; Camp and Parke, Ancestry and Descendants of Frederick Tracy Camp, 2. Both support survival beyond Nicholas’s death; compiled accounts give Mehitable’s death year as 1730, but the exact date requires further verification. ↩

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