Life History

Other facts

Notes

• There are multiple records of Susannah's birth and marriage with different dates that appear to refer to the same person.  Or the discrepancy may be in the transcription of early records by different sources.  The year of Susannah's birth varies from 1652 to 1655.  Discussions and genealogies indicate that her family, as that of Mareen Duvall, were Huguenot.
  
  Note that in the following cases, her name differs from her father's name (which is different in each transcription). We see here the process by which non-English names were modified into more English-sounding names.
  
  The phonetic variation in people's speech in an era of low literacy and no concern for standard forms of spelling led to a variety of spellings for the same English family name in the colonial period.  Note that the English surname also varies, as many family names do, between singular Brashear and plural Brashears.  Her first name is spelled Susannah or Susanna.
  
  Family Data Collection - Individual Records
  Susannah Brashear
  Parents Benois Benjamin Brasseuir [standard French spelling Brasseur], Mary Richford
  Birth 1655 Nansemond, VA
  Spouse Mareen Duvall
  Marriage 1674 Middleplantation, Ann Arundel, MD [other sources say marriage was in 1673]
  
  "Nansemond is an extinct locality that was located in Virginia Colony and the Commonwealth of Virginia (after statehood) in the United States, from 1646 until 1974.  It was Nansemond County until 1972, and the independent city of Nansemond from 1972 to 1974. It is now the independent city of Suffolk."
  --  "Nansemond County, Virginia," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nansemond_County,_Virginia
  
  The second record reports birth was in Nansemond County, Maryland, in contrast to Virginia.  I can find no information or record for a Nansemond County, Maryland.
  
  Family Data Collection - Individual Records
  Susanna Marie Brashears
  Father Benois Brasseur
  Birth 1652 Nasemond Co, MD [should be Nansemond Co VA]
  Spouse Mareen Duvall
  Marriage 1673 Anne Arundel Co, MD
  Death Anne Arundel Co, MD 1694
  
  One record for Susannah and one for her husband Mars Mareen Duvall have the marriage year of 1673, while another individual record for Susannah says the year was 1674.
  
  Susannah was Mareen's second wife.  His first wife is reported as Mary Bouth in some sources.  She died in 1670 in Anne Arundel, Maryland, according to some sources, or 1672 in others.  The documentation is unclear.  Some sources indicate that his first wife's name is unknown!
  
  The only date I have seen for Susannah's death is just  the year.  But the year reported in her memorial on Find a Grave is 1692, the same year of Mareen's death in some sources.  But Mareen married again and died in 1694.  Susannah's son's obituary comments that Susannah died before Mareen, but gives no date.
  
  "Mareen Brasseur "the younger" Duvall At the age of 12 yr. his father, who was predeceased by his mother, died in 1692." [This would indicate that Mareen the Younger was born in about 1680.]
  --  Find A Grave Memorial #49426955, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=49426955
  
  Mareen's third wife was Mary Stanton, according to sources.  She is the Mary named in his will.
  
  On the memorial for Susannah on Find a Grave, her maiden name is spelled Bassuer, an odd spelling, not fitting any spelling convention in French or English.  It is normally rendered in sources in the English form of Brashear or Brashears.  It must be a typo for Brasseur.  We left a note on the memorial to this effect.
  
  Susannah Brasseur Duvall
  Birth 1652
  Death 1692
  Spouse Mareen Duvall (1635 - 1694)
  Children:
  John Duvall (____ - 1711)
  Samuel Duvall (1667 - 1741)
  Susannah Duvall Tyler (1678 - 1716)
  Mareen Brasseur Duvall (1680 - 1741)
  Elizabeth Duvall Clarke (1680 - 1713)
  Burial Unknown
  Maintained by Michelle Fuller And Alice, Originally Created by P Fazzini Jul 10, 2010
  --  Find A Grave Memorial #54740998, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=54740998&ref=acom
  

Sources

• 1. Family Data Collection - Individual Records
• 2. Find a Grave Memorial Registry
• 3. Family Data Collection - Individual Records
  • Name, birth and death information; error in death year
• 4. Ancestors of Benjamin West
  • Location: No longer online;
• 5. U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
• 6. Millennium Files, Ancestry.com
• 7. RootsWeb Trees