Chapter History

The Captain Henry Sweetser Chapter, NSDAR, was named in honor of our organizing regent's American Revolutionary War ancestor. He was the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Marjorie Gunn Stoskopf.

Henry Sweetser was born on March 25, 1738, in Malden, Massachusetts. He married Louise Johnson on October 5, 1763. They settled in Wendell, Massachusetts, shortly after their marriage and took an active part in the organization of the first church in that town.

Captain Sweetser was one of the signers of a petition, dated May 28, 1766, of the inhabitants of Ervingshire and the northern part of Shutesbury in the county of Hampshire to the General Court. In 1787, Henry Sweetser was a Selectman in Wendell. This was an honorable position. He served in Aaron Osgood's 7th Company, Hampshire County Regiment. He was commissioned on May 10, 1778. In 1781, a vote raised 72 pounds, hard money, to procure the town's proportion of beef for the army. The following month it was agreed to pay the men the value of 16 bushels of rye and 20 shillings in hard money a month. A committee was chosen to procure Continental clothing.

The U.S. Census of 1790 includes the name of Captain Henry Sweetser. He is also listed among the owners of pews in the Congregational Church in Wendell, Massachusetts, in 1795. Captain Henry Sweetser and Louise Johnson Sweetser are buried in the Wendell Cemetery, according to cemetery records.