Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Mercy Tuttle
1650 - Aft 1695 (> 46 years)-
Name Mercy Tuttle [1] Birth 27 Apr 1650 New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut 
[2, 3] Baptism 19 May 1650 New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut [2, 3] Gender Female Death Aft 1695 [3] 
Siblings1 sibling Person ID I23372 Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others Last Modified 14 Feb 2024
Father William Tuttle, b. Bef 26 Dec 1607 d. Between 10 Mar 1673 and 27 Apr 1673, New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut (Age > 65 years) Mother Elizabeth, b. Abt 1609 d. 30 Dec 1684, New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut (Age ~ 75 years) Marriage Bef 1631 [2, 4] Family ID F9371 Group Sheet | Family Chart
Family Samuel Brown, b. Bef 7 Aug 1645 d. 4 Nov 1691, Wallingford, New Haven, Connecticut (Age > 46 years) Marriage 2 May 1667 New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut [2, 3] Children 1. Rachel Brown, b. 14 Apr 1677, New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut d. 24 Jan 1718, Wallingford, New Haven, Connecticut (Age 40 years)Family ID F14049 Group Sheet | Family Chart Last Modified 14 Feb 2024
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Notes - From Divorce, Murder and Madness: The Puritan Tuttles of the New Haven Colony:
Mercy Tuttle, the youngest daughter of the clan, had married Samuel Brown in 1667 at age 17. The couple had several children, including a son, Samuel. They lived in Wallingford.
It would come out later that Mercy Tuttle was erratic in her behavior throughout life. (Her older brother, David, had also been judged insane years earlier.)
When Mercy’s husband died in 1691, there was no longer anyone to act as a check on her. On the night of June 23, she attacked her son Samuel with an ax and killed him. Mercy admitted she had killed her son, but said it was not done out of malice. Instead, she said, the murder was committed “at the instigation of the devil.”
In October 1691, the court convicted Mercy of murder, but withheld sentence until 1693. Then it ruled: “Having weighed the evidences given in, to prove that she hath generally been in a crazed or distracted condition as well long before she committed the act, as at that time, and having observed since that she is in such a condition, do not see cause to pass sentence of death against her, but for preventing her doing the like or other mischief for the future, do order, that she shall be kept in custody of the magistrates of New Haven.”
And that’s where she died, in the custody of the magistrates of the New Haven Colony her father had hoped to build.
- From Divorce, Murder and Madness: The Puritan Tuttles of the New Haven Colony:
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Sources - [S185] Families of Ancient New Haven, originally published as New Haven Genealogical Magazine, vols. I-VIII, compiled by Donald Lines Jacobus. Rome, New York: Clarence D. Smith, 1923-1932.
- [S101] The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volumes 1-3 and The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes 1-7, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996-2011.
- [S7416] Frederick C. Hart, Jr., "Ancestry of William Weed of Stamford and Darien, Connecticut." Connecticut Ancestry 50:101; 50:145; 51:1, 2008.
- [S388] FamousKin.com.
- [S185] Families of Ancient New Haven, originally published as New Haven Genealogical Magazine, vols. I-VIII, compiled by Donald Lines Jacobus. Rome, New York: Clarence D. Smith, 1923-1932.