Shon, Johanna

On November 26, 1789 Justice of the Peace William Williams presided over the marriage of Johanna Shon and Jeremiah Shantup, a Mohegan Revolutionary War veteran, in Stonington, CT.  Johanna was enumerated as the head of a household of four in the 1810 federal census for North Stonington, CT, suggesting that her husband Jeremiah had either died, was working away from home, or separated.  She and her family were residing on or adjacent to the Eastern Pequot Reservation and neighbors with the families of Samuel Shelly, Cyrus Shelly, Bartlett Shelly, Rachel Poheage, Hannah Poheage, Isaac Fagins, Elizabeth Tikens, Moses Skeesucks, Amos Robinson and Mary Johnson.    

While the records don’t explicitly name any of her children, it is possible that the younger Jeremiah Shantup that appears in the New London County Court records and various mariner records from 1818-1836 is the son of Johanna and Jeremiah. In 1816 Johanna was listed as receiving benefits from the rental of Indian Town Pasture on the Eastern Pequot’s Lantern Hill reservation in North Stonington, CT.  

Associated with this rental income was the notation that the money was used to defray the cost of her medical bills.  Johanna appeared again in August of 1823 and May of 1824 when she was credited with $2.00 each of those years by the state appointed overseer of the tribe for her part of the proceeds in the rental of reservation lands to neighboring non-natives.  In 1825 the Eastern Pequot funds were debited for medical care for Johanna Shantup.  While she no longer appeared in the records after this point as Johannah, she may have been the Hannah Shantup receiving supplies in 1842. 

Brown and Rose, Black Roots, 367.  Sources for this biography also come from the Related Digital Heritage Items listed below.