Squinn, Zerviah, - 1816

Zerviah Squinn was the daughter of a Native man named Wamsley and Lydia Squinn, a descendant of the Wampanoag sachem, Massasoit.  On December 4, 1791, she married James Johnson, a Gay Head Indian and had one daughter, Arabella, who died at three months old.   In 1816, Zerviah and her sister Phebe unsuccessfully petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for the ability to sell their late mother’s interests in the ancestral land in Fall River to pay her debts.  Pierce, Indian History, Biography, and Genealogy, 216.