Zachariah Child (1763-1845), the son of David Child and Mehitable Richardson of West Boylston, Massachusetts, served in the Revolutionary War. He married Lydia Bigelow (1764-1849) in 1784, and they had several children: Cynthia, Annis, Dolly, Walter, Lydia B. (who died after 4 weeks), Marcus (b. 1792), David Lee (1794-1874), Levi Bigelow, Lydia Bigelow, Susan, John (1802-1858), and Lucretia. David Lee Child became a lawyer and married author Lydia Maria Francis in 1828; in 1841, they moved to New York, where they published the Anti-Slavery Standard . Marcus Child married Lydia Chadwick and moved to Stanstead, Quebec, where he became a partner in a pharmaceutical business and a Provincial Parliament representative. John Child, who later added an e to his surname, entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1823, graduated in 1827, and left the Army as a captain in December 1835. Following his military service, he became a civil engineer and worked for several railroad companies; most notably, he was chief engineer during construction of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. His first wife, Laura Dwight, died on the Arctic in 1854; he married Ellen Wills Healy in 1856. He and Laura had two daughters: Lelia Maria, who died with her mother on the Arctic, and Maria Dwight. He had one son with Ellen: John Healy Childe (b. 1858), who married Jessie Duncan Clark around 1887.
From the guide to the Childe family papers, 1733-1908, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)
