"Susan Downing came to New England in 1633 (along with her sister Mary) under the care of William Coddington [WP 3:117]. She was daughter of Emanuel Downing by his first wife, Anne Ware [Hale, House 518], and sister of James Downing who had come to New England in 1630. She was probably born not long before 1620. Susan Downing was mentioned frequently in letters from her English friends and relatives [WP 3:131, 133, 136, 154, 163, 261, 307, 410], the last such reference being on 10 May 1637. COMMENTS: Given the close relation between Susan Downing and the Winthrop family, one would expect that her fate would appear in the papers of the Winthrops, but it does not. Her father, stepmother and younger half-siblings arrived in New England in 1638 (just a year after the last mention of her) and settled in Salem. The most likely explanation is that she died not long after 1637, since this only demands that she be omitted from the surviving records for the brief period around her death. If she had married and remained in Massachusetts Bay, there would have been many more opportunities for references to her in the records."
