William and Susan Capen Rockwell raised their children in the earliest decades of New England settlement. The book presents these children as the foundation of the second generation, through whom the Rockwell family continued in Connecticut and beyond.

At the time of the family’s arrival in New England in 1630, William and Susan Rockwell had two young children: Joan and John. Additional children were born after settlement, expanding the family during the Dorchester and Windsor years.

The book treats the Rockwell children not as isolated individuals but as members of a cohort that grew to adulthood alongside the colony itself. Their formative years coincided with the transition from fragile settlements to more stable towns governed by established institutions.

As members of the second generation, these children inherited a New England already shaped by their parents’ labor. Unlike the first generation, they did not experience the Atlantic crossing, but they lived with its consequences—frontier conditions, communal governance, and inherited land.

The book’s treatment emphasizes continuity rather than biography at this stage, reserving fuller detail for individual descendants whose lives intersect more frequently with surviving records.

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Source: The Rockwell Family in One Line of Descent, transition from first to second generation and references to the children of William and Susan Capen Rockwell.