Susanna Farnham Clarke was born on May 20, 1745, in Boston, the daughter of Richard Clarke and Elizabeth Winslow Clarke. The spreadsheet spells her given name “Sussanna,” while surviving records commonly use Susanna. Her father was a prosperous merchant whose family later became deeply involved in the tea crisis of 1773. Her mother belonged to the prominent Winslow family. Susanna therefore grew up within Boston’s affluent commercial society. The Clarke household enjoyed imported goods, servants, education, and extensive Atlantic connections. As a merchant’s daughter, Susanna was probably educated at home or in a private school. She learned reading, writing, religion, needlework, music, household accounts, and the social manners necessary for entertaining business and family associates. Detailed records of her tutors or childhood personality are scarce. Boston’s imperial conflicts surrounded her adolescence. The Seven Years’ War increased trade and military activity, while the Stamp Act and later protests divided merchants over resistance. Richard Clarke’s business depended upon British commerce, making the family cautious about radical politics. Susanna’s siblings included Hannah, who married the painter John Singleton Copley, and other members of a large interconnected household. Susanna later married Jonathan Clarke, a relative within the broader Clarke merchant network. Like many marriages among colonial commercial families, the union joined personal, kinship, and business interests. She became part of a family whose loyalty to Britain drew public anger when Richard Clarke’s sons and associates accepted appointments as East India Company tea consignees. Before the Boston Tea Party and family exile gave her historical visibility, Susanna had been formed by merchant wealth, Winslow and Clarke kinship, private female education, Anglican or Congregational religious culture, and the social responsibilities of an elite Boston daughter.