Susannah Whitman was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 15 December 1723. She married Edward Vail in September 1742 and the couple moved to Chowan County, North Carolina by 1749, where they had four sons. In 1774 she and several of her relatives signed a nonimportation agreement that later became known as the Edenton Tea Party Resolves. Signing the resolves wasn't the Vail family's only act of resistance during the American Revolution either. Susannah's husband Edward was a member of North Carolina's committee of correspondence and later served as a Patriot general during the American Revolution. She died sometime after 1778.