Jonathan Waitt was born at Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1763.  He was 57 years old when he died at Danvers, Massachusetts, January 12, 1821.  He was the eldest child of Peter Waite and Margaret Mallet, of Lynn, who was born at Cambridge and was at least 16 years his junior.

Peter, born at Medford, Massachusetts, one and one-half years before his own father died, spent his entire childhood under the guardianship of a family friend from Reading because the laws of the day wouldn’t allow him to be raised by his own widowed mother.  It is believed that Peter married Jane Ferguson and had a son by her named Jacob.  Peter married Margaret in 1762, at Old Trinity Church at Boston.  He was 41 years old and a military man – serving the British Crown in Captain George Lane's Company from Boston.  After the birth of his sons – Jonathan in 1763, Edmund in 1768, and Peter in 1774, Peter Senior enlisted in 1777 to serve as a Private in the Continental Army in Captain Hatfield White's Company of Colonel Rufus Putnam's 5th Regiment.  He served a full three years in the army, returning home to Danvers only after finishing his tour of duty by serving in the Regiment of the Invalid Corps, the world’s first such organization, in which injured soldiers who were still well enough to serve guarded forts and encampments.

Peter’s return to Danvers prompted his son, Jonathan, then age 17, to enlist in the Continental Army of Essex County, Massachusetts as a Private for three years, along with his close friend Milan Murphy, a notable African-American Revolutionary War soldier from Danvers.  In February of 1781, he began the 220 mile march from Danvers to West Point, New York, where he was put under the command of Captain William Story in the 8th Regiment of the Massachusetts Line, commanded by Colonel Michael Jackson.  He stayed with the 8th Regiment for two years and four months.  At the end of the war, he briefly served with the restructured 3rd Regiment, again led by Colonel Jackson.  He was honorably discharged in September 1783 by order of General Henry Knox.

Four years after his service, Jonathan married Elizabeth Brown of Beverly, whom he called “Betsey.”  Over the next 17 years, they had eight children together – Cyrus in 1787, Mary “Polly” in 1789, Jonathan in 1791, Samuel in 1794, Betsey in 1796, John in 1799, Daniel in 1801, and Peter in 1804.  Only six of the children survived to adulthood.  Three are buried with the senior Jonathan and Betsey.  Cyrus died in 1788 when he was nine months old.  Jonathan died in 1793, five days shy of his second birthday.  Betsey died in 1824, just two days after her fifth wedding anniversary, possibly during or as the result of childbirth.

In 1818, Jonathan Waitt was 55 years old and began to receive a military pension from the U.S. Government of eight dollars per month, a substantial sum for its day.  Testifying to his military service on his behalf was, once again, his dear friend Milan Murphy, and the man buried right behind Jonathan, David Tarr.  Jonathan was viewed as “…infirm and almost disabled from labor,” according to his long-time family doctor.  The doctor further said that “…he has an ulcer on his leg, which probably cannot be ever cured.  I do not think he has been able to earn five dollars this summer on account of his infirmities… If he loses his pension, [he] must be supported by alms.”  At the time of Jonathan’s death in 1821, his entire estate was worth $10.89, however; he owed his debtors $14.00.  He was interred in a brown stone crypt at Porter's Burial Ground (High Street Cemetery) at 45 High Street at Danvers, Massachusetts, to be joined 26 years later in 1847 by his beloved Betsey, who was then 84 years old and had never remarried.