Samantha was created in colonial North
America back in the late 1700s. You can find examples of women named
Samantha in genealogies of New England and New
York families from the early 1800s and late 1700s:
Samantha Hawley, born 1814:
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~smith82/monet.html
Samantha McWhorter, born 1809 in upstate New
York:
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~mcwgen/mathewny.htm
and the oldest I've found so far,
Samantha Bibbins, born 1788 in Stillwater, New
York:
http://www.renderplus.com/hartgen/htm/bibbins.htm