Revolutionaries: Our Little Compton Baileys

We pick up on our Bailey family in Little Compton, Rhode Island, just a hop across the Sakonnet River from Portsmouth and about 55 miles down the coast from Plymouth.  Colonists from both areas looking for more grazing and farm land, to expand their holdings came to Little Compton in the early 1680’s. One of the original Little Compton founders was Colonel Benjamin Church from the Plymouth area, commander of Colonial forces during King Philips’s War in 1675-1676 and known as the father of the US Army Rangers. Four of Colonel Church’s brothers are our grandfather ancestors.

To catch up from the last post, Lt. Thomas Bailey (1690-1740) and Mary Wood (1691-1745) from our Portsmouth families married in Little Compton in July 1712 just months after six of Mary’s siblings died suddenly in an influenza epidemic. Thomas was living on his father’s lands and both inherited Little Compton land from their parents. They had ten children between 1713 and 1733, nine boys in a row and the last a girl, all born and raised in Little Compton. 

Of their children:

• John inherited £300, land on Warrens Point and his father’s sword.
• Constant Bailey inherited  £1,000, a good cow, and “a horse to ride of a credible sort.” He moved back to Newport where he was a cabinet maker. When Mary died, she gave Constant a Negro boy and 16 acres in Little Compton she inherited from her father.
• Joseph inherited £100 and a good horse. He moved to Newport where he was a cordswainer (shoemaker).  Mary left him another 16 acres in Little Compton.
• Oliver inherited all Thomas’ land in Freetown with buildings, saw mill, grist mill and fulling mill as well as £300.
• James, Thomas, Barzilla, William and Lemuel were underage when their father died.  As executors, Mary and the oldest son John were to divvy up the remaining lands and property when the children came of age. 
• Lemuel, the last son, died at age 13, the same year as his mother.

Generation Four

The second son, Thomas Bailey, Jr. was a husbandman - or farmer - in Little Compton on lands owned by his father which became Thomas Jr.’s when Thomas Sr. died. He married 20 year old Mary Bennett in Little Compton in 1734. Thomas was18 years old; his mother just had a child herself the previous year.  

Seven months after the marriage, Mary and Thomas had Phebe, our sixth great-grandmother. A second child for the couple was born two years later on October 3, 1736. Mary died days later, and we would presume the cause of death was related to childbirth. The following year, Thomas married 19 year old Abigail Lynd and they had four children. She died twelve years later at age 31; Thomas now was 34 and twice widowed. He married a third time the following year to 22 year old Deborah Carr. They had another 4 children, all girls.

Photo from Little Compton Families, Vol 1

Little Compton Families gives the following excerpt from an old book of photographs by Arthur Aspinwall:

The people of Little Compton, as might be expected from the descendants of the Pilgrims, were patriots, and none were more patriotic than Bailey. Occasionally they were troubled by visits from British warships, and upon one of these occasions a part of British seamen landed and captured Bailey and a coast guard who was on duty there and several others. They were carried to the boats, and upon arriving on the beach an effort was made to induce Bailey to tell them the number of men in the American army. The patriotic old man replied that they might as well attempt to count the sands of the beach as the troops upon which the Americans relied. This exaggerative bit of “yankee insolence” was rewarded by confinement in a British prison-ship for some time…Bailey, while confined, played off crazy and gave his answers in a peculiar way in hopes of being released. He told his captors that he must go home because his wife was wide open, his barn door was sick abed, and every pumpkin had a hog. In a short time he was released and went home to live a peaceful citizen.

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors shows Thomas was on the British prison ship, “Lord Sandwich” in New York in 1776.  He was 61 years old.

Thomas lived to a ripe age of 77 years and is buried with lots of other Baileys in the Little Compton Old Commons Burial Ground.

Generation Five

Phebe Bailey (1734-1785) had a childhood of loss with the death of her mother when she was two years old and a stepmother died when she was 16. Little wonder it is that she married Isaac Hathaway, Jr. (1729-1798) in 1752 when she was but 17 years old.

A Family at War

During the Revolution, Isaac served dual roles as an Adjutant in the 2nd Bristol Regiment under Colonel Thomas Carpenter and as Quartermaster in the 1st Bristol Regiment in Rhode Island under his son, Colonel John Hathaway. Regiments frequently operated side-by-side defending the New England coastline against British raids from occupied Newport. An educated man like Isaac was often tapped to wear multiple hats across neighboring regiments depending on who was short on capable staff.

Serving as the adjutant to Colonel Carpenter meant managing a regiment that was essentially a rapid-response force for the Rhode Island Theater. Because the British occupied Newport, Rhode Island from 1776 to 1779, the 1st Bristol County Regiment was repeatedly called out on sudden, short-term emergency "alarms."

In a coastal militia unit like Colonel Hathaway’s, the adjutant's role was fast-paced and chaotic. When a British fleet was spotted off the coast or a raid began, the adjutant had to instantly organize the regiment's response

While his commanding officer for the 2nd Bristol County Regiment was son Colonel John Hathaway, another son Robert served as a private in the 2nd Bristol under his brother John, and another son, Isaac, served in Rhode Island and in a Berkshire militia. Isaac's brother, Joshua, was a Major in the Massachusetts Minutemen.

Phebe and Isaac had 16 children starting the year after they were married; three died in infancy or early childhood. 

Isaac, Phebe and eight or nine of their children left Freetown sometime before or in early 1780 for Adams, Berkshire County, in the very western part of Massachusetts, a distance of 170 miles, most likely by ox cart carrying their belongings.  These would have included Phebe, 17; Robert, 16; Prudence, 14; Irene, 13; Henry, 11; Susanna, 10; Bailey, 9; Rebecca, 8; Rachel, 5; and Daniel, 3. Whether 25 yr old Isaac III accompanied them or joined them later is unclear, most likely he went along at the same time.

Berkshire County, showing proximity of Adams and Cheshire towns

Isaac's family was in Adams by October 1780 when son Isaac Jr. is recorded as belonging to the 2nd Berkshire militia.  Most likely, they made the trip in the spring to have time to plant crops. Isaac does not appear to have a Revolution land grant and does not appear to be in the group of Rhode Island Baptists that originally settled Cheshire. Indeed, the family was likely Quaker and Adams was settled in the 1760's by Quakers from Rhode Island.  An act by the General Court of Massachusetts in 1782 states,

Whereas it appears that Capt. Isaac Hathaway, of Adams, in the county of Berkshire, is now in the possession of a certain lot of land in said town, which he holds by an agreement made with John Murray, Esq; [John Murray was one of the original three buyers of 23 square miles of Adams in 1766] an absentee, but by reason of the losses the said Isaac has sustained by the war, and the public having the use of his money, he is unable to make that full payment for said lands that is required by law in order to compleat his title thereto; Therefore, Resolved, That the committee for the sale of conspirators and absentee estates in the county of Berkshire be and they hereby are directed to receive from him the said Hathaway his note of hand, with one responsible surety, payable in one year from the date of said note, to the Treasurer of this Commonwealth, or his successor in said office, for the sum of twenty eight pounds, with lawful interest, and to govern themselves in their conduct toward said Hathaway and the land he possesses, upon his paying the residue of the money due for said lands, in the same manner as though he had paid the whole in cash.  October 19, 1782.

Mary Hathaway (1757-1824), our great-grandmother ancestor, married Thomas Borden in 1776 and stayed behind  in Fall River. 

Phebe would have been in her early 40’s at the time of the move. Such hardship they must have endured to move with eight children, likely by cart and ox over rough roads with what belongings they could take to what was still wilderness, and to leave behind what family she had in Freetown, a well-to-do family at that.

Children of Isaac Hathaway and Phebe Bailey:

• Captain John Hathaway served in the American Revolution and died in Hudson, New York in 1818, age 64. He married a young woman from Long Island and the couple returned for a few years to Freetown, MA, before going to Hudson, New York, in 1788 with a group of Massachusetts and Rhode Island proprietors to go into the ship business. He became a wealthy owner of a fleet of sloops.
• Isaac Hathaway III served as a private in the Continental Army in the American Revolution. He married Jemima Constock in Adams, MA, and migrated with brother Robert and the Comstock family to Farmington in 1790, an area now called Hathaway Corners.
• Mary Hathaway, our sixth great-grandmother, linked with our Borden family in 1776 when she married Thomas Borden, great grandson of our Richard Borden and Innocent Cornell.
• Irene, born in 1759, died at age 3 1/2 months in Freetown.
• Robert, born in 1761, died at age three weeks.
• Phebe, born in Freetown in 1763, probably went to Cheshire, MA, when her family moved.  She died in 1797 but no other information available.
• Robert Hathaway, born in Freetown, migrated to Cheshire with the family, and was a pioneer settler in Farmington, NY along with his brother, Isaac.  He died in 1806 in Hudson, NY.
• Irene would have been about 12 years old when the family moved to Cheshire. She married in Windsor, MA, and died in Palmyra, NY in 1849.
• Henry Hathaway, born 1769 in Freetown, married a young woman in Adams, MA, and died in Russia, NY in 1804.
• Susanna, born in 1770, married in Adams, MA, and died in Norway, New York in 1845.
• Bailey, born in 1771 in Fall River, married in New London, CT, became a master seaman. He died in Hudson, NY in 1831.
• Rebecca, born in 1772, was seven years old when the family moved to Cheshire, MA, married there and died at age 27.
• Rachel, born 1775, married in Cheshire and died in Russia, NY.
• Daniel, born 1777, died shortly after birth.
• Sally Hathaway was the only child born in Adams, MA, in 1781.  Father, Isaac, died in 1798 when she was 17 and she must have afterwards gone to Farmington where she married Joseph Comstock in 1802. She died in Michigan in 1862.

Life could not have been easy for Phebe. She had the deaths of a mother as a toddler, a stepmother as a teen, and three children of her own in their infancies. Her father was taken prisoner during the Revolution and she was in the midst of the Revolution herself with a husband and two sons as Revolution soldiers. Phebe had 16 children over a span of 28 years. She left behind three adult children when she moved into the wilderness with little expectation she would see them or her grandchildren again. Her daughter, Mary Hathaway Borden, had two young babies when Phebe had to leave the only home she'd known.

IN

Memory of

Phoebe the wife of

Isaac Hathaway

who Died August 13th

1785

Aged 51 years

And had Been the

Mother of 16 Children

13 of which were living

At her Death

Phebe died in 1785, four years after the birth of her 16th child and six years after that horrendous move to western Massachusetts. Her death is listed in Adams but she is buried in a small Baptist cemetery near Adams, the Old Churchyard Cemetery, Cheshire, Massachusetts. Isaac remarried eight years after Phebe's death and lived until 1798. 

Old Churchyard Cemetery, Cheshire. Photo from Find-a-Grave.

According to Find-A-Grave, the Old Churchyard Cemetery is on the National  Register of historic places, located beside the first site of the Baptist Church, and associated with the original settlement of New Providence plantation which was annexed to Adams in 1780. The Church house has been moved up the hill. Cemetery gravestones date from 1785.  Phebe must have been one of the first interred in the bucolic stone walled cemetery.

Sources:
Little Compton Families, Vol I, compiled by Benjamin Franklin Wilbour, 1967.
A History of the Town of Freetown, Massachusetts, 1902.

Our Portsmouth Bailey Family, and Then There Were Ñone

Twelve ancestor families settled this land virginal to Europeans, and started an American experiment of religious freedom and separation of church and state. By 1712, second and third generations had left the island for the mainland or relinquished their surnames by marriage into another family line.* They left behind a few from the elder generations who died in Portsmouth, including John Borden (died 1716), Mary Earle Corey (died 1717), George Brownell and Mary Walker Earle (died 1718), and the last remaining grandparent ancestor on the island, Susanna Pearce Brownell who died in 1743. From the time of the first colonists in 1638 until then, they had greatly multiplied, accumulated property and wealth, built farms, lived through Indian Wars, and experienced tragedies. 

The last of our Aquidneck Island families to immigrate who came to roost in Rhode Island in the early 1650’s - the Bailey family.  

The Bailey Family

William Bailey, Sr. is shrouded in mystery and misinformation, though he is mentioned by various sources as the head of the family that came to Rhode Island.  Family tradition says he was a silk ribbon weaver in London.  The 1894 Records of the Bailey family, descendants of William Bailey of Newport, RI, states William Bailey, Sr., bought land in Newport in 1655 “partly bounded by the sea” and sold 20 acres in 1656 to a man from Portsmouth.  Otherwise, there are no records of this man.  This same book, however, lists him as married to our Grace Parsons who is actually the wife of a younger William Bailey, our tenth great-grandfather. The confusion comes about as the records clearly state a William Bailey, Sr., bought the Newport land in 1655 implying there was a Jr. there at the same time.

It is more probable that the William Bailey Sr. who bought the land and our tenth GGF William Bailey - referred to in Ancestry as William Bailey, Jr. - are one and the same.  There is no crumb trail of immigration ship, birth, marriage or death records telling us when this family may have arrived or where they were living before coming to Portsmouth/Newport.  A number of English Bailey immigrants arrived in New England in the 1630’s and 40’s, but none have been tied with certainty to our William. Further, there are no other Baileys in early Portsmouth/Newport colonial history which would be expected if a Bailey family arrived in those early times.

Generation One

William Bailey (abt 1631- abt 1670) arrived at the Colonies as a single young man about age 22, with or without a William Sr., and married our Grace Parsons in Portsmouth around 1653. He and Grace resided in the Middletown area of Aquidneck with property bounding on the Parsons and Thomas Lawton farms. 

William died at about age 39 leaving five minor children and no will which might indicate his death was unexpected.  His burial is unknown.

William and Grace had five sons:

• John Bailey (1653-1736) married a Miss Sutton and remained on the family land in Portsmouth.
• Hugh (1654-1724), sixteen years old when his father died in 1670, was taken into the custody of his grandfather, Hugh Parsons.  The elder Parsons left Hugh all of his land, house, belongs, a bequest that left his mother Grace without means of support and likely led to her situation as a reluctant wife in her second marriage.  Hugh married twice with 8 children from his first marriage and died soon after his second marriage in East Greenwich on land given to him by his grandfather Parsons. He is buried in the Hugh Bailey Lot on his land.  Hugh also died without a will leaving  young children who were appointed guardians by the town.
• Stephen Bailey (1665-1724) married Susanna, both buried in Newport Cemetery.
• Joseph Bailey, lived in Newport, no other information.
• Edward Bailey ( -1712), married, had 4 children and lived in Newport and Tiverton.

Generation Two

John Bailey (1653-1736) was born and raised in Portsmouth.  At about 28, he married a woman with last name Sutton (1660-1709).  The rest of her name and from which Sutton family are unknown.  Indeed, her first name was possibly Sutton. Her grave stone is marked only with “Sutton.”  

John owned lands in Newport, Middletown and Tiverton. Remember Middleton is the middle of Aquidneck Island, with Portsmouth town in the north and Newport the south side of the island.  He moved to Middletown about 1682 when he purchased 50 acres and a building. His will indicates property that would be used on a dairy farm. John and wife Sutton had 12 children over a span of 20 years. He died at age 83, she at 69, and they are buried on his farm in the Old Bailey Cemetery, Berkeley Ave. in Middletown, RI.  

John’s will in 1733 indicates he was considerably well-to-do with substantial agricultural land holdings in the Newport-Portsmouth area and Little Compton which he distributed to sons and grandsons, even those under age. His will left two 18 acres lots in Little Compton to each of his grandsons as well as his eldest son, William Sr. The remainder of the Little Compton lands went to his son Thomas who was already working the farms there, described as “uplands, salt meadows, and ledges.” The Newport farm went to the eldest son, John Jr. Son, Samuel, received half of his land in Portsmouth he had purchased from Thomas Cornell, another of our ancestor grandfathers. Reflective of the time, his two youngest daughters received only £5 each and some household goods.

The opening of his will was beyond the usual “being of sound mind and body”:

 In The Name of God Amen, I John Bailey of Newport in ye Collony of Rhoad Island and Providence Plantations In New England yeoman Being in Good health of Body and of a Perfect Sound Diposing mind memory and understanding Praised Be the Lord Therefore Considering Ye Uncertainty of this my Naturall Life and the Necessity of Settling this my Temporal Estate In Order to my Great Change when It shall please the Lord to Call me hence Do make and ordain this my Last Will and Testament (That is to Say) Principally and first of all I give and Recommend my Soul unto the Hands of My Creator hopeing for the Sake and upon the account of the Sole merits of Jesus Christ my only Saviour & Redeemer to Be Everlastingly Saved and my Body I Commit to the Earth therein to Be Decently Buried at the Discretion of My Executor Herein after nominated. And As to that Temporal Estate it Hath Pleased the Lord to Bless me with in this Life after all my Just Debts and funerall Expences are Honestly paid and Discharged I Give Devise and Dispose of the Same as followeth.

The will also reached beyond the grave anticipating squabbles among the children over his estate:

I Give all the Remaining Part of Personall Estate undisposed of unto my Son Thomas Bailey and for the Preventing all Differences which may happen to arise amongst my Children or Grand Children Concerning my Estate or ye Estate by my Daughter Ruth Late Deceased Do therefore further Declare my Mind and It Is my Will that If any of the Legatees Herein Before named, Children or Grand Children will not Conform to and Rest Satisfied with my manner of Disposeing, ordering or Giving the Same that then & In Such Case the Portion of Legacy of Him, Her or they that shall move any Suit In Law or Disturbance Shall Revert to my Executor to Enable Him the Better to Defend ye other Part of my Estate against Such Suit or Disturbance.

Generation Three

Being several sons down the line for inheritance, Lt. Thomas Bailey (1690-1740) went to his father’s land in Little Compton across the Sakonnet River and just south of Fall River and Tiverton. Little Compton belonged to Massachusetts until incorporated into Rhode Island in 1747. His older brother, William, had already settled onto farmland nearby. Thomas was living in Little Compton by 1712, age 22 - and perhaps earlier - when he married Mary Wood (1691-1745). Hers was the John and Mary Wood family who lost 6 children within 8 days in 1712. She is our Richard Warren Mayflower descendant link.

Mary and Thomas had ten children between 1713 and 1733, all born in Little Compton. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Little Compton was a modest, sparsely settled agricultural community with a population of just over 600. Little Compton Families says Thomas was the richest man in town at the time. The Thomas and Mary family lived in an early 1700’s home built in the center chimney style, still standing at 14 Grinnell Road.

Thomas Bailey House in Little Compton
Built about 1700, now in an exclusive neighborhood

Thomas died in 1740 at age 50 and Mary in 1745, age 54. Both are buried in the historic Little Compton Old Commons Ground behind the Congregational Church. In his will, he gave his wife and daughter, both named Mary, each half of the household goods and use of the best room in the house.  The sons received various amounts of money, land, cows, horses.  He had lands at Freetown with saw, grist, and fulling mills that he gave to a son, Oliver.

Lt. Thomas Bailey Headstone
Old Commons Burying Ground, Little Compton, RI

The Bailey Brook Farm in East Greenwich, RI was founded in 1677, likely by his his brother, Hugh. Listed on the National Historic Register, the property is still operated by the Bailey family as a dairy farm, 2068 South County Trail, East Greenwich, RI, 4 miles out of Providence.  

Another Bailey Farm is located on the island at 373 Wyatt Road, Middletown, RI, owned by the Bailey family until the 19th century. The farm has been reduced from more than 100 acres to about 45 acres, and the Old Bailey Lot Cemetery is nearby, likely once on the original farm.

The Historic Bailey Farm, Middletown, RI

William Bailey is our tenth and Lt. Thomas Bailey our ninth great-grandfather.

Lt Thomas’ son, Thomas Bailey, Jr. is a Revolution patriot, held prisoner in 1776 on the English prison ship, “Lord Sandwich” in New York. Another generation down the line in Little Compton, an 8th great-grand mother married into the Hathaway family. More to come on these families when we look at our Little Compton families.

Migration map:  Portsmouth/Newport, Fall River, Tiverton, Little Compton, Freetown

*Last death or immigration of the Aquidneck families

Bailey

Lt. Thomas Bailey moved to Little Compton by 1712

Borden

Richard Borden moved to Fall River before 1694

John died in Portsmouth in 1716

Joseph moved to Freetown in 1712

Brownell

George Brownell died in Portsmouth in 1718

Sarah Brownell Borden moved to Freetown between 1709 and 1712

Cornell

Innocent Brownell Borden moved to Tiverton before 1694

Cooke

Thomas Cooke moved to Tiverton by 1698

Corey

Mary Corey Cooke moved to Tiverton by 1698

Earle

Mary Earle Corey died in Portsmouth in 1717

Martha Earle Wood died in Portsmouth in 1696

Sarah Earle Cornell moved to Tiverton by 1681

Parsons

Grace Parsons Bailey Lawton died in Newport in 1677

Pearce

Susannah Pearce Brownell died in Portsmouth in 1743

Shearman

Philipa Shearman Chase moved to Freetown in 1672

Walker

Mary Walker Earle died in Portsmouth in 1718

Wood

William Wood moved to Dartmouth in 1667

Lt. John Wood moved to Little Compton by 1681

The Portsmouth Parsons Family: A Reluctant Wife, or was she?

The two decades of the Great Migration (1620-1640) had passed when England was in the midst of their English Civil War (1642-1651), a clash between the Royalists who supported Charles I and the Parliamentarians, when the last of our Portsmouth families crossed the Pond. The Parsons and Baileys were in Rhode Island by 1653 when Hugh Parson's daughter, Grace, married William Bailey, Jr.

11th great-grandfather Hugh Parsons (1613-1684) has no direct evidence for origin or birth, but he was likely born in England around 1613. Nor does he have a definitive immigration record. Three contemporary Hugh Parsons were in the New England area at the time, one of whom was tried in Boston for witchcraft in 1652.

Although the Parsons were in Aquidneck by Grace's marriage in 1653, Hugh first showed up in Portsmouth records in 1658 when he was on jury duty, and later in 1662 as constable, 1663 as a freeman, 1667 enlisting in a troop of horse, and 1673 testifying in the Thomas Cornell murder trial. 

There is a great deal of confusion around when Hugh married his first wife with whom he had daughters, 10th great-grandmother Grace and her sister Hannah.  

The usually reliable Torrey New England Marriages for the Portsmouth Hugh Parsons lists Hugh’s marriage to Elizabeth England, widow of Wm, about 1635-1640 or after 1641, Portsmouth, but no note what the Portsmouth location means. Hugh was likely not in Portsmouth this early or he would have shown up in some town records. His marriage to Elizabeth, origins unknown, was before the 1635 birth of Grace.

By 1662, Hugh married second wife, also Elizabeth (1613-after 1684), widow of John Wood living on land adjoining Hugh’s in Portsmouth. John Wood died in 1655, so it makes sense that the widower Hugh married the widow Elizabeth, and that Hugh’s two daughters, Grace and Hannah, were born to a previous wife. Second wife Elizabeth helped prepare the corpse of Rebecca Briggs Cornell (the Killed Strangely) for burial. Both she and Hugh testified at the Thomas Cornell’s murder trial in 1673. 

Hugh died in 1684 at about age 70. His burial is unknown, likely on his land. With only two daughters, this was the end of the Portsmouth male Parsons line. Hugh's will left his land and buildings to his grandson Hugh Bailey, son of Grace.

Daughter Hannah married first Henry Matteson in 1670  and they had two children, Henry and Hannah - that had to be confusing around the dinner table. Her second marriage to Charles Hazleton of Kings  Town, RI, in 1693 produced no children. She died the year after her father, Hugh.

Grace Parsons (c.1634-1677) was most likely born in England before the family immigrated; her birth estimate is based on her marriage year in 1653. She married William Bailey, Jr. (1634-1670) from an adjoining Portsmouth farm in about 1653 and they had five children, all sons. 

In 1661, husband William and a neighbor, Thomas Lawton, agreed that William would have 60 acres of Lawton’s farm in a hunting swamp lying on one side of the farm on which Hugh Parsons lived. We know, then, that Parsons, Lawton, and Bailey were all in the same neighborhood. The agreement goes on to say that William would have the land for his lifetime and, if Grace kept herself a widow after William's death, then she was also to have it for the full term of Thomas Lawton’s life and three years afterward. It appears to be an odd arrangement in which Lawton sells the land to Bailey, but with conditions which also included upkeep of the property and that William was not allowed to resell the land, so this wasn’t just a lease. More of this in a minute.

Grace was about 35 years old when husband William died in 1670 and she married, secondly, Thomas Lawton from an adjoining farm who had sold/leased land to William. Thomas was about the same age as Grace’s father, around 60 years old.  

George Lawton Farmstead in Lawton's Valley, Portsmouth

Thomas Lawton and his brother George were signers of the Portsmouth Compact in 1638 and early settlers in Portsmouth so they both had substantial land from grants. Thomas and George had land adjoining each other in Portsmouth, now known as Lawton’s Valley, and George's original historic farm house is still standing. George was an overseer of Hugh's will in 1684. 

Was Grace forced into an arrangement with the elderly Thomas Lawton in order to save the property for which first husband William made conditional arrangements in 1661? Were Lawton and Grace's father, Hugh, complicit in the arrangement?

Things were clearly not going well for Grace at this point. 

In June 1674 Thomas Lawton drew up his will which starts out with “I do hereby declare that although Grace have not behaved herself towards me as a wife ought to do towards a husband, yet for the manifestation of my care of her, I do hereby give, bequeath unto her all the goods that are yet remaining in my custody of those that were hers when I married her and also one good feather bed and bolster; also 12 pounds per annum for life in lieu of all right she has.”

In June 1676, town records show that Grace “having presented her many grievances to the town often, and to the Assembly several times, for due and sufficient maintenance, she being much neglected in her husband’s absence; it was therefore ordered by the Assembly that 6 shillings per week in silver be paid her or her order during her life, or until her said husband Thomas Lawton shall come himself, or maintain her. During his absence or neglect, the said sum of 6 shillings per week shall be paid by his agent Daniel Lawton (Thomas’ 22 year-old son), and an Inventory of moveable goods in her custody be taken, which inventory Daniel Lawton shall have. Grace to have the privilege of chamber she is now possessed of, and use of necessary movables, and the rights of her or any of her children now or in the future to any estate are not cut off.

In April 1677, town records show Thomas Lawton made agreement with 23 year-old stepson John Bailey whereby Grace, “the present wife of Thomas Lawton,” should receive 10 pounds per year from John Bailey, and Elizabeth Shearman, daughter of Thomas Lawton, should have 3 pounds/year. In consideration of these, John Bailey was to have lease of the dwelling house, land, and orchard for term of time Grace lived without changing her name by marriage. The term of tenancy not to expire until one year after death or marriage of Grace. On the same date, he sold John Bailey all his household goods except a bedstead, chairs, etc.

Grace died the same year at age 42. We can only speculate on the cause of death. Her burial is unknown.

Grace and William’s second son, John Bailey (1653-1736), continued our ancestry in the Bailey line.

Addendum: The following was kindly added by a commenter:

Acquitals rooted in legal technicalities appear in five other Rhode Island sexual misconduct trials. Grace Bailey Lawton committed adultery in 1670 with Thomas Lawton, while still married to William Bailey. Bailey appears to have then divorced his wife as Grace married Lawton while Bailey was still alive, although therre is no record of the divorce. Grace married Thomas early in 1671 and was tried for adultery on October 18, 1671. Circumstanial evidence did not play in Grace's favor, particularly since she was now married to the man with whom she was accused of having an adulterous affair. Unsurprisingly, both jury and justices found her guilty. However, her attorney "declar[ed] that there was a failer in the Testimony" and the court ordered her acquitted. The other four trials were all fornication trials. . . . None of the Rhode Island court records preserve the details of these trials and it is impossible to know exactly how these acquitals were accomplished.

The Pearce Family: Sorting Fact and Fiction

Richard Pearce’s brother, Captain William Pearce, was Master of the ship Desire that brought our grandparent ancestors Richard (1590-1666) and Martha (1593-1662), and at least some of their children from England to Boston in 1638. William, a celebrated mariner, was killed by the Spanish while transporting settlers in 1641 as they approached Providence Island in the Bahamas. He had already been sailing to and from the colonies for several years before bringing Richard’s family to Boston.  William was Master of the Anne that brought families of the first Pilgrims to Plymouth Colony in 1623.

No good evidence exists for the popular myth that our Pearces were from the powerful Northumberland Percy family involved in the Gunpowder Plot in 1604, although origins of our Pearces may have been connected to the Northumberland Percys at some point in time. The family had multitudinous ways to spell the name - Piers, Peirse, Percy, Pearcy, etc...

Our Pearce family had an annoying habit of naming the first born sons Richard. Not only that, but the siblings of our Richards would have a Richard offspring - they loved the name Richard. One wonders whether the Pearce/Percy family genealogy lineage might be valid when it says our immigrant Richard Pearce is the great grandson of the Peter Percy of Northumberland, standard bearer to Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 during the War of the Roses. This Peter Percy named a son Richard, and every generation thereafter had a Richard.

A confused genealogy of the Pearce family written in 1888, though, makes connections without documented substance, and we can’t be sure of much of the information on the early Pearces before Portsmouth.  For example, the book claims the Pearces came over in 1638 on the ship Lyon, ignoring the fact the Lyon, albeit captained by William Pearce, hit a reef and sunk in 1632. This 19th century genealogy draws conclusions about Pearce-Percy lineage that simply may not be true - or they may. 

We don’t know for sure where our Pearces were until they show up in Portsmouth records in the 1650’s, but they may have been in Salem, MA. A Richard Piers mentioned in Portsmouth town records in 1651 is likely one of our Richards, and the name Richard Pearce begins to show with some regularity in 1657. No record exists in Portsmouth for wife Martha, and she may have died before the family moved here.

It appears most of Richard and Martha’s adult children remained in the Salem/Boston area. We know that Richard Sr., Richard Jr., younger Richard’s wife Susannah, and her father George Wright, came to the Portsmouth/Newport area. Oldest son, John, died in Boston in 1661. There are no records in Portsmouth of the other six children.

Richard Pearce, Jr. (1615-1678) married Susannah Wright (1627- before 1678 ) from Waltham Abbey. There is conflicting information whether Richard married Susannah in Waltham Abbey, Salem, or Newport, RI in 1642. More likely, Richard Jr. came with the rest of the family in 1638, already married or he married Susannah in the Salem/Boston area. Susannah is believed to be daughter of George Wright of Newport who also previously lived in Salem. 

Richard, Jr. stabbed a Walter Lettice in Newport in 1649, but we have no information on what happened as a result. Clearly, he wasn’t hanged so perhaps it was self defense.

Richard, Jr. named freeman of Portsmouth in 1669 may have been actually a Richard Pearce III.

Faithfully following the guide of primogeniture, Richard Jr.'s will left the house, land, fencings, orchard and swamps, oxen, cart, etc... to his oldest son, also named Richard, and to the other 10 children he left ONE SHILLING EACH! Was he cash poor, or were only those named Richard deserving?

Richard and Susannah had 11 children. Eldest son Richard, moved to Bristol, RI; Giles became a grantee in East Greenwich, RI, in 1678; George moved his family across the bay to Little Compton; John bought land and was one of the incorporators of Tiverton, RI. Daughter Martha, married Mahershalalhashbaz Dyer. That’s right, Mahershalalhashbaz. Evidently, these families sometimes got carried away with Biblical names, and this one comes from Isaiah - "Moreover the Lord said unto me, Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man's pen concerning Maher-shalal-hashbaz.” Martha lived to be almost 100 years old, quite a feat in those times.

The burial site for Richard and Susannah is unknown.

Susannah Pearce (1652-1743), daughter of Richard Jr., was born in Portsmouth in the middle of the sibling pack. She married George Brownell in 1673; her sister Mary married George’s brother, Thomas Brownell, Jr.  Susannah and George had eight children and she remained in Portsmouth until her death at age 90, surviving her husband by twenty five years. They are buried in the George Brownell Lot in Portsmouth.

George Brownell Cemetery Lot, Portsmouth, RI

Richard, Sr. is our 10th great-grandfather and Susannah our 8th great-grandmother.

Our Cooke Family: Smugglers, Shoemakers and Patriots

Immigrant Thomas Cooke alias Butcher (1600-1677) from the small village of Netherbury, Dorset, England, his wife Mary and three children sailed to Dorcester, Massachusetts, in 1637 on the ship Speedwell.  They traveled with a number of others from Netherbury, less likely for religious reasons than due to a prolonged drought in their area.   

St. Mary's Church in Netherbury, like so many in English villages we walked

Baptismal records for Thomas and other Cookes were found in Netherbury parish records.  The family most likely attended St. Mary’s Church which was begun in the late 1300’s and a Norman tower added in the 1400’s.  Check out the wonderful buttresses on the tower.

Using an “alias,” i.e. Butcher, as did the Cooke family was not unusual for this part of England.  Butcher was not a reflection of their occupation; the name was also spelled Bowcher, Bocher, and Boocher, perhaps a derivation of the Norman surname Bourchier.  Why were aliases more common in Dorset than elsewhere in England?  Evidently, smuggling was a big time occupation for Dorseters given their location on the southern coast of England, and smugglers used aliases.  Our Grandma Alice, proper New Englander she was, would turn over in her grave if she knew she might be descended from smugglers.

In any event, the connection of our Thomas Cooke as a Netherbury immigrant was made from Thomas being found in the Dorset parish records as Thomas the Butcher and likewise listed on a 1660 Portsmouth deed as Thomas the Butcher. 

The Cooke family had only a 15-20 mile jaunt from Netherbury to Weymouth to catch the Speedewell
From Thomas Cooke of Rhode Island

The year after arrival in the Colonies, Thomas purchased land in Taunton from Tetiquet Indians.  Even though a proprietor of Taunton and he took an oath of fidelity for the town, Thomas moved to Portsmouth by 1647.  He was illiterate, signing documents with his mark.  Evidence indicates he was Baptist, by this time a popular denomination in the area after residents built one of the first two Baptist churches in America in Newport.  

Wife Mary, mother of his four children, died in 1670 and Thomas, age 72, remarried to a second much younger Mary, last name unknown.  Besides Mary #1, numerous family members died in the same year, including a son, the son’s wife and three children, and a son-in-law, presumably due to the 1670-71 influenza epidemic.

John Cooke alias Butcher (1630-1691) was seven years old when he accompanied his family on the Speedewell and 18 years old when he was admitted as a freeman in Portsmouth  in 1648.  The Cookes, Shearmans, and Bordens had farms in close proximity, so it’s no surprise John married 20 year old Mary Borden (1632-1690), daughter of our Richard and Joan, in 1652 and they had ten children.  John's father deeded him 60 acres in Portsmouth and he acquired land in Pocasset (now Tiverton/Little Compton) and Barnstable.  

John Cook Lot, burial ground for he and Mary on his farm

John's will indicates he owned Negro slaves and had Indian servants.  John and Mary Borden Cooke are buried in a small unmarked plot in an open field on Glen Farm in Portsmouth, once John's land, beside a stone wall on the south side of Glen Road, 0.3 miles east of East Main Road.

Thomas Cooke (1667-1726), seventh child of John and Mary, married Mary Corey (1662-1743), daughter of William Corey and Mary Earle, sometime between 1692 and 1697 and inherited land near Barnstable, MA, and in Tiverton.  He and Mary settled in Tiverton by 1698 when he registered his cow ear mark there.  As well as owning land and cattle, he was a cordswainer, i.e., a shoemaker who makes new shoes rather than a cobbler who repairs.  Their burial is unknown, but most likely on their land in Tiverton.

Joseph Cooke (1667-1727), the oldest son, was born in Portsmouth just before the family moved to Tiverton.  He married Patience (last name unknown) in Tiverton in 1721 and they had four children,  all born in Tiverton and baptized at Trinity Church in Newport.  He inherited half the family farm in Tiverton, the other half going to a brother, but died at age 30 - a year after his father - and never claimed it.  The last record of Patience was her baptism along with eight year old son, William, in 1730 at the Newport Trinity Church.

Daughter Hope Cooke (1726-1791) was one year old when her father died.  She married Richard Borden (1722-1795), grandson of Richard Borden and Innocent Cornell, in Tiverton.  Husband Richard and son Thomas are recognized by the DAR as patriots of the American Revolution related to the Battle of Fall River.  That's a story for another day.  Hope and Richard are buried in the Fall River North Old Burial Ground.  We brought all our cousins to the old burial ground during the 2013 Cousins Reunion in Fall River and showed the mini-cousins their ancestor graves.  Just so they know.

Inscription:  Sacred to the Memory of
Mr. Richard Borden who departed this life
July 4, 1795
Aged 74 years

Inscription:  Sacred to the Memory of
Mrs. Hope Borden, wife of
Mr. Richard Borden who departed this life
March 1791
Aged about 70 years.

Thomas  the Butcher was our 10th great-grandfather and Hope, who married Richard Borden, our sixth great-grandmother.  Thus, our colonial Cookes passed through five generations before linking in to the Bordens.

Source:  Thomas Cooke of Rhode Island, Jane Fletcher Fiske.

The Wood Family: Six Children in Eight Days, A Tragedy of Shakespearean Proportion

Hypotheses and unproven claims have long swirled around the origins of John Wood of Portsmouth, sometimes called John Wood the Mariner even though no evidence shows he was a seaman. 

He has been identified as the John Wood who married Margaret Carter at St. Savior’s Church in Southwark, London, and lived in Frying Pan Alley. He has also been linked with John Winthrop and described as a master’s mate or captain in one of the fleets that brought English settlers to New England. None of these identifications is supported by direct evidence.

Part of the confusion arises from several John Woods in seventeenth-century New England. Over time, the identities of different men have contaminated each other.

More recent research has disproved some of those connections and failed to substantiate others. What can be said about our John Wood, born about 1590 somewhere in England, and immigrated to Rhode Island, is that his life before 1643 remains largely a historical blank slate.

John Wood of Portsmouth

The first documented appearance of John Wood of Portsmouth (ca. 1590-1655) comes on June 7, 1643, when John Richman and David Greenman brought separate trespass suits against him in a Newport court. Both matters were referred to an arbitrator rather than decided in court, and the surviving entries tell nothing about the disputes.

John was affluent enough when he arrived in Rhode Island that he was able to buy land in 1646 in the area that became Middletown, a family farm that has remained in the Wood family for generations.

His son, John Wood II, lived on the Middletown farm while John Sr. moved farther north to Portsmouth. He was accepted as a freeman in July 1648 and served on the Portsmouth Town Council in 1649. The father is often referred to as John Wood of Portsmouth to distinguish him from his son known as John Wood of Middletown.

By the time John Sr. appeared in Rhode Island records, he already had at least five older children born in England who were either grown or approaching adulthood.  His oldest son, George, was probably born before 1620 and the last of the England births was around 1638. The 1655 Portsmouth estate settlement and local gravestones provide proof five of his children were born in England and traveled to Rhode Island. 

The identity of their mother is unknown. She either died in England or soon after arrival as he married a second wife, Elizabeth, whose maiden name is also unknown. His two youngest daughters, Susanna and Elizabeth, were both under sixteen when he died and may have been children of this second marriage.

When John died intestate in 1655, dispersal of his estate was a mess and immediately became complicated. His family included adult children from his first marriage, a widow, and two underage daughters.

The Portsmouth Town Council stepped in to inventory the property and determine how it should be divided. A group of prominent men, including our direct ancestor Thomas Cornell, appraised the land, buildings, fences, livestock, and household goods - pretty much everything. The family accepted an agreement for distribution of assets in May. John II was allowed to keep the land already in his possession, but had to pay his sister Margaret eight pounds and a “ewe goat.”

John of Portsmouth and his unidentified first wife are our eleventh-great-grandparents.

John Wood of Middletown

Before his father’s death, John Wood II (ca. 1620-1704) had informally taken possession of approximately fifty-eight acres in the area that later became Middletown, and the Portsmouth Council allowed this in the final agreement.

While several other siblings eventually moved away from Portsmouth, John remained on the farm for the rest of his life, safely removed from the family drama.

The details of John’s marriages remain uncertain. He apparently married an unidentified wife in England and perhaps a second wife and had two children before arrival in the colonies with his father. He married again to Mary Peabody about 1662 and they had several children, including our grandfather ancestor, John Wood III, of Little Compton.

Mary Peabody, born around 1640, was a daughter of John Peabody of Newport who bought property in 1649. A carpenter by trade, he was also highly entrepreneurial, owned cattle ,and had business interests spread across Little Compton and Dartmouth.  Mary’s mother is sometimes identified as Dorothy Tooley, but that identification is questionable and should not be treated as established.

John briefly entered  colonial politics, serving as a deputy to the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1673. In December 1677, John purchased two tracts at Saconett Neck, now Little Compton. One contained approximately one hundred acres along the water, between the property of Joseph Church and Josiah Cooke.. This land eventually served as the homestead for the next Wood generation.

John died on August 26, 1704 . His gravestone inscription, copied by historians around 1890, recorded both his dead date and his age as eight-four. Mary lived until 1719.Both are buried in the Wood Lot in Middletown.

.John Wood of Middletown and Mary Peabody are our tenth-great grandparents. 

Lt. John Wood of Little Compton

 Their son, Lt. John Wood (1664-1740),was born in Newport and moved between 1688 and 1691 to the 100-acre tract in Little Compton inherited from his father. 

John married Mary Church (1666-1748) in Hingham in 1688 and they had eleven children over the next nineteen years  

Mary’s father was Joseph Church (1638-1711), a descendant of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren. She was also a niece of Colonel Benjamin Church, one of the best-known military commanders in early New England.

 

Benjamin Church, Joseph's brother, was among the early proprietors of Little Compton and became John Wood’s neighbor when John moved to the town to claim his one-hundred acre of land deeded to him by his father. 

During King Phillip’s War, Church organized irregular, highly mobile forces that combined English colonists with Native allies and adapted Native methods of warfare. His forces participated in the campaign at Mount Hope in Rhode Island that tracked and killed the leader of the Native American resistance, Metacom, called King Philip by the British.

Church later led expeditions across the northeastern frontier of New England and Acadia during King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War, forerunners of American ranger-style warfare He was inducted into the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame in 1992.

John Wood was commissioned as a Lieutenant n the Little Compton militia in the late 1690s, in charge of maintaining garrison defenses for the coastal areas.

The political identity of Little Compton changed several times over the next several decades. Originally part of Plymouth Colony, it became part the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in 1691. In 1747, a royal boundary settlement transferred it to the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. 

The Tragic Loss of Six Children

An epidemic swept through Little Compton in the winter of 1711-1712, causing twenty three deaths in the small farming community. The epicenter was recorded in Waterbury, Connecticut, where  hundreds of people died, including 24 members of the Connecticut General Assembly. but it spread quickly through coastal communities of Connecticut and southeastern Massachusetts. The epidemic was largely contained by the isolation of farming communities and natural quarantine when families were so sick they couldn’t leave their farms and those traveling through avoided houses of sickness.

The epidemic was caused by a highly contagious, virulent strain of influenza combined with secondary bacterial pneumonia that could cause death within a few days.

Six of John and Mary’s oldest seven children died within eight days of each other in March 1712 and were buried in four graves in the Little Compton cemetery.  The only one of the seven older children to survive was our ancestor, twenty-one-year-old Mary Wood.  Four younger children survived the epidemic, but eleven-year-old Rebekah died two years later.

Little Compton Church and Old Commons Burial Ground

John died in 1740 and Mary eight years later in 1748. They are buried at the Little Compton Old Commons Burial Ground alongside their six children who died in the epidemic.  Benjamin Church is also buried in the cemetery. 

In Memory of Lieu John Wood

Died February 22, 1739

In Ye 77 year of his age

In Memory of Mary Widow 

of Lieu John Wood

Died Nov ye 11 1748

Aged about 80 years

Janie and I visited the cemetery to pay our respects to the Wood family and the young children and look for Colonel Church’s grave near the church. When a young man came outside and struck up a conversation, I mentioned this was Benjamin Church’s grave. He immediately came to attention and saluted. An Army veteran, he well knew who Benjamin Church was. What he hadn’t known was that Church was buried in that cemetery.

John Wood of Compton and Mary Church are our ninth- great-grandparents.

Mary Wood and the Bailey Family

Four months after losing her siblings, Mary Wood (1691-1745) married Lt. Thomas Bailey (1690-1740). With that marriage, our Wood line merged into the Bailey family.  

Like his father-in-law, Thomas served as a commissioned officer in the local militia. He acquired and managed property in both Portsmouth and Little Compton, eventually coming to be described as the wealthiest man in town.

Thomas and Mary had ten children. The family’s military tradition continued with their son Thomas Bailey Jr. who served during the American Revolution. He was captured by the British and endured brutal captivity on an English prison ship.

John Woods will directly bequeathed money and high value household items to Mary rather than to her husband. The only surviving son of John and Mary’s eleven children inherited most of the family’s land.

Thomas Bailey died in 1740 at about age fifty. Mary survived him by five years, dying in 1745 at age fifty-four. Mary’s will shows she was a slave holder and bequeathed three of them to her children.  It is a sobering reminder that not only Southerners were slave owners, and some were in our ancestor families. 

Mary and Thomas were buried in Little Compton Old Commons Burial Ground near Mary's parents and the brothers and sisters she lost in 1712.

Inscription: In Memory of Mary, ye wife of

Lieu Thomas Bailey

Died October 7

1745 in ye 54 Year of her Age

Mary Wood and Thomas Bailey are our eighth great-grandparents. Thomas Bailey, Jr. is our seventh great-grandfather.