Our Portsmouth Brownell Family, Macho Has A Down Side

Thomas Brownell (1608-1664) came from Ryecroft Parish of Rawmarsh in West Riding, Yorkshire, a bit farther north than our usual English immigrant.  He married Anne Bourne (1607-1666) at St. Peter’s Wharf in London in 1637.  Anne hailed from Cranfield in Bedfordshire, England, notably south of Thomas’ northern England Yorkshire.  Thomas and his brother George had moved to London to work for an uncle who was a fabric merchant, doubtless as young men, perhaps about 18-20 years old.  Did he meet Anne there?  Was she Austin-like staying with an aunt to meet London society?  She was 30 when they married - almost elderly for an unmarried woman in those days.

Thomas and Anne sailed to Boston on the ship Whale in 1638.  They settled on six acres in Braintree, MA, worked the small farm - perhaps Thomas also found some work in the fabric business here - and had one child before selling their house in Braintree to move to Portsmouth in 1640.  Was the Braintree-Portsmouth connection William Coddington, a key Antonimian/banned from Boston guy who was given land grants in Braintree between 1635 and 1637?  Did the Brownells find the Puritan government of Braintree less to their liking than separation of church and state in Portsmouth?

The first town record of Thomas in Portsmouth was in 1647 when he witnessed John Walker’s will.  Thomas held several public offices - as expected for a freeman - and had a 40 acre farm on the west side of the northwest end of the island extending down to Narragansett Bay.  These days, Brownell Lane runs through this location.

In 1664, 56 year old Thomas was killed in an equestrian accident racing 21 year old Daniel Lawton while returning from Daniel’s dad’s farm back into Portsmouth.  Young Daniel in the lead saw a riderless horse headed into the swamp when he looked back. Backtracking, he found the lifeless Thomas and a great deal of blood, hair and blood stuck to a tree, and brains spilling out as described in detail by Daniel at the inquest. 

Thomas and Anne had nine children, and 55 grandchildren!  How does one ever find enough names?  Given his sudden death, Thomas left no will and the Town Council divided the estate using the custom of primogeniture.  The bulk of the estate went to the oldest son, George, then age 19.  Anne retained the use, benefit and profit of the house and lands, but she died a year later.  The other sons received 20 pounds when they reached 21; the daughters were given 10 shillings until they were married.  They would then receive their 20 pounds.  Heaven forbid young women be given money to manage on their own!  What if the daughter didn’t remarry, like his youngest Susanna who died never married at about age 74?  She was pretty much up a creek, so to speak.  Well, we ladies got some help in this area a couple + centuries later.  Ever hear of Susan B. Anthony?  It’s Susan Brownell Anthony, for your information - not a direct descendant but named after a paternal aunt.

George Brownell Lot, Portsmouth

Thomas and Anne are buried in the historical George Brownell Lot in Portsmouth located 104 feet west of West Shore Road at telephone pole #11.

George Brownell (1647-1718) inherited his father’s lands and house at a young age and so worked the Portsmouth farm his entire life, likely lived in the town house, and held various positions in Portsmouth town.  He married 21 year old Susannah Pearce (1652-1743) in 1673 and they had eight children, all born in Portsmouth.  Several of George’s siblings spread out to Freetown and Little Compton.  Brother, Thomas Jr., married Susannah’s sister, Mary Pearce, in 1678.

George and Susannah are also buried in the George Brownell Lot in Portsmouth.

Daughter, Sarah Brownell (1681-1715) married Joseph Borden (1680-1715) in Portsmouth in 1703, another link into our Borden family.  They had 4 children, spaced apart about every two to three years, and died relatively young at ages 35 and 34 respectively.  See Sarah Brownell in the Borden post.

Plaque at Oak Grove Cemetery, Fall River
Here are interred the remains of Stephen Borden, his wife, and fifteen of their immediate relatives removed from the family burying ground on Central Street, April 12, 1909.

Sarah and Joseph were the first Bordens buried in downtown Fall River where Central Street now runs between Durfee and Harbor Street.  All 23 graves from the Stephen Borden family burying ground were disinterred in 1909 and reburied in Oak Grove Cemetery, a beautiful Gothic arched cemetery which opened in 1855.  The automobile was coming into vogue in 1909, so I suspect a lot of other city cemeteries on the East Coast were being dug up to make way for street building.  

We have a 1909 newspaper photo of our great grandfather Joseph Nute riding in a “motor truck” purchased by the Fall River Gas Works Company.  According to the article, “it had coil springs in the rear - what we call “knee action” today - was chain driven and had solid rubber tires.”  The photo was taken at the “Narrows,” exactly the area where would have been the Borden cemetery.  Did Joseph Nute know his wife’s ancestors’ bones were dug up that year to make way for his motor truck?

Thomas Brownell is our 9th great grandfather, George our 8th, and Sarah our 7th great grandmother.

Our Portsmouth Bordens

We have more Bordens in our family than you can shake a stick at, from the first Borden who came to Boston in 1635 to the last male Borden, Civil War veteran Stephen  Bailey Borden (1838-1901).  Our beloved Aunt Nettie was Nettie Borden Studley and her hometown, Fall River, was studded with Bordens.

This is the story of only those Bordens born in Portsmouth.  We'll address the others later.  Here is a cheat sheet to keep them straight.  It doesn't help that families all named their kids after themselves, their parents, their grandparents, their siblings, and their best friend when they ran out of names.  In fact, family historians would rather see best friend namesakes than five Richards in a row.

Most researchers believe the Bordens came to England from Normandy with William the Conqueror in 1066.

Richard's parents were Matthew Borden (1583-1620) and Matthew's second wife Joan Glover (1583-1620) of Headcorn, Kent, England. The Borden Coat of Arms is on record the Herald's office in London, However, while Matthew owned lands across Headcorn, Smarden, and Bletchenden, and served as a churchwarden, he was not an armigerous gentleman and never registered a coat of arms.

Richard Borden (1595-1671) and his wife Joan Fowle  (1604-1688) were not spring chickens when they crossed the pond from Headcorn, Kent, England to Boston in 1635. He was 40 and she 31 years old.  One child had died in infancy; the other three came to the colonies with their parents, including sons Thomas, 8, Francis, 7, and daughter Mary, 3.  Three years in Boston and a dissenter in the Antinomian Controversy, Richard took his family to Portsmouth with the first group of settlers.   

Altogether, Richard and Joan had 11 children, eight boys and three girls, born between Joan’s ages of 22 and 48 years.  Son Matthew was the first child of English descent born on Aquidneck in May 1638.  Three sons, Francis, Samuel and Benjamin settled in New Jersey where the family had extensive land holdings. Richard and Joan’s illustrious offspring include Marilyn Monroe, Gail Borden of Borden Milk, Robert Laird Borden, prime minister of Canada during WWI; notorious offspring includes Lizzie Borden.

Richard was prominent in the governance of the Rhode Island Colony.  As a surveyor, he acquired substantial land in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.  He was one of the founders of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Portsmouth.  His will indicated he had a Negro man and woman and 3 Negro children.  Joan and Richard are buried in the Friends Churchyard in Portsmouth.

Generation Two

Two of Richard and Joan’s children are our grandparent ancestors:

• Mary Borden (1632-1690), born in Cranbrook, Kent, England, fourth child of Richard and Joan.  She was three years old when the family arrived in Boston and 6 years old when they moved to the Portsmouth settlement.  As the oldest girl with seven younger siblings, Mary’s time was likely consumed with helping her mother.  She married John Cooke (1630-1691) at age 20 and had nine children of her own.  She lived her entire life in Portsmouth, died at age 58, and was unusually fortunate that none of her children preceded her in death.  She is buried in the John Cooke Lot in Portsmouth, a small burial ground in an open field on Glen Farm in Portsmouth, beside a stone wall on the south side of Glen Road, 0.3 mile east of East Main Road that was John's land.

• John Borden (1640-1716), the 5th son of Richard and Joan, was born in Portsmouth in 1640. Two older brothers, Thomas and Francis, moved to New Jersey to look after the family land holdings when John was about 25, while John and his two year older brother, Matthew, stayed in Portsmouth and were considered pillars of the community.  On Christmas Day 1670 - he married 16 year old Mary Walker Earle (1654-1734), fourteen years his junior.  John inherited substantial land from his father who died the following year.  He continued to acquire property, publicly saying “if any man has land to sell at a fair price, I am ready to buy and have money ready at my house to pay for it.”  He bought Hog Island, for grazing cattle as well as lands at Bristol Ferry, Swansea, Tiverton, and Freetown.  He operated the ferry service between Portsmouth and the mainland in 1660 when only 20 years old.

John Borden (1640-1716)

John and Mary had nine children; all born in Portsmouth and all but one moved off the island:

• Richard m. Innocent Cornell  settled in Fall River
• Joseph m. Sarah Brownell  and moved to Fall River
• John Jr. settled on his father’s land in Swansea, later part of Scuitate, and set up a forge to make wrought iron
• Amey married Benjamin Chase and settled in Tiverton
• Thomas remained in the family home in Portsmouth
• Mary moved to her father's land holdings in Pennsylvania with her husband, progenitor of the Potts family in that area
• Hope married into the Almy family in Tiverton 
• William went into the ship building business in Newport and eventually moved to North Carolina where he had a shipyard and named the local river Newport 
• Benjamin joined his uncles in New Jersey and Virginia where he accumulated thousands of acres.  He made two trips to England to recruit hundreds of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians to farm the land.

A close friend to King Philip of King Philip’s War, John was sent to negotiate in an effort to head off the impending Indian war.

John was a devout Quaker and involved in erecting the Friends Meetinghouses in Newport and Portsmouth.  No slaves were mentioned in his will.  Both John and Mary lived well into their 70’s and were buried in the Portsmouth Friends Churchyard.

Portsmouth Friends Churchyard behind the Meeting house

Generation Three

Two of John and Mary’s children are our Fall River and Freetown grandparent ancestors :

• Richard Borden (1671-1732), born, raised and married in Portsmouth at age 21 to Innocent Cornell (1673-1720), first located his home after marriage on a 14 acre family farmstead in what is now Fall River, sold timber for ship masts in Newport and became an original proprietor in Tiverton, RI.  He and his brother, Joseph, bought a mill lot in Fall River from Benjamin Church of our Little Compton Church family.  Joseph soon became mortally ill and turned over his share to Richard.  At the time of Richard’s death at age 60, he was the largest landowner in Fall River.  

Richard and Innocent had seven children, 4 boys and 3 girls.  Their second son, Thomas (1697-1740), born in Tiverton, married Mary Gifford, to continue our family line in Fall River.  Thomas' son, Richard, was a legend in Fall River for his defiance of the British during the American Revolution.  Richard and Innocent's third son, Joseph Fuller, was killed instantly in a tragic accident at the mill at age 34.  Richard and Innocent are buried at the Portsmouth Friends Churchyard.

• Joseph Borden (1680-1715), born and raised in Portsmouth, married Sarah Brownell (1681-1715) - he age 22 and she 21 - and settled on family land in Swansea between the birth of their third child in 1709 and fourth in 1712.  Their deaths at a young age within 5 months of each other in 1715 suggest the possibility of tuberculosis or other chronic infectious disease.  Or, perhaps Sarah was despondent from Joseph’s death and killed herself, the kind of thing that would not be mentioned in history.  They left 4 young children in the care of her sister and a complaint was filed in 1750 that the aunt did not give them their due inheritance.

Generation Four

William Borden (1707-1756), son of Joseph and Sarah Brownell, was born in Portsmouth but moved with his family to Swansea, MA, by age 4 and to Freetown by age 8 where his parents died within 5 months of each other that year.  William, his wife and 15 immediate relatives were removed from the family burial ground on Central Street, Fall River, likely the farmstead at the time, to Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River.

Home on original Borden Portsmouth farmstead, built in mid-1800's, on National Register of Historic Places.  Photo by John Phelan.

And so, all but one of John Borden’s progeny left the island by 1712, including our grandparent ancestors.  Only Thomas from our line remained in the family home on the farmstead.

Richard Borden (1671-1732) and Innocent Cornell are our 8th great grandparents.

Historical and Genealogical Record of the Descendants, as far as known, of Richard and Joan Borden, who settled in Portsmouth Rhode Island, May 1638, Weld.