Ancestors

Alice Newton

Alice Newton was born on 28 February 1686, the second daughter of James Newton and his first wife, Mary Hubbell. The family was then living at Fairfield, Connecticut, where her father served as the town's constable that year. Her mother was a daughter of Sergt. Richard Hubbell, one of the largest landholders in Fairfield. Her father's family went back to the founding of the town: her grandfather Thomas Newton was one of the four men who began the plantation there in 1639.

She was one of seven children. Her sister Dorothy was born in 1681, five years before her. After her came James in 1690, Ann in 1692, Israel in 1694, Mary, baptised in 1699, and Abigail in 1703 or 1704. While she was a girl, both her parents joined the Fairfield church in full communion, her father in December 1694 and her mother in March 1696. In April 1696 her father sold his homelot at Greens Farms. By 1703 the family had moved to Kingstown, Rhode Island, where her father held a farm on Boston Neck. That land had come down to him from his grandfather, Richard Smith, the first English settler of the Narragansett country.

About 1708 she married Robert Ransom. Their first child, John, was born on 13 November 1709, and the family's births were entered in the town book of Colchester, in New London County, Connecticut. Her father was one of the proprietors of that new town. He signed as a proprietor on 28 April 1713, and her husband's name stands near his in the town's lists of officers.

She had eleven children over twenty three years. John was born in 1709, Mary in 1711, James in 1713, Joshua in 1715 and Robert in 1717. Alice followed on 6 September 1719. Then came Newton in 1722, a son who carried her own family's name, then Peleg in 1724 and Amos in 1727. Elizabeth was born on 1 May 1729 and Amy on 2 August 1732. She was forty six when Amy was born.

The Colchester clerk entered the first nine of those children under their father alone. When Elizabeth was born he wrote the mother in as well: "Elisabeth daughter to Robert & Alice Ransom b. May 1: 1729 ... Amy b. Aug. 2: 1732." It is the only place in the town book where her name appears. A few lines above it on the same page is a daughter of James Newton Junior and his wife Susannah, born on 7 May 1732. That was very probably her brother James, living in the same town.

Her father became one of the leading men of Colchester. He was a selectman from 1713 to 1726, sat for the town in the General Assembly from 1713 to 1716, and in May 1716 was commissioned captain of its first trainband. Her mother died at some date after 1699. Her father married again in January 1735 and died on 9 February 1739, aged eighty five. He lies under a table tomb in the Colchester Burying Ground.

Her daughter Alice married Lebbeus Harris of Mohegan in November 1738 and later went north to Horton, in Nova Scotia. The date and place of her own death are not recorded. A family letter printed in 1911 remembered her as a woman who "lived to a great age".

If Alice Newton is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Alice Newton (b. 1686)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/alice-newton-1686-a82899.