Ancestors

Benoni Gardiner

Eldest son of George Gardiner and Herodias Long, born not far from 1647. His name comes out of Genesis. Rachel, dying as she bore her son, calls him Ben-Oni, the son of my sorrow, and Jacob renames the boy Benjamin so he will not carry it. English families gave the name to boys whose birth came with grief, most often when the mother died. His mother did not. She had been beaten by her first husband, robbed of her estate and left, and she was still legally that man's wife when this child was born. He took the oath of allegiance in 1671, by which time he was already married, and in 1679 he put his name to a petition asking the King to settle the question of who governed Narragansett, the quarrel having been fatal to the prosperity of the place. He and his wife Mary spent their last decades handing the land on: a hundred acres to their son Nathaniel in 1705, a house and orchard to Stephen the same day, more to Isaac in 1713. He gave his age in testimony in 1727 as ninety and upward, which does not fit a birth near 1647. He died about 1731.

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Cite: Heirology, "Benoni Gardiner (d. 1731)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/benoni-gardiner-1731-409d9c.