Joseph Clarke of Westerly

1643-1727

Born 1643

Died 1727

Mother: Joseph Clarke of Newport

Children include Susanna

Joseph Clarke of Westerly was born on 2 April 1643, the eldest son of Joseph Clarke of Newport, in Rhode Island. His father was the youngest brother of Dr. John Clarke, the physician and Baptist minister who went to England for the colony and came back in 1663 with its royal charter. His father was one of the founders of the Baptist church at Newport and an Assistant of the colony in 1658.

He married Bethiah Hubbard at Newport on 16 November 1664. Within sixteen months the two of them had left the Baptist church they were raised in over the question of which day was the Sabbath.

His father-in-law kept a journal, and the entry that names him is a list of the people in his own family who took up the seventh day one after another. Samuel Hubbard set down his wife first, in March 1665, then himself in April, then his daughters, and then, on 23 February 1666, "our son Joseph Clarke." A son-in-law is a son in that vocabulary. He was the fifth person in the household to go over.

He moved to Westerly with his father, and lived there for many years. Westerly was the frontier of the colony, and its town records were kept in his hand at least once. A copy of a 1685 town paper is signed off "a true copy compared with the original and entered by Joseph Clark clerk to the town 28th June 1685."

His children were Judith, born 12 October 1667; Joseph, 4 April 1670; Samuel, 1672; John, 25 August 1675; Bethiah, 11 April 1678; Mary, 27 December 1680; Susanna, 31 August 1683; Thomas, 17 March 1686; and William, 21 April 1688. Thomas became a Seventh Day Baptist minister.

His wife died on 17 April 1707. He lived another twenty years and died on 11 January 1727, aged eighty three.

Parents

Joseph Clarke of Newport 1618-1694

Children

Susanna Clark (b. 1683)

Sources

Stephen Babcock, Babcock Genealogy (1903), entries 15, 17 and 19; John Osborne Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), Hubbard; the Westerly town record printed in the Babcock appendix

James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (Boston, 1860-1862), vol. 1, p. 398; https://archive.org/details/genealogicaldic01savarich/page/n419

James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (Boston, 1860-1862), vol. 1, p. 399; https://archive.org/details/genealogicaldic01savarich/page/n420

Stephen Babcock, Babcock Genealogy (1903), entries 15, 17 and 19; John Osborne Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), Hubbard and Saunders; the Westerly town record printed in the Babcock appendix; James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (Boston, 1860-1862), vol. 1, pp. 398-399, archive.org genealogicaldic01savarich

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Cite: Heirology, "Joseph Clarke of Westerly (1643-1727)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/joseph-clarke-of-westerly-1643-1727-7f2a3f.