Ancestors

Obadiah Richards

Obadiah Richards was a son of Thomas Richards, who was early at Hartford in Connecticut. In 1639 Thomas was one of those who had "the privilege of getting wood and keeping cows on the common." He soon died. His lands went to his widow, who brought up the children. When she died in 1671 the estate went to John, born in 1631, who married Lydia Stocking; to Mary Peck, of Milford; to Thomas, who married Mary, daughter of Deacon Parsons of Springfield; and to Obadiah. A son Samuel had died before his mother.

Obadiah was an early settler of Farmington, though not one of the first. He was "presented for freeman" to the Court in May 1669. A freeman had been admitted to vote in the affairs of the colony. He was one of the proprietors of Farmington in 1672. He married Hannah, a daughter of John and Mary Andrews of Farmington, and both of them were members of Mr. Hooker's church there. Their children were John in 1667, Mary in 1669, Hannah in 1671, Esther in June 1673, Elizabeth in 1675, Sarah in 1677, Obadiah in 1679, Rachel in 1683, Thomas in 1685 and Benjamin in 1691.

He took an early interest in the settlement at Mattatuck, which became Waterbury, and was one of the original thirty proprietors. He held an old town plot lot there. The town's records show that his allotments were condemned in 1682/3 for what the historian Henry Bronson calls his "tardy, slip-shod way of doing things," and afterwards restored to him.

By 1701 he was too ill to work. On 17 May he gave land to his sons John and Obadiah, "being by sickness layd by not able to labour," so that they would build and break up the ground and he and his wife would "haue som Releife by it." His wife was to have "four bushills of grain by ye yeir." He died on 11 November 1702. His inventory came to 138 pounds. Hannah lived until about May 1725.

His son Obadiah, the one he had settled land on, did not stay. Bronson writes that "when his rights had been made sure, and thick gloom was settling over the planters of Waterbury, he made his escape, and was next heard of in Lyme. There he died about 1707."

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Cite: Heirology, "Obadiah Richards (d. 1702)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/obadiah-richards-1702-9f64fa.