Richard Smith

1596-1666 · Thornbury, England

Born 1596, probably Thornbury, Gloucestershire, England

Died 1666

Children include Joan

Richard Smith was born about 1596, probably at Thornbury in Gloucestershire. His parents' names are not known. In later years he was described as "of gentle blood" and of an ancient family of those parts, and he bore a coat of arms of his own.

On 28 May 1621 he married Joan Barton in Thornbury church. Her family lived at Thornbury or close by. They had five children baptised there: Joan in January 1623/4, Katherine in August 1627, James in December 1629, Richard in December 1630 and Elizabeth on 18 March 1631/2.

In the 1630s he gave up his English property and took his family to New England. Roger Williams later said he went "for his conscience toward God". He settled first at Taunton, in Plymouth Colony, where Williams called him "a most acceptable and prime leading man". He left Taunton "for his conscience sake (many differences arising)". He was admitted at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1638.

About 1639 he moved into the Narragansett country, the land of the Narragansett people on the west side of Narragansett Bay. With the leave of the Narragansett sachems he built a house at Cocumscussoc, near the present Wickford. It was the first English house in that country. Williams wrote that he "broke the ice (at his great charges and hazards), and put up in the thickest of the barbarians, the first English house amongst them". He held it, coming and going with his children and servants, for about forty two years.

He also spent years among the Dutch at New Amsterdam. Under the Dutch governor Willem Kieft he was one of the Eight Men of 1645, a board of settlers chosen to advise the governor. In the spring of 1648 his daughter Joan married Thomas Newton of Fairfield at Flushing without her parents' consent. The Dutch authorities voided the marriage. By 10 April 1648 he was reconciled to the match, and the couple were married again at New Amsterdam in his presence.

In 1651 Roger Williams sold him "my tradeing house at Narragansett, together with two Iron Guns". His son-in-law Thomas Newton witnessed the deed.

He died in 1666, in his own house at Cocumscussoc. Williams wrote that "there in his own house, with much serenity of soule and comfort, he yielded up his spirit to God (the Father of spirits) in peace". He was buried in the family plot, under a small slate stone cut "R. Smith, 1666". His wife had died before him. His will divided the estate between his son Richard, his daughter Elizabeth, and the children of his two dead daughters, Katherine and Joan.

His son, Captain Richard Smith, kept the house after him. In King Philip's War of 1675 and 1676 it served as a garrison and supply post for the whole army of New England.

Children

Joan Smith b. 1623

Sources

Clair Alonzo Newton, The Colchester, Conn., Newton Family: Descendants of Thomas Newton of Fairfield, Conn., 1639 (1911), p. 3, quoting Albany Records VII, 141-145, and E. B. O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland II, 222; archive.org colchesterconnne01newt, leaf 32

Clair Alonzo Newton, The Colchester, Conn., Newton Family: Descendants of Thomas Newton of Fairfield, Conn., 1639 (1911), p. 4, printing Roger Williams's testimony of July 1679 (Rhode Island Colonial Records III, 57); archive.org colchesterconnne01newt, leaf 34

Daniel Berkeley Updike, Richard Smith, First English Settler of the Narragansett Country, Rhode Island (Boston, 1937), p. 3, quoting Phillimore's Register of Thornbury; archive.org richardsmithfirs00updi, leaf 26

Daniel Berkeley Updike, Richard Smith, First English Settler of the Narragansett Country, Rhode Island (Boston, 1937), p. 4, quoting Phillimore's Register of Thornbury; archive.org richardsmithfirs00updi, leaf 27

Daniel Berkeley Updike, Richard Smith, First English Settler of the Narragansett Country (1937), pp. 3-23 (archive.org richardsmithfirs00updi); Roger Williams's testimony of 2 and 21 July 1679, Rhode Island Colonial Records III, 57, printed in Clair Alonzo Newton, The Colchester, Conn., Newton Family (1911), p. 4 (archive.org colchesterconnne01newt); J. O. Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, p. 185

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Cite: Heirology, "Richard Smith (1596-1666)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/richard-smith-1596-1666-ff1ce5.