Tobias Saunders
Tobias Saunders was one of the men who settled the Pawcatuck country and one of the two who went to prison for it.
In November 1661 he and Robert Burdick were arrested by the constable Walter Palmer and brought before Governor John Endicott of Massachusetts, charged with forcible entry and intrusion into the bounds of Southertown in the Pequot country. He answered that they looked upon the lands to be their right. Both men were committed, refusing to give security for their appearance at the General Court. A letter from Rhode Island to Massachusetts in May 1662 protests their imprisonment for not producing their deeds to the Narragansett lands.
He was living at Pawcatuck by 1666, was on the list of inhabitants of Westerly in May 1669, and was a deputy to the Assembly in 1669, 1671, 1672, 1680, 1681, 1683 and 1690, and a conservator of the peace in 1669, 1678 and 1695. In March 1670 he and John Crandall answered a complaint from the governor of Connecticut about encroachment on Stonington, denying it and closing with a line that is either diplomacy or a shrug: they hoped the two colonies would in the first place lovingly agree, and then they did not question but there would be an agreement between themselves and their neighbours. In May 1671 the Rhode Island authorities warned the inhabitants of Westerly to appear at his house at eight the next morning to attend the court of justice, which is what a frontier courthouse was.
His will of 9 August 1688 was proved on 2 September 1695. It makes his wife Mary executrix, names an overseer as his wife's nephew Joseph Clarke, and mentions land given to his son John by his wife's uncle John Clarke of Rhode Island, deceased.
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Cite: Heirology, "Tobias Saunders (d. 1695)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/tobias-saunders-1695-13bfc2.