♀Alice Stonard

Alice Stonard married Anthony Shaw at Boston in 1653, raised the first of their seven children there, and moved with him to Portsmouth, in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W, where the freemen of the town chose her husband at least three times as one of their deputies to the colony’s General Assembly. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through her daughter Ruth Shaw (born 1660).

She was probably a daughter of John Stonard, who was living at Roxbury by 1645 and was buried on 13 August 1649. Anthony Shaw married Alice Stonard at Boston on 8 April 1653, before the magistrate Increase Nowell^W; the town clerk wrote her name “Stanare”. Their first child, William, was born on 21 January 1653/54 and died two months later. A second William followed on 24 February 1654/55, then Elizabeth in May 1656, Mary in December 1658 and Ruth on 10 December 1660, all entered in the Boston register. With a son, Israel, and a youngest daughter, Grace, who was probably born at Portsmouth, the couple had seven children.

By 1665 the family had moved to Portsmouth, on Aquidneck Island. Anthony spent his last years, by the family histories’ account, at Little Compton, where their son Israel lived, and he died on 21 August 1705. The date and place of Alice’s own death are not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Ruth Shaw, who married John Cook of Tiverton, and then through their daughter Ruth Cook and her husband Preserved Fish. Two of Ruth Cook’s children carried them on: her son Thomas Fish (1703–1786), whose granddaughter was Waite Allen (1766–1850), and her daughter Amy Fish (1705–1745), whose grandson was Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828). Waite and Batchelder married each other, and the two lines meet again in their daughter Salena Sherman (1806–1842), through whom both descend to Roger.

Notes

Her parentage

John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), in its Shaw entry on page 174, calls her “ALICE STONARD, of John Stonard”. James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (volume 4) is more cautious: “Alice Stonard, perhaps d. of John”. Savage’s John Stonard, “Stonnard, or Stonhard”, was of Roxbury in 1645, mortgaged his estate to Governor Dudley that August, “was of the ch. but took not the freem.’s o.” and was buried on 13 August 1649, “a middle-aged man, says Eliot”. Neither book gives a record that names her as his daughter, so the link is probable rather than proved.

Marriage and the Boston children

The Boston town register, as printed by the Boston Record Commissioners (volume 9, 1883), gives the marriage on page 43, in the entries for 1653: “Anthony Shaw was married to Alice Stanare 8th — 2nd month by Increase Nowell.” The second month of 1653 is April. The same register records “William of Anthony & Alice Shaw born 21st Jan.” (page 41, the 1653 entries), his death on the 25th of the first month (page 47, 1654), the second William’s birth on 24 February (page 46, 1654), Elizabeth’s on 21 May (page 54, 1656), “Mary of Anthony and Alice Shaw born December 17th” (page 65, 1658) and “Ruth of Anthony & Alice Shaw born Dec. 10.” (page 74, 1660). Austin gives Israel’s birth as 1660, only ten months before Ruth’s, so his year is likely approximate. The Mayflower Society’s Richard Warren genealogy (volume 18) gives Grace as probably born at Portsmouth and as a daughter of Anthony and Alice (Stonard) Shaw.

The move to Rhode Island

Anthony Shaw was at Portsmouth by April 1665, when, by Austin’s abstract, he bought a house and ten acres there; the town’s own records enter his cattle earmark in January 1666 and his admission as a freeman in 1669. Austin gives the family’s homes as “Boston, Mass., Portsmouth, Little Compton, R. I.” and Anthony’s death on 21 August 1705. Austin does not give Alice’s death, and she is not named in his abstract of Anthony’s inventory, which his son Israel presented on 1 October 1705.