♂Anthony Shaw

Anthony Shaw (died 21 August 1705) was a settler of Boston and then of Portsmouth, in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W, where the freemen of the town chose him at least three times as one of their deputies to the colony’s General Assembly. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through his daughter Ruth Shaw (born 1660).

Boston

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.

Portsmouth

By 1665 the family had moved to Portsmouth, on Aquidneck Island, where Anthony reportedly bought a house and ten acres from Philip Taber in April 1665, paying £40 and three hundred good boards. The town clerk entered his cattle’s earmark in January 1666, and on 16 October 1669 he was admitted a freeman^W of the town. He sat on the petit jury of the colony’s Court of Trials at Newport in 1671, and the town meeting chose him as a deputy to the General Assembly in April 1675, April 1678 and March 1684. In August 1684 he served on a coroner’s jury^W over a Native boy found dead in the Portsmouth woods.

He was not always on the side of order. In May 1675, a month after his first election, he was reportedly bound over for good behavior, and on another occasion he was fined three shillings and fourpence for breaking the peace. In 1677 he won five shillings in a suit against Edward Marshall of Warwick.

Death

He spent his last years, by the family histories’ account, at Little Compton, where his son Israel lived, and he died on 21 August 1705. Israel presented the inventory of his estate on 1 October 1705. It reportedly came to a little over £213, about £165 of it in bills owed to him; besides £9 in silver money, a cow and some pewter and brass, it listed an enslaved man and an old horse, “very lame”, valued at ten shillings.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his 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

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). James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (volume 4) gives the first William as dying “at 2 mos.”

John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), in its Shaw entry on page 174, gives his homes as “Boston, Mass., Portsmouth, Little Compton, R. I.” and says “His first three children were born at Boston”; the Boston register in fact records five, Mary and Ruth included. 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; Austin gives her death on 1 March 1737.

The Portsmouth years

The admission as freeman, the jury service, the three elections as deputy and the coroner’s inquest of 16 August 1684 are in the Early Records of the Town of Portsmouth (1901), pages 150, 166, 183, 195, 222 and 300; the cattle earmark is on page 268. The house and land bought from Philip Taber (20 April 1665), the bond for good behavior (10 May 1675), the suit against Edward Marshall (24 October 1677) and the fine “for breaking peace, &c.” come from Austin’s abstracts. Austin prints the fine’s year as 1638, out of order between his entries for 1680 and 1705, so it is evidently a misprint and the true year is uncertain.

Death and estate

His death on 21 August 1705 rests on Austin, who abstracts the inventory: “Inventory, £213, 12s. 2d., shown by Israel Shaw. A cow, grindstone, silver money £9, bills due £165, 11s. 8d., negro man … old horse very lame 10s.” Austin does not give the place of death; Little Compton is where the family histories place the family’s last home and where Israel and his sister Grace lived.