♂John Harndell

John Harndell (died 6 February 1687) was an inhabitant of Newport, in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W, whose will named his daughters Mary Stanton and Rebecca Mosher and whose death is entered in the records of the Newport Friends. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Mary Harndell (1647–1680).

His parents are not known, and neither is his origin. The records spell his name Harndell, Horndell and Harndel. A nineteenth-century genealogical dictionary of New England’s first settlers, whose author knew of him chiefly from his will, suggested only with a “perhaps” that he was the John of that name at New Haven in 1644. The same dictionary identifies him with the John Hornden or Horndall on the roll of the colony’s freemen^W dated 1655. A study of the original roll published in 2001 gives the name “John Hornden” among the Newport freemen, one of four Newport names that the printed edition of the colony records had left undeciphered.

His wife’s name has not been found in any record. His will, made at Newport on 9 February 1685, is known from the dictionary’s summary: it names his daughter Mary, wife of John Stanton, with her children Robert, Benjamin, Mary and Hannah, and his daughter Rebecca, wife of Hugh Mosher. A later history of Maine families also records that Hugh Mosher married Rebecca, daughter of John Horndel of Newport. John Harndell died at Newport on 6 February 1687. The Friends, the Quakers of Newport, entered his death in their register, which a collection of Rhode Island vital records prints under the spelling Horndell.

Notes

The will is known only from the dictionary’s summary. The dictionary dates it 9 February 1685 in two of its entries and 9 February 1686 in a third. Its summary calls Mary “wife of John Stanton”, yet she seems to have died before 1680, when her husband married again; the will may have named her only to identify her children.