♂Preserved Fish

Preserved Fish (born 12 August 1679) was a Portsmouth, Rhode Island man who married Ruth Cook and raised a family of eight children there, two of whose great-grandchildren later married each other. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through his son Thomas Fish (1703–1786) and his daughter Amy Fish (1705–1745).

Life

The printed vital records of Rhode Island record his birth at Portsmouth on 12 August 1679. His parents were Thomas Fish and Grizzel Strange of Portsmouth, and he was the fourth of their five children; his sisters were Alice, Grizzel, Hope and Mehitable, and the Fish family history calls him their only son. The Portsmouth town record gives his birth with theirs, and the index of Rhode Island town births names Thomas Fish and Grizigan or Grizigon as his parents. A history of the Fish family published in 1948 quotes the Portsmouth town record of their marriage on 16 December 1668 and lists him among their children, and in the printed Portsmouth births his entry gives the names Thomas and Grizigan. A typescript Fish pedigree dates the marriage to 1683, four years after his birth; that date is an error.

He married Ruth Cook at Portsmouth on 30 May 1699, by Giles Slocum, assistant justice. The printed Portsmouth marriages give the year as 1690, a misprint, since he was born in 1679. The Portsmouth register lists their eight children together, Grizzel, Ruth, Thomas, Amey, Sarah, John, Preserved and Benjamin, born between 1699 and 1716, and the index of Rhode Island town births gives the same eight.

The same typescript pedigree calls him a Quaker and gives his death as 1745, but no record of his death or burial has been found. The index of Rhode Island wills and probate records gives no entry for him, though it does not list Portsmouth estates of the 1740s by name.

Lines of descent

Two of his children carried separate lines to the Curtis family. His eldest son, Thomas, born on 1 December 1703, married Mercy Coggeshall and settled at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where their daughter Elizabeth Fish (1736–1814) was born; Elizabeth’s daughter was Waite Allen (1766–1850). His daughter Amy, born on 8 January 1705/06, married James Akin of Dartmouth; their daughter was Ruth Akin (1731–1821), whose son was Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828).

Batchelder Sherman and Waite Allen, second cousins and both great-grandchildren of Preserved Fish and Ruth Cook, married each other. The two lines meet again in their daughter Salena Sherman (1806–1842), through whom both descend to Frederic Roger Curtis.