♂Richard Borden

Richard Borden (about 1595 – 25 May 1671) was an English settler from Kent who was among the first planters of Portsmouth, on Aquidneck Island, in 1638, and who later served as General Treasurer^W of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through his daughter Mary Borden (died before 1691).

England

Richard Borden and Joan Fowle were most likely the couple who married at Headcorn, in Kent, England, on 28 September 1625. Their first two children, Richard and Thomas, were christened at Headcorn in 1626 and 1627, and four more at Cranbrook between 1628 and 1634: Francis, Jane, Mary and Elizabeth. The young Richard, Jane and Elizabeth are not named in their father’s will and probably died young.

Portsmouth

The family had crossed to New England by 1638. That year Richard was admitted an inhabitant of Aquidneck Island and allotted five acres at Portsmouth, the settlement founded that year by followers of Anne Hutchinson^W who had left Massachusetts with her. A son, Matthew, was born there in May 1638, and a family history of 1899, citing the Friends’ records, names him the first child of English parents born on Rhode Island. John, Joseph, Sarah, Samuel, Benjamin and Amey followed between 1640 and 1654.

Richard was one of the men chosen to survey the town lots, and in January 1639 he and three others were appointed to survey the lands about the settlement and bring in a map of them. He became a freeman in March 1641. The family were Quakers: Richard is said to have been one of the founders of the Society of Friends at Portsmouth, and the Friends’ Monthly Meeting at Newport kept the births of the children born on the island.

Public life

Richard was an assistant of the colony in 1653 and 1654, and in September 1654 he was chosen General Treasurer to fill a vacancy. He was a commissioner for Portsmouth from 1654 to 1657 and a deputy from 1667 to 1670, and the Portsmouth town records of the 1660s also name him as a juryman and one of the town’s two surveyors.

His interests reached beyond the island. He bought land near Providence, which he left to his son Thomas, and in 1667 he was one of the original purchasers of lands in New Jersey, where his son Francis had settled at Shrewsbury.

Death and estate

Richard Borden died at his own house at Portsmouth on 25 May 1671. The Friends recorded him as “one of the first planters of Rhode Island” who had “lived about seventy years”, and he was buried in the burial ground that Robert Dennis had given to the Friends, beside the way from Portsmouth to Newport.

He had made no written will, so on 31 May 1671 the town council of Portsmouth made one from testimony about his wishes, an oral will^W put into writing. It named his son Matthew executor and heir to the residue and provided for Joan for life. Thomas received the Providence estate, Francis the New Jersey lands and John the land about his own house, while the younger sons Joseph, Samuel and Benjamin were left £40 each. Of the daughters, Mary Cook received £5, Sarah Holmes £40 and the unmarried Amey £100 at twenty-one, and Mary’s daughter Amey Cook £10.

The inventory, valued at £1,572 8s 9d, describes a large farm: some two hundred sheep and a hundred lambs, oxen and cows, horses on the island, at Providence and at New London, and thirty swine. It also listed enslaved people among his property: a Black man and woman, valued together at £50, and three Black children, valued at £25.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Mary Borden, who married John Cook, and her son John Cook (1656–1737), whose daughter Ruth Cook married Preserved Fish. Two of Ruth’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

The Kent records

The marriage of “Richard Borden” and “Joane Fowle” at Headcorn on 28 September 1625 is known from a FamilySearch index of English marriages; a second entry for the same couple gives 28 October 1625, in Kent. The christenings, all with the father named Richard Borden, come from FamilySearch indexes of English christenings: Richard on 9 July 1626 and Thomas on 3 October 1627 at Headcorn, and “Frauncis” on 28 December 1628, Jane on 9 January 1630/31, Mary on 13 January 1632/33 and Elizabeth on 25 May 1634 at Cranbrook. The January years are Old Style^W, when the year began on 25 March.

The pedigree printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for 1930 joins the two in one entry: it gives Richard’s baptism at Headcorn and his marriage there to Joane Fowle, and records his death at Portsmouth on 25 May 1671 and hers on 15 July 1688. The identification also fits: Thomas, Francis and Mary are the three eldest children in John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), in the same order, and the christenings stop four years before their son Matthew’s birth at Portsmouth.

Birth and age

Austin gives his birth year as 1601. Hattie Borden Weld’s Borden genealogy (1899) explains that it was reckoned back from the Friends’ record of his death, which says he “lived about seventy years”. The pedigree printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for 1930 (volume 84, pages 226 to 228) gives his baptism at Headcorn on 22 February 1595/96, which puts his birth about 1595. It names his father as Matthew Borden, a yeoman of Headcorn, and his mother as Joan, Matthew’s second wife, who was living in 1620. That pedigree gives her only as Joan, without a surname; an index of English marriages names her “Joane Glouer”, married to “Mathew Borden” at Smarden on 10 July 1593. Weld also repeats a tradition that he came over with a John Borden in 1635, or a year later, but no passenger list names him.

Sources for the Portsmouth years

The details of his allotment, surveys, offices and land purchases are from Austin’s and Weld’s abstracts of the town and colony records. The printed Early Records of the Town of Portsmouth (1901) show him among the jurymen chosen to serve with the deputies at the General Court at Newport in about 1664, chosen a deputy in October 1667 and a grand juryman in 1668, and in 1669 one of the town’s two surveyors sent to lay open a highway. Weld’s statements that Matthew was the first English child born on the island and that Richard helped found the Friends’ meeting at Portsmouth are the book’s own account; the first is attributed to the Friends’ records but not quoted from them.

Death, will and inventory

Austin and Weld give his death as 25 May 1671; one passage of Weld has 23 May, a slip. The Friends’ record quoted by Weld reads: “Richard Borden of Portsmouth, R. I., being one of the first planters of Rhode Island, lived about seventy years and then died at his own house, belonging to Portsmouth.” Weld adds that the council approved the will as his lawful will on 11 July 1671. In Weld’s abstract of the inventory the enslaved people appear as “negro man and woman, £50; 3 negro children, £25”; their names are not given.