♂Richard Williams

Richard Williams (about 1606 – before 10 October 1693) was one of the first settlers of Taunton in Plymouth Colony^W and several times one of its deputies to the colony’s General Court. In 1654 Elizabeth Poole^W, the gentlewoman who had founded Taunton, named him one of the overseers of her will. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Samuel Williams (died 1697).

From Gloucestershire to Taunton

Richard was probably the son of William Williams, a yeoman of Synwell in Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire, and his second wife, Jane Woodward, and was baptized at Wotton under Edge on 28 January 1607/8. He is said to have married Frances Dighton at Great Witcombe, Gloucestershire, on 11 February 1632/3.

The couple probably crossed to New England about 1637, in the years of the Great Migration^W, and settled at Cohannet, a new plantation in Plymouth Colony that was soon renamed Taunton. Richard is said to have been one of the first purchasers of the town’s land from its Native owners. The couple had at least seven children: five sons, Samuel, Nathaniel, Joseph, Thomas and Benjamin, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Hannah.

A townsman of Taunton

Richard was admitted a freeman^W of the colony on 5 June 1644. Taunton sent him to the General Court at Plymouth as one of its deputies in the 1640s and in several later years. In October 1646 the court fined him and the town’s other deputy twenty shillings apiece for failing to appear, a fine it later remitted. In May 1650 he sat on the jury that inquired into the death of a young traveler found drowned in the Taunton River, and in March 1667/8 he was one of the town’s selectmen.

When Elizabeth Poole made her will in May 1654, “sicke and weake”, she called him and her two other overseers her “frinds”, and he was also one of its witnesses. She died on 21 May. By the time he made his own will, Richard owned a tanyard and a share in the town’s ironworks^W.

His will

On 5 May 1686, “aged about Eighty” and “in competent health”, Richard made his will. He left land to each of his children, beginning with “my Eldest Son Samuell”, and Benjamin also received the tanyard and its stock. The last bequest was to “my beloved wife Ffrauncis”: for the rest of her life she was to have the easterly part of the dwelling house with the garden, land at Assonet, fifteen pounds a year, and two cows with their keep and the household goods. If she needed more, the Assonet land and his share in the ironworks could be sold to support her. He named their five sons joint executors and charged them “to take care of her their said mother”.

Two of those sons, Nathaniel and Joseph, are said to have died in August 1692, a year before their father. Richard died at Taunton in 1693. On 10 October of that year two of the witnesses swore to the will at Bristol, calling him “Richard Williams late of Taunton Decd”, and it was proved.

Notes

Birth and origins

His will gives his age in May 1686 as “about Eighty”, which places his birth about 1606. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. 1, p. 635, citing articles in The American Genealogist (vols. 9 and 10, 1932–1934), gives his baptism at Wotton under Edge on 28 January 1607/8 as a son of William Williams of Synwell, yeoman, by his second wife, Jane Woodward; it makes him a legatee in his father’s will of 1618, gives the marriage at Great Witcombe on 11 February 1632/3, and has the family come to New England about 1636 or 1637. The Great Migration Begins (vol. 3, p. 2006) notes that he was still in England in 1636, and so was not the Richard Williams fined for drunkenness in Massachusetts Bay in March 1633/4, as an earlier compiler had supposed.

Older accounts gave him other origins. James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (vol. 4, 1862) says he “sprung from Glamorgansh.”, calls very improbable the idea that he was a brother of Roger Williams and wilder still the tradition that he was a relation of Oliver Cromwell, and distrusted the story of a Gloucestershire wife. Peter Wilson Coldham’s Complete Book of Emigrants 1607–1660 (p. 290) abstracts the probate in 1655 of the will of Jane Williams of Whetenhurst, Gloucestershire, spinster, “whose brother and sister Richard and Elizabeth Williams were in New England”; it does not show which Richard Williams was meant.

Taunton and the colony

The printed Records of the Colony of New Plymouth record his admission as a freeman on 5 June 1644; his name among Taunton’s deputies in 1643 and alone as its deputy in July 1646; the fine of October 1646, marked as remitted; the jury of inquest of May 1650; and a suit of March 1667/8 brought against him and two other selectmen by a proprietor who claimed his share of land in a division the town had ordered on 9 September 1667. The colony’s lists of freemen name him at Taunton, in a list headed with the town’s first name, Cohannet, and in later ones. Savage gives his years as deputy as 1646, 1648, 1650 and several later years, and calls him one of the first purchasers of the town’s land.

An abstract of Elizabeth Poole’s will, dated 17 May 1654, is printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 5 (1851). Richardson (vol. 1, p. 211) says that she came to New England in 1637 and founded Taunton; Governor John Winthrop’s journal describes the beginning of the plantation by “a gentlewoman, an ancient maid, one Mrs. Poole”.

The will

The will is copied into the Bristol County probate register, vol. 1, pp. 79–80, with the probate of 10 October 1693. Of the fifteen pounds a year, the five sons together were to pay eleven and Benjamin four, and after Frances’s death the Assonet land and the ironworks share were to pass to all five sons. Richardson gives his death at Taunton in August 1693.

His children

Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, vol. 2 (1978), gives Nathaniel’s birth at Taunton on 17 November 1639 and his death there on 16 August 1692; Savage gives Joseph’s death as 17 August 1692. Richardson names nine children: six sons, John, Samuel, Nathaniel, Joseph, Thomas and Benjamin, and three daughters, Elizabeth, a second Elizabeth (wife of John Bird) and Hannah (wife of John Parmenter). Savage also has a son John, who probably died young. Only the seven named in the will are counted above.