♂Robert Stanton

Robert Stanton (about 1599 – 29 August 1672) was an early inhabitant of Newport, in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W, 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 son John Stanton (1645–1713).

His parents are not known, and neither is his birthplace. Family trees say he was born in England, but the Friends’ entry of his burial, the record those trees cite, gives only his age. A nineteenth-century genealogical dictionary of New England’s first settlers records that he was admitted an inhabitant of Newport in 1639 and was a freeman^W in 1655. His wife was named Avis; her surname is not known. The Newport Friends’ records enter the birth of their son John at Newport in August 1645, “of Robert and Avis”, and John is the only child of the couple that the records name.

Robert Stanton died at Newport on 29 August 1672. The Friends’ register, as printed in a collection of Rhode Island vital records, lists him as “Robert Stanton, Newport, aged 73”, and his birth year of about 1599 is reckoned from that age. Another printing of the same register, in a genealogical journal, gives the date as that of his burial, “29th of 6 mo. 1672”. The Friends numbered the months instead of naming them, and with the year then beginning in March, the sixth month was August.