♀Ruth Shaw

Ruth Shaw (born 10 December 1660) was born at Boston and became the wife of John Cook, a yeoman of Tiverton. When he made his will in the winter of 1736/37 he provided for her with an annuity of forty pounds a year, paid by their four daughters, ten pounds each. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through her daughter Ruth Cook (died 1775).

Early life

She was born at Boston on 10 December 1660, a daughter of Anthony Shaw and Alice Stonard, who had married there on 8 April 1653; the town register records her birth and those of four children before her. By 1665 her family had moved on to Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and it is said to have gone later to Little Compton.

Marriage

She probably married John Cook, a Portsmouth man, in the early 1680s. The couple made their home at Punkatest, in Tiverton, where their eldest daughter, Ruth, was born about 1683 by one account. In February 1707, according to the family histories, her brother Israel Shaw, of Little Compton, sold John two more parcels of land.

They had two sons, John and Thomas, and four daughters, Ruth, Mary, Deborah and Ann. Ruth married Preserved Fish of Portsmouth in 1699, Deborah married James Howland of Dartmouth in 1717, and Ann married James Tripp in 1719; Mary also married a Howland.

Her husband’s will

John made his will on 23 January 1736/37 and died at Tiverton before 7 August 1737, when it was proved. He left Ruth an enslaved woman, Phillis, and an annuity of forty pounds a year for the rest of her life, to be paid by their four daughters, ten pounds each: Ruth Fish, Mary Howland, Deborah Howland and Ann Tripp. The two sons were left five shillings each in silver money, and the four sons-in-law, Preserved Fish, John Howland, James Howland and James Tripp, were named executors. The daughters shared the rest of his movable estate equally. Tiverton was then part of Bristol County in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and the will was proved there.

The date and place of Ruth’s own death are not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through their daughter Ruth and her husband 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

Birth and family

The Boston town register, as printed by the Boston Record Commissioners (volume 9, page 74, in the entries for 1660), gives “Ruth of Anthony & Alice Shaw born Dec. 10.” The same register records “Anthony Shaw was married to Alice Stanare” on the 8th of the second month of 1653, which is 8 April 1653, and the births of William (January 1653/54, who died young), a second William (February 1654/55), Elizabeth (May 1656) and Mary (December 1658). John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887) gives Anthony Shaw’s homes as “Boston, Mass., Portsmouth, Little Compton, R. I.” and his death on 21 August 1705.

Her marriage to John Cook

No date or place is recorded for the marriage. It rests on family histories and a deed abstract that agree. Austin’s Shaw entry gives “RUTH, m. JOHN COOK, b. 1656, of John & Mary (Borden)”, and under her brother Israel: “1707, Feb. 11. He sold to brother-in-law John Cook of Tiverton, two parcels of land”. American Family Antiquity (1880–81) independently gives the same purchase, in 1706/7, “from his brother-in-law, Israel Shaw, of Little Compton”, and says that John’s wife Ruth survived him. Lester Warren Fish’s The Fish Family in England and America (1948) calls her daughter Ruth the “dau. of John and Ruth (Shaw) Cook of Tiverton”. The will names John’s wife Ruth but not her maiden name. The early 1680s for the marriage is an estimate from the eldest daughter’s birth about 1683, which American Family Antiquity places at “Punketest”.

The will

The will is entered in the Bristol County, Massachusetts, probate records. It is dated 23 January 1736/37 and leaves “Ruth Cook my well beloved wife my Negro woman called Phillis”, with the annuity to be paid by “my Daughter Ruth Fish”, Mary Howland, Deborah Howland and Ann Tripp. It shows Ruth living when it was made, about six months before it was proved.