♂Thomas Fish

Thomas Fish (died before 13 December 1687) was one of the early settlers of Portsmouth, on Aquidneck Island in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W, where land was laid out to him in 1643 and where for more than thirty years he served the town as juryman, constable, councillor and deputy to the colony’s General Assembly. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas Fish (1649–1684).

Life at Portsmouth

Nothing certain is known of his life before he reached Portsmouth. The town meeting of 5 October 1643 ordered land “layd out to Thomas fish at the first Brooke”, and the family history that prints the town’s records reckons he was then about twenty-four. In December 1648 four acres of his lot were added to his neighbor James Babcock’s house lot, and he was given four acres out of the common to the south in exchange. He sat on a jury in November 1649 and was made a freeman^W in 1655, with a voice in the colony’s affairs.

In March 1660 Henry and Ann Ayres deeded him a house and land in return for his fencing two acres, on condition that the couple could live there for the rest of their lives without paying rent. In 1665 he bought two parcels of land with a dwelling house, barn and orchard from James Babcock for £50, and the same year sold four acres to Thomas Lawton.

Through the 1660s and 1670s the town called on him again and again. He was chosen petty juror for the court at Newport in 1663, constable in 1665 and 1670, grand juror in 1667, 1673 and 1679, a member of the town council in 1674 and 1675, and deputy to the General Assembly in 1667 and 1674. In July 1675 he was one of ten men named to assess a rate of £400 on the town and island. According to the family history, while many of Portsmouth’s first landholders could only make their mark, his name in the town papers appears in a “bold, legible hand-writing”.

Family

His wife was Mary; no record gives her family name or the date and place of their marriage. Their eldest son, Thomas, was born at Portsmouth about 1649, and six more children followed: Mehitable, Mary, Alice, John, Daniel and Robert. By the time of their mother’s will the three daughters were married as Mehitable Tripp, Mary Brayton and Alice Knowles.

The younger Thomas married Grizzel Strange in 1668 and lived in a house on fifteen acres of his father’s land, but he died young, before May 1684, leaving small children. On 2 May 1684 his father deeded that house and its fifteen acres to the dead man’s son Preserved, then four years old, who was to take possession in the year 1700.

Last years and death

He was still serving the town the next year. On 18 September 1685 he was named to a coroner’s jury^W for “an Inquest into the hanging of a Scotsman named John Crage”, held before the coroner, Major John Albro.

His will, recorded on 9 February 1687, made his wife Mary executrix. It left his son John the land bought from James Babcock, twenty shillings each to his son Robert and his daughters Mehitable, Mary and Alice, five shillings to his grandson Preserved, and the rest of the estate to Mary. The will was proved on 13 December 1687, and the inventory of his estate came to £49 10s. He is said to be buried in the old Portsmouth cemetery.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his grandson Preserved Fish, who married Ruth Cook at Portsmouth. Their son Thomas Fish (1703–1786) was the father of Elizabeth Fish (1736–1814), whose daughter was Waite Allen (1766–1850). Their daughter Amy Fish married James Akin, and Amy’s daughter Ruth Akin (1731–1821) was the mother of Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828). Batchelder Sherman and Waite Allen married, and the two lines meet again in their daughter Salena Sherman (1806–1842).

Notes

The town records

His public life is known from the Portsmouth town meeting records as quoted in Lester Warren Fish, The Fish Family in England and America (1948), pp. 32–34, and from John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), p. 78. Austin, whose abstracts the 1948 book follows, gives the 1643 land grant, the 1655 freemanship, the Ayres deed of 20 March 1660, the Babcock purchase of 1665, the town council seat of 1674, the deed of 2 May 1684 to his grandson and abstracts of both his will and his widow’s. The town books themselves are not cited here, so these facts rest on the two printed books. The remark on his signature and the burial in the old Portsmouth cemetery are from the 1948 book alone.

Date of death

All that is certain is that he had died before his will was proved on 13 December 1687. The 1948 book concludes that he died in December 1687. He was alive in September 1685, when he sat on the coroner’s jury.

Origin in England

The 1948 book identifies him with a Thomas Fyshe baptized at Great Bowden, Leicestershire, on 1 January 1618/19, the eldest son of Robert and Alice (Fysh) Fyshe. The identification rests on the name and an age that fits; no record ties that baptism to the Portsmouth settler, and it is not adopted here.

The children

The children’s birth years are the 1948 book’s estimates. His will names four sons and three daughters; the children are named from the two wills as the 1948 book and Austin abstract them.