♂Thomas Fish

Thomas Fish (about 1649 – about 1684) was a colonist of Portsmouth, in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W, who married Grizzel Strange there in December 1668 and died about 1684, leaving a young family. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Preserved Fish (born 1679).

Life

A history of the Fish family published in 1948 gives his birth at Portsmouth as about 1649, “or perhaps earlier”, and makes him the eldest son of Thomas Fish of Portsmouth and his wife Mary. His father’s will, proved in December 1687, names four sons and three daughters, so he probably had three brothers, John, Robert and Daniel, and three sisters, Mehitable, Mary and Alice. According to the same book, he was admitted as an inhabitant of Portsmouth on 3 December 1670, served soon afterwards on a coroner’s jury^W, and on 12 September 1680 was granted an earmark^W for his cattle as “Thomas Fish, junior”.

Marriage and children

A history of the Fish family published in 1948 quotes the Portsmouth town record of the marriage: “Thomas fish of the Town of Portsmouth, junior, was married unto Grizzigon Strange, daughter of John of the said Portsmouth on the 16th of Dec. 1668.” The book’s own family entry gives the day as 10 December 1668 and names Grizzel’s parents as John and Alice Strange. The clerk wrote her name Grizzigon; the tree uses Grizzel, the form in the family book and in the town record’s own entry for their daughter of that name.

The same town record, as the book quotes it, lists five children of Thomas and Grizzel born at Portsmouth between 1671 and 1684: Alice, Grizzel, Hope, Preserved and Mehitable. The index of Rhode Island town births gives each of the five at Portsmouth, with Thomas Fish and Grizigan or Grizigon as the parents, and Preserved’s birth on 12 August 1679 also appears in the printed vital records of Rhode Island, where the parents’ names are given as Thomas and Grizigan.

A typescript Fish pedigree dates the marriage to 1683, four years after Preserved’s birth; the town record quoted in the 1948 book gives 1668, which fits the births of the children.

Death

He had probably died at Portsmouth before 2 May 1684, the date of a deed by which his father gave Thomas’s dwelling and fifteen acres to his grandson Preserved, then four years old. The deed calls Preserved the son of Thomas, deceased, and describes the land as where Thomas Fish, junior, had lived. His father’s will, as the 1948 book abstracts it, also names him as deceased. No record gives the day of his death. The youngest child, Mehitable, was born on 22 July 1684, a date given by both the town record and the births index; it falls after the deed, so she was born after her father’s death. A codicil of 1697 to the will of the widow Mary Fish, as the book abstracts it, names Preserved and Mehitable as her grandchildren, “children of son Thomas, deceased”.

Lines of descent

Both lines of descent run through Preserved Fish, who married Ruth Cook at Portsmouth. Their son Thomas Fish (1703–1786) settled at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where his daughter Elizabeth Fish (1736–1814) was born; Elizabeth’s daughter was Waite Allen (1766–1850). Their daughter Amy Fish (1705–1748) married James Akin of Dartmouth; her daughter Ruth Akin (1731–1821) was the mother of Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828). Batchelder Sherman and Waite Allen, second cousins, married each other, and the two lines meet again in their daughter Salena Sherman (1806–1842).

Notes

Death before 2 May 1684

Two printed books give the same deed of 2 May 1684: the 1948 Fish family history (p. 76) and Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (p. 78), which records the grandson as “Preserved Fish, son of Thomas, deceased” and the land as “where Thomas Fish, Jr., had lived”. The original town book is not cited here, so the death is stated as probable. The family tree’s death date remains “about 1684”; the deed gives a date by which he had already died.

Parents and brothers and sisters

The 1948 book abstracts the will of Thomas Fish, proved 13 December 1687, which names four sons and three daughters, and the will of his widow Mary, proved 12 July 1699. Austin’s dictionary abstracts both wills as well. The brothers and sisters are named from the 1948 book. The record gives his mother only as Mary, so her family name is not stated.

The coroner’s jury

The 1948 book says that he served on a coroner’s jury soon after 1670, but its own extracts from the Portsmouth town meetings list only one such jury, on 18 September 1685, for the inquest into the hanging of a Scotsman named John Crage, and place it under his father. By then he was probably dead.