♂Thomas Fish

Thomas Fish (1 December 1703 – about 1786) was a Rhode Island-born farmer who raised his family at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and then moved them to the Oblong in Dutchess County, New York, where he lived for some forty years and was once bound over to keep the peace. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Elizabeth Fish (1736–1814).

Early life and marriage

He was born at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, on 1 December 1703, the eldest son of Preserved Fish (1679–) and Ruth Cook, a Quaker family; his grandparents were Thomas Fish and Grizzel Strange of Portsmouth. On 16 December 1724, at Portsmouth, he married Mercy Coggeshall (1704–1778), of one of the island’s founding families.

Dartmouth

The couple settled across the bay at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where the town register records seven of their children as born to “Thomas and Mercy” between 1725 and 1740, among them Elizabeth on 4 June 1736. A family history published in 1948 adds a daughter Sarah, born in 1738, and a son Joshua, born in 1743 “at Oblong”, which puts the family’s move to New York in the early 1740s.

The Oblong

The Oblong was a strip of land along the Connecticut border, later part of the town of Amenia, and it drew many families from Dartmouth and the Rhode Island shore. A Thomas Fish witnessed a deed there in December 1744, when William Russell of the Oblong sold land to James Tripp of Dartmouth; the other witness was Philip Allen.

On 13 April 1756 “Thomas Fish of the Oblong in Dutchess County” was bound over before a justice of the peace, with two neighbours as sureties for twenty pounds, to appear at the next court of general sessions at Poughkeepsie. He was to answer a complaint by John Birdsell “concerning sundry Misdemeanors & Breaches of the Peace” and in the meantime to keep the peace. The outcome is not known. Being bound over was not a conviction: his neighbours pledged money that would be forfeit if he misbehaved before the court heard the complaint.

In January 1769 Thomas Fish, John Fish and Joshua Fish together witnessed the will of a neighbour, Abraham Bockee. When the will was proved in 1784, Joshua Fish of Amenia gave his evidence by affirmation rather than oath, as a Quaker would.

Death

Mercy died in Dutchess County on 10 February 1778. The 1948 family history says Thomas died at the Oblong about 1786, aged eighty-three; no record of his death or burial has been found.

Notes

The deed and the will are known from transcripts of the recorded copies and have not been checked against the original pages; the 1756 court bond has been read from the original.