Notes |
- From Wikipedia:
John Crandall, one of the founding settlers of Westerly, Rhode Island, was born in 1618 (baptized February 15, 1617/8) in Westerleigh, Gloucestershire, England to James Crandall, a yeoman of Kendleshire in that parish, and his first wife Eleanor. The origin of the name is undoubtedly a place-name, Crundelend, in Abberley, Worcestershire, where people bearing the name were concentrated in the 16th century. [...]
While the exact date of Crandall's arrival is not known, it is believed to be 1637 when he arrived in Providence, Rhode Island, then a new settlement and a refuge for dissident Puritans from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
From Providence he came to Newport, Rhode Island, as early as 1651. (The first actual documentation for Elder John Crandall in American is in 1643 when he appears as a grand jury member in Newport.) He became a prominent member of the First Baptist Church in Newport there, subsequently the first elder of the denomination at Westerly, Rhode Island. With John Clarke and Obadiah Holmes he went to Lynn, Massachusetts, to hold services for the Baptists, was arrested there July 21, 1651, and sent to prison in Boston. Ten days later he was convicted of breaking the law by holding services and fined five pounds, in default of which he was to be publicly whipped. Upon his promise to appear at the next term of court he was released.
In 1655, he was a freeman of Rhode Island; in 1658-59, 1662–63, he was a commissioner.
With eight others he signed a letter to the court of commissioners of Rhode Island, dated August 27, 1661, in relation to a tract of land at Westerly, where they and others desired to settle.
He was a deputy to the general assembly in 1667, and in the fall of that year was living at Westerly. He and Joseph Torrey were appointed commissioners to treat with Connecticut as to jurisdiction over disputed territory, May 14, 1669, and he was supplied with thirty-five shillings by the colony of Rhode Island to pay his expenses to Connecticut.
On November 18, 1669, he received a letter from the governor and assistants of Connecticut, complaining that he and others had appropriated a large tract of land belonging to Stonington, Connecticut. He and Tobias Saunders answered the complaint for the Westerly people. He was conservator of the peace at Westerly in 1670, and deputy to the general assembly again in 1670-71.
He was arrested by the Connecticut authorities, May 2, 1671, and was advised by the Rhode Island government to decline to give bond. The Rhode Island colony promised to pay his expenses and defend him.
The name of his first wife (by whom he had at least seven children) is not known, but it was not Mary Opp as was previously thought and is widely mentioned. He married, as his second wife, Hannah Gaylord (born 1647), daughter of William Gaylord and Ann (Porter), of Windsor, Connecticut. She died in 1678. He died at Newport, where he had moved because of King Philip's War, in 1676.
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