John Gardner (politician, 1697)

John Gardner (born September 17, 1697 in Newport , Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations , † January 1764 ibid) was a British lawyer, politician and officer. He was Deputy Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and Chief Justice of the Colonial Superior Court for more than eight years .

Career

John Gardner became a Freeman at Newport in 1722 and served as an assistant between 1732 and 1737 . In 1737 he sat on a committee with members from other colonies, which helped to settle the disputed border between New Hampshire and Massachusetts . Four years later he was on a different committee. His job was to determine if two additional companies could be raised to defend the colony and to determine whether a fort on Goat Island should be built to defend the port. He was elected treasurer general in 1743 - a position he held until 1748 when he became assistant again. During this time he held the rank of colonel in 1744 and was appointed commissioner general. In 1754 he became lieutenant governor of the colony and held this post for a year. When his successor Jonathan Nichols junior died before the end of his term, he was re-elected lieutenant governor. Gardner held this post for more than seven years until his death in January 1764. He was also elected sixth Chief Justice in the Superior Court - an office which he held for five years.

family

John Gardner, son of Catharine Holmes and Joseph Gardner, was born in Newport County during colonial times . His grandfather, George Gardiner , was one of the first settlers in Portsmouth, Newport County , in 1638 . One of his great-grandfathers was Obadiah Holmes , a Baptist minister in Newport. He was badly flogged for his religious beliefs and activities in Boston . Another great-grandfather was Randall Holden , who supported the dissident theologian Anne Hutchinson . He was a signatory to the Portsmouth Compact , a document that established the first government of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. A great-great-grandmother of John Gardner was Frances Latham , the wife of William Dungan. She is referred to as "the mother of governors". 14 of her descendants were governors, lieutenant governors or spouses of the governors.

On October 23, 1720 he married Frances Sanford (born January 13, 1702), daughter of Frances Clarke and John Sanford. The couple had eleven children: Mary, Francis, John Holmes, George, Catherine, Lydia, Elizabeth, William, Sanford, Ann, and Abigail. Frances Sanford was a great-granddaughter of two previous Rhode Island governors. One of them was John Sanford , who briefly served as governor of the towns of Portsmouth and Newport in Rhode Island. This was just before the colony was reunited under the Coddington Commission. The other great-grandfather was Jeremy Clarke , who served a one-year term as president of the colony from 1648 to 1649.

Ann Gardner, daughter of Frances Sanford and John Gardner, was married twice. Her second husband was Solomon Southwick , the editor of Newport Mercury and a prominent advocate for the Patriots during the Revolutionary War .

literature

• Austin, John Osborne: The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island: Comprising Three Generations of Settlers who Came Before 1690, with Many Families Carried to the Fourth Generation , Genealogical Publishing Com, 1887, ISBN 978-0-8063-0006-1 , pp. 12, 44, 67, 81f, 100, 103f and 171
• Smith, Joseph Jencks: Civil and Military List of Rhode Island, 1647-1800 , Providence, RI: Preston and Rounds, Co., 1900, pp. 185-219
• White, James Terry: The National Cyclopedia of American Biography , JT White Company, 1898, p. 41

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Gardner on the familytreemaker.genealogy.com website
2. ↑ James Moore Caller and Maria A. Ober: Genealogy of the Descendants of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick of Salem, Mass: The Original Emigrants, and the Ancestors of the Families who Have Since Borne His Name , New England Historic Genealogical Soc., 1881, P. 97