In a message dated 5/17/2003 12:24:55 PM Eastern Standard Time, barrybro@twave.net writes: > So...how many other South County stories of > family deeds and adventures are there out there which I've not yet heard > about...which many/most of you may not yet have heard about as well? > > It's just a thought...but what do you all think about sharing these things? > > Appreciatively, as always, > Barry Hale Browning > Hi Barry; I share your Teffts, Hoxies, Greenes (two Johns), Hulings, etc., but are you by any chance a Wightman? Rev. Edward Wightman, 1570 - 1612, was the last person burned at the stake for heresy in England. There is a plaque which marks the spot, and which I visited while in London. It's interesting to know you have relatives who were drawn and quartered, and burned at the stake. I also have a couple of Quaker grandmothers who were whipped at the post and "carted" thru town in Massachusetts, and a couple of grandfathers who were kidnaped and thrown in jail during the dispute between Massachusetts and Connecticut over the Rhode Island territory. Makes my life seem dull. Charlie B Charles I Bearse Morrisville PA To Be Remembered May Be The Secret To Immortality

> I share your Teffts, Hoxies, Greenes (two Johns), Hulings, etc., but > are you by any chance a Wightman? Rev. Edward Wightman, 1570 - 1612, was the > last person burned at the stake for heresy in England. There is a plaque > which marks the spot, and which I visited while in London. ..Hmmmm....the "forty martyrs"...yes, I'm...11th great-grandson...Wightman....Wightman...Updike...the Cocumcossoc crowd...then...Huling/Gard(i)ner... > It's interesting to know you have relatives who were drawn and > quartered, and burned at the stake. ...Well....makes for appropriate retelling during a particularly cold nor'easter....I love that there was always...more than one side to the story....my/our RI matriarch Anne Marbury Hutchinson actually came close to overcoming the Puritan Mass Bay theocracy...(too bad she didn't...)...Samuel Gorton was mildly to moderately controversial...even in Portsmouth/Pocasset before moving to found Warwick....and Herodias Long-Hicks-Gardiner-Porter, as you know, was whipped as well...and if Acus/Acres Card Tucker's elusive wife Abbie Dye(r) turns out to be a Little Compton Dyer after all...jackpot! Isn't it Quaker Anne Dyer who was martyred on Boston Common, and whose statue is now in front of the MA statehouse? These antecedents bolster my pride in indentifying myself as a "Rogue's Islander"... I also have a couple of Quaker > grandmothers who were whipped at the post and "carted" thru town in > Massachusetts, and a couple of grandfathers who were kidnaped and thrown in > jail during the dispute between Massachusetts and Connecticut over the Rhode > Island territory. Makes my life seem dull. ....Yes, I can remember my cousin the late Dr. Harold Browning, for many years VP of the University of Rhode Island...making reference to the conflicting claims of nearby colonies to our "unsettled lands", and those of our kith and kin who were "unfairly imprisoned"...with a certain inflection in his voice to indicate that the Bay Colony and the Hartford/Connecticut Colony were even now...not fully forgiven... And RI Quakerism....went far to rectify the odiousness of Black/Indian slavery in the Narragansett Country...quite the largest slaveholding area in all New England...(as we read our census results through the early years...) Perhaps the saddest of all concerns for local genealogy is that there are practically no traceable records to show the ancestry of so many of South County's native Indian and black people....who have been here from the first... ....As for religious meddling...well...I still have in mind a certain image of the amply-built Rev. McSparren, His Majesty's Anglican Church Cleric for the King's County....I understand that the pulpit/sounding board had to be equally solid to support his weight....the job must have paid him amply...was he not guaranteed an income from the local colonists, as often happened in the southern colonies? I'm also amused by the story of the Episcopal Church dispute wherein the church, then located on Scrabbletown Road near Slocum and the North/South Kingstown line, was...in the dark of the night, put on sleds, and...dragged to Wickford, where it remained...the opposing faction woke to find no church building and a "fait accompli"! Best, as always, Barry Browning