| OCR Text |
Show GENEALOGY 8 to believe that they came from the west of England. The exact date of their coming is equally uncertain. Another tradition says that William Tanner was born in London, England, about 1660, and when about fourteen years of age was taken aboard an English sailing vessel which landed in New York. He escaped from these people and settled in Rhode Island. to the Reverend Tanner, who spent many years of re this work, the William Tanner to whom we trace our ancestry first appears in the Baptist Colony of Rhode Island, and as a member of the Baptist Church. This might suggest a connec tion with the Tanner freehold at Godelman, County Surrey, of which the Tanners have' been Baptists almost from the rise of the sect. Regarding their coming from the west of England the exact date of their coming is uncertain. The tradition referred to regarding this says-that it was the time of Olivet Cromwell. The descendants of Isaac Tanner of Herkimer Co., N. Y., have a tradition that "Good man William Tanner landed with Roger Williams in Rhode Island in the seventeenth century." According search on That our ancestor was of good family appears from his early record and from the names with which his is associated. His birth evidently took place about the time of the accession of Charles II, and he pos sibly may have come over at a visit of Roger Williams, or of Randall Houlding to England in the interest of the Colony of Rhode Island. The first mention of him that the Reverend Tanner was able to find was in the "Fones Record," Vol. I, as a witness to a deed of convey ance of Frances, wife of Randall Houlding of Warwick the 12th day of May, 1682. It is noted that Randall Houlding had been in England on important business whence he returned in 1679. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that William Tanner, then a young man not far from twenty years of age, may have accompanied him on his return. There is no evidence that he had any relation with any other part of the 'country, or that his parents came with him. He appears to be the first Tanner who became a freeholder. in 'Rhode Island. That his education was respectable for his day is evident, and that his ancestors were freeholders in England is in harmony with tradi tions. The Colonial Records afford no information concerning the an cestry of Wm. Tanner so far as is known to this writer. In his History of the Commoners, Vol. II, p. 214, Burke says, "The family of Tanner (is) one of remote ancestry in the counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. The name appears in English history. No Tanner except Nicholas of Swanzy, Mass., was 'in the Narragansett Indian War." After his witnessing the deed of sale of Frances Houlding in 1682 and the payment of the Andrus tax in 1687, nothing further appears in the early records until 1693, when William Tanner purchased of Henry Hall of Westerly a tract of land of one hundred acres, lying on the east side of the Usquepaugh River, about a mile below the |
