Family history and genealogical information about the ancestors and descendants of William Browning Greene and Mary Hoxsie Lewis. William was born 28 February 1803 in Charlestown or South Kingstown, Rhode Island. He was the son of Browning Green (born ca. 1770 in Rhode Island) and Dinah Kenyon. Mary was born 28 November 1810. She was the illegitimate daughter of John Segar and Penelope Lewis. William and Mary lived in Charlestown, Rhode Island and were the parents of three sons and four daughters. Ancestors lived in Rhode Island and New York. Descendants lived primarily in New York.

In 1636, Roger Williams, recently banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of his religious beliefs, established a settlement at the head of Narragansett Bay that he named “Providence.” This small colony soon became a sanctuary for those seeking to escape religious persecution. Within a few years, a royal land patent and charter resulted in the formation of the “Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” which incorporated Williams’ original settlement and espoused his tenets of freedom of religion and separation of church and state. During the ensuing decades, thousands of Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and Huguenots relocated to Rhode Island from other New England colonies, the British Islands, and Europe in search of religious freedom. One such individual, John Thomas, an immigrant from Wales, made significant contributions to early settlements at Jamestown on Conanicut Island and at Wickford on the nearby mainland of Rhode Island. He was the first town constable of Jamestown in 1679, and later owned hundreds of acres of land in the towns of North and South Kingstown. This fully indexed work traces and sketches the lives of his descendants, many of whom were at the forefront of the great American westward migration, and represents the most comprehensive compilation of them to date. It is the result of twenty years of extensive research and includes detailed information from military pension archives, will and estate records, agricultural data, county histories, and migration patterns that far exceeds the standard for genealogical works of this scope and magnitude. It is important for us to remember those who helped shape our nation. This work provides valuable information for those who are interested in this family and its evolution in America.

Bliven Family

Record of sermons, records of members, marriages performed and miscellaneous church records kept by John Gorton in East Greenwich and Warwick, Rhode Island. Includes brief genealogy of John Gorton's family. John Gorton was born 22 April 1723. His parents were Samuel Gorton and Elizabeth Greene. He married Rhoda Bowen (1726-1781), daughter of Daniel Bowen and Priscilla Vinton, in 1746 in Scituate, Massachusetts. They had nine children.