GENERATION 10

GENERATION 9

Biography

SAMUEL WILBORE was born in 1664 at Portsmouth, Newport, RI, and married in 1689 at Portsmouth, to MARY POTTER. She was born at Dartmouth, Bristol, MA, in 1689. MARY came from Central Village. Her father's farm was a little west of Central Village up a lane to the south of the road from Central Village to Adamsville. On this land is a large Brownell cemetery.

SAMUEL settled in Little Compton, Newport, RI, about 1690. It is estimated that it was in 1690 that SAMUEL built his two-room house. Five additions were made over the next 180 years, but the house still stands today and is the headquarters of the Little Compton Historical Society. The house can be toured, and the room where seven girls slept can be visited. It is presumed that the four boys slept in the attic. The land which made up the farm was obtained by combining four lots, two of the fifty acres lots, numbers 15 and 16 and two of the eleven acre lots. This made a farm of one hundred and twenty-two acres.

In his will of 1740, SAMUEL left the west half of his farm of sixty-one acres, with the Wilbor house, to his son William, and the east half to his son Isaac. Also, in that will he laid out the old Wilbur cemetery, on the southern part of the land he had given to William. It was to be four rods square, and to remain "for ever and never to be sold."

The burying place was used for many generations by his descendants, for almost 200 years. But there are few marked stones, possibly because of Quaker practice. Some of the stones were moved to other cemeteries where the graves would receive better care. Some were moved to the "new" Wilbor cemetery (or Sakonnet cemetery) on the West Road. The oldest stone in the "old" cemetery is of Daniel Wilbour, who died in 1841.