Person:Damaris Westcott (2)

Damaris became "the First Lady of the Colony" when her husband succeeded Roger Williams as President of the Colony and later became Governor. Buried with her husband in Newport, Rhode Island.

"Damaris, daughter of Stukeley, was born in England about 1620 and was about sixteen years of age when she accompanied her father to America. The date of her death is unknown, as the inscriptions upon the stones that mark her grave and also that of her husband, are now illegible. She was buried in the family burial ground of her husband, her grave being the grave next south of his, near Pelham Street, Newport, on a lot three rods square, forever dedicated by Governor Benedict Arnold as a family burial lot, lying between the present residence of Ex-Governor Van Zandt and the Aquidneck Hotel at Newport, R. I., and a few rods westerly from the old " mill." She survived her husband who died in 1678. She married 1640, December 17, Benedict Arnold, known as Governor Benedict."

-- "Partial Genealogy of Stukeley Westcote's Descendants" in Jonathan Russell Bullock, Incidents in the life and times of Stukeley Westcote, with some of his descendants, 1886, page 10. - http://archive.org/stream/incidentsinlifet00bull#page/10/mode/1up

1. ↑ Whitman, Roscoe Leighton, History and genealogy of the ancestors and some descendants of Stukely Westcott, 1932-1939
   Vol. II., Page 7.

   Recorded in the parish register of St. John the Baptist Church at Yeovil in Somerset:
   "Damaris, daughter of Stuckeley Westcott, baptised 27 January, 1621"

2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 Jonathan Russell Bullock, Incidents in the life and times of Stukeley Westcote, with some of his descendants, 1886
   Page 10.

   Re location of the Arnold Burying Ground see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Burying_Ground