Person:Richard Newton (1)

According to E. Leonard, in the book Newton Genealogy [S1], Richard Newton was probably born ca 1601 to 1602, but possibly as late as 1608. He lived to be nearly 100 years old.

Ancestor of the Massachusetts family of Newtons, was born in England and came to America before 1639, in which year he was one of the original proprietors of Sudbury and was allotted land there in 1640. He was made a freeman of the colony in 1645 - given the typical 7-year indenture period he would have been indentured in 1638, probably when he embarked to Massachusetts. On 6/27/1647 he was the owner of the estate of Nathaniel Sparrowhawk.

Puritan Village: The formation of a New England Town / by Sumner Chilton Powell / 1963 / Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press.

The book uses the 17th century town records of Sudbury MA, letters from and about its first English settlers, and English records from the areas of origin of those settlers to explain what the settlers were doing, and why. Unfortunately for Richard Newton descendants however, it focuses, as it must, on the more prosperous men, not on men yet to be made freeman of the colony. Richard Newton is mentioned briefly about 5 times in the book.

The town of Sudbury was chosen for the book because of its relatively-complete town records from settlement in 1638 to 1660.

East Anglia is the name of the region in England where many of the first settlers of Sudbury came from. The area in southeastern England (but northeast of London) comprising the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. Until about 1000 years ago, East Anglia was a separate kingdom, first held by Anglo-Saxons and then by the Danes. This area never adopted open-field farming that was common in most of England. Many New England town names come from here, including Sudbury (home of Edmund Brown, the new Sudbury's minister, and Edmund Rice, who moved to Berkhamsted and then settled in the new Sudbury with Thomas Axtell). Watertown, Massachusetts was settled mostly by East Anglians--one reason that immigrants with open-field farming experience wanted their own settlement in Sudbury.

1. ↑ 1. RICHARD NEWTON(1), in Leonard, Ermina Elizabeth (Newton). Newton Genealogy: Genealogical, biographical, historical, being a record of the descendants of Richard Newton of Sudbury and Marlborough, Massachusetts 1638, with genealogies of families descended from the immigrants Rev. Roger Newton of Milford, Connecticut, Thomas Newton of Fairfield, Connecticut, Matthew Newton of Stonington, Connecticut, Newtons of Virginia, Newtons near Boston. (De Pere, Wisconsin: B. A. Leonard, 1915)
   p 10.
2.   Re: Sir Isaac Newton Moves to the U.S. [1], in Ancestry.com Message Boards.

   "(Sir) Isaac Newton did not have a brother called Richard Newton, he was an only (posthumous) child of his father Isaac. He did have 3 step siblings called Smith. His 2nd uncle Richard Newton, died in Colsterworth - as the parish records and wills show conclusively, the wills in particular allow us to relate him to the other members of the wider family. This Richard had two sons and two grandsons via one of the sons. All of Richard's family lived and died in Lincolnshire, England until the 1700s as the parish records, tax returns and wills show. They are all entered in Sir Isaac's own pedigree which I have seen, in his own hand, at the College of Arms in London. The same pedigree forms the basis of a pedigree published at Woolsthorpe Manor, his birthplace, by the National Trust. It contains errors but is correct in respect of the 2nd uncle Richard. The records show, I'm afraid, no American connection with this uncle."