Person:Thomas Dungan (1)

Representative in the colonial assembly of Rhode Island 1678-1681. Founded first Baptist church in PA when he moved there in 1682. ^[4]

May 20, 1656, at the Court of election holden at Portsmouth, he was elected a freeman. ^[5]   June 7, 1671, he was a member of a special court to try two Indians, as a juror from Newport. ^[6]   October 31, 1677, he was named as one of the Patentees, in the charter of the town of East Greenwich, R. 1. ^[7]

From America’s First Families website:

REV. THOMAS DUNGAN RHODE ISLAND  (1634/35-1688)

Thomas DUNGAN was born in London on Feb. 13, 1634 to William DUNGAN and Frances Weston (Latham). William was a perfumer and he and Frances were the parents of two boys and two girls with Thomas the last born.... William DUNGAN died in 1636 and his wife Frances married Jeremiah CLARKE. Thomas came to Rhode Island with his mother and step-father before 1638, and were some of the first settlers of Newport.

Thomas studied the ministry under both Roger WILLIAMS and the Rev. William VAUGHN in Rhode Island. William VAUGHN was Frances LATHAM's fourth husband after Jeremiah CLARKE died.

In 1656 Thomas was a freeman and in 1663 he married Elizabeth WEAVER (1645-1697) daughter of Clement WEAVER and Mary FREEBORN. Thomas and Elizabeth became the parents of nine children.

In 1677 he was named with forty-seven others who took grant of 5,000 acres to be called East Greenwich. He deeded his cousin (i.e. nephew) Thomas WEAVER, of Newport, 100 acres in East Greenwich, for love and in 1682 he and his wife Elizabeth sold John BAILEY, late of Portsmouth, 50 acres in Newport.

In 1684 Thomas DUNGAN and his family moved to Cold Spring, PA and established a Baptist church, of which he was the first pastor. Morgan EDWARDS gives the following account of him. "In 1684, Thomas DUNGAN removed from Rhode Island and settles at a place called Cold Spring, Bucks County, between Bristol and Trenton."

After alluding to the breaking up of the church in 1702 (an old grave yard stone marking the site of the church in 1770 when Edwards wrote), he further says of Mr. DUNGAN, "The Rev. Thomas DUNGAN, the 1st Baptist minister in the Province, now (1770), exists in a progeny of between 600 and 700."

Thomas DUNGAN died in 1688 and was buried in the churchyard in Cold Spring.^[8]

5g grandfather of Eleanore Widener, who donated the Widener Library at Harvard, through son William. ^[9]

Text References

1. ↑ Church of England. St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church (Westminster, Middlesex), and Thomas Mason (ed.). A register of baptisms, marriages, and burials in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, in the county of Middlesex, from 1550 to 1619. (London: Harleian Society, 1898).
2. ↑ Justice, Alfred Rudulph. Ancestry of Jeremy Clarke of Rhode Island and Dungan genealogy. (unknown: unknown, 1922).
3.   Austin, John Osborne. The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island. (Orig. 1887; Reprinted 1969 Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing).
4. ↑ A genealogical and personal history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania
5. ↑ Ancestry of Jeremy Clarke of Rhode Island and Dungan genealogy, p. 336
6. ↑ Id. 21, p. 394.
7. ↑ Id. 21, p. 588
8. ↑ Submitted by Norman Wesley Merritt with notes by America's First Families from The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (http://www.linkline.com/personal/xymox/roh/dungan.htm)
9. ↑ See Notable Kin column #58.