Person:Edward Fitz Randolph (7)

Edward Fitz Randolph, the Pilgrim, and the progenitor of the Fitz Randolph family line in America, was undoubtedly the "Edward Fitzrandell", the son of Edward Fitz Randolph or Randall and his second wife Frances Howis or Howes, baptized at Sutton-in-Ashfield, Co., Nottingham, England, on July 8, 1607. "Fitz Randolph Traditions" by the late Lewis Van Syckel Fitz Randolph gives much on the English antecedent of the family. Among the seven hundred passengers who came over in the eleven vessels which comprised the "Winthop Fleet" and which was know as the "Great Immigration" of 1630, was Edward Fitz Randolph, who settled in Scituate, Mass. Pastor Lathrop's diary asserts that the "young Master Edward Fitzrandolph built the 38th house in Scituate, Mass." He married in Scitutate, May 10, 1637, Elizabeth Blossom. Edward and Elizabeth moved from Scituate to Barnstable, Mass., in 1639 and his name appears in the list of those able to bear arms in New Plymouth in 1643. In 1649, Edward moved from Barnstable to his farm, "a great double lot", in Piscataway, N.J., leaving his son Nathaniel and his daughter, Mary, wife of Samuel Hinckley, in West Barnstable, and his daughter, Hannah, wife of Jasper Taylor, in Yarmouth. In the "Book of Records" of Nathaniel Fitz Randolph it states that Edward lived to be nearly eighty years of age." It is often stated that Edward died in Piscataway in 1675 or 1676, which would make him only about 68 or 69 at his death, so it seems probable that he lived until 1684 or 1685. After Edward's death, Elizabeth gave her four sons, John, Joseph, Thomas and Benjamin, on June 26, 1685 the land she had located in her husband's name, and on June 30, 1685 she married Capt. John Pike of Woodbridge, N.J. Julianna Fitz Randolph Wood tells us in her "Family Sketches" that Elizabeth "was buried by her first husband" in the west corner of what is now St. James Church yard, Piscataway, N.J. During the Revolution, as the British troops came down King George's Highway (now Woodbridge Avenue) breastworks were thrown across the plot, and after the war was over and the ground leveled, no trace was found of the tombstones of either Edward or Elizabeth. He moved to Barnstable on Cape Cod 1639; was juryman 1641; sold house June 1, 1649 and moved to West Barnstable; moved family 1669 to Piscataway, N.J. because the New England Patriotism and religion were too restrictive. Address: Note: Edward was said to have built the 38th house in Scituate, Plymouth Colony in 1636. He moved to West Barnstable and then in 1669 to Piscataway, NJ because New England's religion was too restrictive. He was a Quaker. His children were born in Barnstable and West Barnstable.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Reitwiesner, William Addams. William Addams Reitwiesner Genealogical Services: Royal, Noble, and Political Genealogies.
2. ↑ Buried in St. James churchyard (now Stelton or Edison) Middlesex Co., N.J. The tombstone is though to have been destroyed when the British threw breastworks for encampment.
3. ↑ Edward came to America with Winthrop Fleet