Elisha Watson, born August 5, 1748, married (second) Susannah Perry, and they were the parents of Freeman Perry Watson, who married Phoebe Watson, and they were the parents of the Rev. Elisha Freeman Watson, grandfather of Byron Sprague Watson, of Providence, son of Colonel Arthur Hamilton Watson.
Rev. Elisha Freeman Watson was born at 'Boston Neck', South Kingston, R. I., March 28, 1814, and died at his home, 'Matunuck Farm', in the same town, January 16, 1900. He secured a good preparatory education, entered Brown University, was graduated A. B., class of 1840, A. M., 1843, pursued studies in divinity at the General Theological Seminary in New York City, completed his studies under the Rev. Francis Vinton, D. D., of Newport, R. I., and was ordained a priest of the Protestant Episcopal church in August, 1843. He was rector of St. Paul's, Tower Hill, and St. Matthew's, Jamestown, R. I., 1843-46; rector of Christ's Church, Lonsdale, 1846-49; retired, living on his farm in South Kingston, 1851-60; rector of the church at Otis, Mass., 1860-61; chaplain of the Eleventh Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1861-64; and of the Seventh Regiment of Rhode Island Volunteers after returning from the front in 1864. He was one of the founders of the Republican party in Rhode Island, speaking all over the State and in Massachusetts, in support of Freemont and Dayton in 1856, and was an ardent Abolitionist. He was identified with the first temperance movement that ever was organized in his town, and had for his motto, 'From the cradle to the coffin a temperance man'. After retiring from the ministry he became more than ever the student, and even when an old man he was devoting a great deal of time to the study of languages of other lands. He married January 6, 1843, Mary Dockray, who died October 5, 1904, surviving her husband four years.
