Person:Ralph Fargo (1)

From the Diary of Joshua Hempstead

1725 Thomas Fargo and his brother Ralph mentioned.

From Tibby Torhorst

The connection of Elizabeth Tooker Skidmore to Ralph Fargo is mentioned in most published research, however that's as far as it goes... no source is given, only the family knowledge of their life together. He married Elizabeth Gleason and had one child, Elizabeth. He then had Elizabeth Tooker Skidmore live in his house. They had four children. Joseph, Bert, Benjamin, and Ralph.

...Apprentices of Connecticut 1637-1900, Kathy Ritter

From Clay A. Darnell

from Warren Skidmore's book "Thirty Generations of Scudamore /Skidmore family..."

New London County, Connecticut

The family who descend from Elizabeth [Tooker] Scidmore of New London are not, genetically speaking, Skidmores at all. Elizabeth Scidmore was a daughter of Joseph Tooker (by his wife Mary Ogden?) [See additional comments below] and the first wife of Joseph Scidmore of Huntington, Long Island. [See Thomas Skidmore (Scudamore) 1605-1684, of Westerleigh, Gloucestershire, and Fairfield, Connecticut, (2nd edition, 1985), pages 33, 57-8.] A complete history of this family is promised by Timothy M. Bloomquist of Farmington, New Mexico.

Elizabeth Tooker, the wife of Joseph Scidmore, was a member of the First Church at Huntington in 1726. Sometime after this date she deserted her husband and went across the Long Island Sound to New London, Connecticut. Joshua Hempstead (1678-1758) of New London most fortuitously recorded the gossip about her in an entry in his diary on Sunday, 7 July 1734: " Joseph [widow] Skidmore died yesterday in childbed with her 3rd child by Ralph Fergo. She was the wife of one Skidmore of Naharagansett and had Eloped from him and Ralph Fergo having no wife took her in." Hempstead's facts are basically correct, but Elizabeth was not a widow and her Skidmore husband did not live in Rhode Island. She had issue by Ralph Fargo:

1. A child, perhaps born about 1730. No further record. 2. Benjamin, " son of Elizabeth Skidmore" (no father is mentioned), was baptized on 25 June 1732 at Groton, New London County. Nothing more is known of him. 3. Ralph, presumably the child born at New London, New London County, on 6 July 1734.

No probate has been found for Ralph Fargo and his son Ralph seems to have been sent to Long Island perhaps to live with the TOOKER family. His grandfather Joseph Tooker, Sr., settled late in life at Elizabeth, Essex County, New Jersey, where he left a will dated 31 December 1753. It provided for the unnamed children of his deceased daughter Elizabeth. Ralph Skidmore is first mentioned in a private list of marriages kept by William Salmon of persons who married in and around Southold, Suffolk County, Long Island. From this we learn that he married 1stly Hannah Owin on 31 September 1755 on Long Island. He married 2ndly Mary (perhaps Dayton) who was living [as] his widow in Hampshire County, (West) Virginia, in 1784 when she appears on a tax list taken by Michael Cresap. Mary Skidmore disappears after this date and may have remarried. (The early marriage bonds of Hampshire County are lost.)

Taken from information included in the "The Tooker/Tucker Family from Long Island, New York to New Jersey, A search for the true facts! The period from 1639 to 1800" by Franklin B. Tucker. I believe the ancestry of Elizabeth Tooker to be as follows;

John TOOKER b. c 1594 d 1658 m Unknown Charles TOOKER 1616 m Unknown Charles TOOKER 1641-1710 m Mary Mitchell Joseph TOOKER 1678-1753 m Mary Ross Susannah TOOKER m Benjamin Littell Elizabeth TOOKER m (1) Joseph Scidmore

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 New London Vital Records, in Connecticut, United States. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records
   1:37.

   FARGO, Ralph, s. Moses [& Sarah] b. Aug. 18, 1693

2. ↑ American Historical Society, Inc. Ostrander and Allied Families. (1936).
3. ↑ Frances Manwaring Caulkins. CAULKINS' History of New London, Connecticut. (New London, 1852, 1860 or 1895).
4. ↑ Henry A. Baker. History of Montville, Connecticut. (Press of the Case, Lockwood and Brainard Company, Hartford Conn 1896)
   p. 129.
5. ↑ John J. Giblin. FARGO: Record of the Fargo Family. (1907).
6. ↑ W.R. Cutter. Genealogical and Family History of Western New York. (1912).
7. ↑ Warren Skidmore. SKIDMORE: Thomas Skidmore 1605-1684 of Connecticut. (1980).
8. ↑ Kathy Ritter. Apprentices of Connecticut 1637-1900.
9. ↑ Matt Bushnell Jones. History of the Town of Waitsfield, Vermont. (Boston, Mass, George E. Littlefield, 1909)
   p. 304.