vital records sources
Benjamin had a homestead and mill on Boston Neck in North Kingstown.(1) Benjamin's will was written on 15 January 1756 and was probated in North Kingstown. He gave his Boston Neck farm, on which he was living, to his son John. John's son Thomas sold part of it to Samuel Packard. The Packard and Congdon farms were eventually owned by Samuel C. Cottrell in the later 19th century. The Casey farm is also mentioned as a neigboring property, and the original house, built about 1750, still stands. An 1870 Rhode Island state atlas shows two houses owned by S. C. Cottrell next to one owned by a Casey facing Narragansett bay in Saunderstown in the far southern end of North Kingstown. The two Cottrell houses, which probably included a Congdon home, if not the original one, were gone by the time a 1944 topographical map was made. There is a cemetery on the Casey farm called the Sweet-Packard Cemetery close to where one of the Cottrell houses stood. Oral history says Benjamin and his wife were buried on their property, and that may be the site. There are no stones that old, though, according to a comprehensive survey of Rhode Island burial grounds, so it can only be speculated.
children of Benjamin Congdon and Frances Stafford (the origin of these records hasn't been found. They aren't in the records that survived the North Kingstown fire of 1869, but may be in a manuscript compiled by Edward D. Congdon from the records before they were damaged. He also may have had access to family Bibles):
Frances b. 6 December 1703
Joseph b. 15 February 1704/1705
John b. 23 September 1706
Sarah b. 26 June 1708
William b. 6 November 1711
James b. 15 May 1713
Elizabeth b. 8 April 1715
Mary b. 10 March (1717/?)1718
Susannah b. 7 February (1719/?)1720
Hannah d. 3 November 1740
vital records sources: Benjamin's marriage record and the names and birth dates of his children appear on a printed sheet of genealogy, undated (but thought to have been printed about 1870) and by an unnamed author, that was re-printed in Boston in 1918 by Frank J. Wilder as Congdon Family of Rhode Island. The marriage and most of his children do not appear in the surviving North Kingstown vital records. This is a compilation including information from the will of Benjamin (1) and vital record dates that may have been taken from the North Kingstown records before they were damaged by a fire in 1869. Others were likely taken from a family Bible, given the personal detail (for instance, the time of death of one family member). This document follows only one line of descent, including siblings, from Benjamin (1), through Benjamin (2), John (3), John (4), Thomas Rose Congdon (5) and ending with his children, further indicating private records were at least partially used.
1.
all text and photographs © 1998-2010 by Doug Sinclair unless where otherwise noted