Richard Raymond

Richard Raymond was a mariner of Salem. "Freeman, May 14, 1634. Jan. 2, 1636, the town granted him half an acre of land at Winter Harbor (now known as Winter Island in Salem harbor), 'for fishing trade and to build upon.' In 1636 he received a further grant of 60 acres of land at Jeffries Creek (now Manchester). He and his wife Judith .... were members of the First Church, Salem, before 1636" (source). He sat on Salem juries in 1636 and 1637. From at least 1649 his house lot ran between the present Derby and Essex Streets, on the waterfront opposite where Derby Wharf now is (source). In 1660 he sold a quarter of "the good Ketch called the Hopewell of Salem, of the burthen of thirty tons, now being or riding at anchor in the harbor of Boston." He was not of the Beverly Raymonds (John and William), whose father was George Rayment of Glastonbury, Somerset.

His children were all baptized at Salem except John: John; Bathsheba, 1637, who married Humphrey Coombs; Joshua, 1639, of New London, the army's commissary in King Philip's War (below); Lemuel, 1640; Hannah, 1642, who married Oliver Manwaring; Samuel, 1644 or 1645; Richard, 1647; Elizabeth, 1649 or 1650; and Daniel, 1653.

In the winter of 1659/60 his trade along the coast brought him twice before the courts at New Haven. On 7 December 1659 Captain John Penny of the London ship Roebuck, who was there "to take Duch-men," seized Raymond's vessel the Black Eagle and her goods "neare a place called Stamford point." Raymond said he had been "forced by his imploymt to have to doe wth a Duch vessell, being he could not get an English vessell to doe his businesse," and produced a bill of sale, made before a New Netherland notary, for "a vessell named ye Black Eagle" bought for "fourteene hundred gilders, to be paid in seawan"; Penny claimed her as a Dutch prize under "a Sweads comission." On 1 March 1659/60 the magistrates sent the case to "the hono'ble court of admiralty in London, to be there tried & issued" (source). Five days later the town court called him in, "told that its comonly reported that he was drunke aboard ye shipp, wch ye Court was sorry to heare of, & ashamed that a man standing in relation to a church as he doth should be found to stand guilty of such a fact." He "confessed yt he was exceedingly distempered, but withall alleadged & desired that it might be considered that he was very cold at that time, & his head weake, & haveing seuerall sorts of liquors was ouercome by it," and acknowledged that he "had abused his good blessings too much to gluttony, drunkenesse, & pride." The court "did not looke vpon him as a common drunkerd," Deacon Peck said "he had knowne Mr Raymond long," and he was fined ten shillings. A later witness admitted that "once Mr Raymonds sonne bringing cards to his house, they two with two more playd at Cards" (source).

In October 1662 he bought a house and land at Norwalk, and in 1664 he moved to Saybrook.

King Philip's War. When the war came Richard was an old man at Saybrook, and it was his son Joshua Raymond of New London, cornet of the New London County troop under Capt. Edward Palmes from 1672 (Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 2:186), through whom Connecticut fed its army in the Narragansett campaign. In November 1675 the wheat, powder, bullets and cheese gathered at New London were to be "deliuered to Mr. Josh: Raymond of New London, whoe is ordered forthwith to take care that the corne be baked into bread" (2:384); on 25 November the Council of War named "Mr. Witherell, Mr. Josh: Raymond" to sign New London's soldiers' pay bills (2:386); and in February 1675/6, after the army came back from its January march, more wheat and flesh went "to be deliuered to Mr. Joshua Raymond for the use of our army," and the stores at New London "into the hands of Mr. Joshua Raymond for to be preserued for the Country's use," in the same letter that sent thanks "to Vnceas, Owanecoe, Mawmawho and Robbin for their good seruice" (2:405-406). "Mr. Wetherell was the active magistrate, Joshua Raymond the commissary" (History of New London, p. 184). On 7 April 1676 "Mr. Daniel Witherly, Mr. Joshua Raymond, are permitted to send forth the Good Ketch, the New London ... for the Barbadoes" (PRCC 2:428). Seventeen days later, on 24 April 1676, Joshua died, at about thirty-seven (source; source, p. 18), perhaps, as the county history has it, "from the effects of a wound received in the Great Swamp fight" (Genealogical and Biographical Record of New London County). In 1677 "Mrs. Raymond," his widow, accounted for the colony's law-book money (PRCC 2:311). Joshua had been one of the New London men who in 1668 advanced the payment to Uncas that settled the town's bounds, and his farm lay in the "Mohegan fields" on the Norwich road (Caulkins pp. 425-426; Raymond 1886, p. 5).

Richard disposed of his property by deed rather than will. In 1676 he gave his Norwalk lands to the children of "my son John Raymond ... by Mary Raymond his present wife," and in 1677 empowered "his 'well beloved brother Thomas Betts, of Norwalk'" to record his divisions there (source). On 2 January 1690, at New London, he sold his Saybrook house and land to his son Daniel, mariner, with the proviso "that no part of said lands or housing be sold or disposed of out of the family of Raymonds and also in case that I Richard Raymond should desire to live in Saybrook then my son Daniell shall be obliged to receive me into the house and provide suitably for my comfort." He died at Saybrook in 1692, "æ. abt. 90"; afterwards John thanked Daniel "for his care of and charge about our Honored father in the time of his weakness" (source).

The family perhaps descends from him through John, if Jonathan Fairchild of East Jewett was the Jonathan born at Norwalk in 1744 (see Jonathan Fairchild).

Research: Notable connections of Frances Fairchild Holbrook: the Fairchild branch and the families that married in; the war: King Philip's War: the Connecticut valley, the Colony of Connecticut, Long Island and New Paltz.

Open questions

• His English origin (said to be Essex) and his wife Judith's family.
• What Joshua died of in April 1676: his estate (New London probate, 1676).