Thomas Riggs

Town clerk of Gloucester for fifty-one years, 1665-1716 (Babson p. 131). He was "said to have been educated in England for the profession of a scrivener," and he was very probably the "Thomas Rigg filius Rob[er]ti Rigg de Hauckshead in Com' Lancastrie Agricol'" apprenticed through the Drapers' Company on 3 Feb 1646/7 for nine years to Richard Barlowe, scrivener, of Tower Street, London (TAG 82, 2007, from the originals). Y-DNA from his male-line descendants matches descendants of Edward Riggs of Roxbury, so the two immigrants "have a close common ancestor" (TAG 82:125).

He was at Gloucester by 1658, when he married Mary Millett and first appears as a grantee there; his first Gloucester record is testimony in Nov 1658 (EQC 2:134). After his marriage, a newspaper account of 1913 says, his father-in-law Thomas Millett "paid Mr. Riggs for his board at the rate of two days' labor a week." At the Salem court on 25 June 1667 he deposed as "Thomas Riggs, aged about thirty-two years" (Essex Quarterly Court Records 3:431). He was representative in 1700 and selectman "upwards of twenty years," and in 1698 he was chosen schoolmaster, "to have one shilling and six pence a day during the town's pleasure, and the said Riggs's likeing to carry it on."

Children (Gloucester VR): Mary 1658/9, Thomas 1660 (d. 1660), Sarah 1661, Anna 1664, Thomas 1666, John 1669/70, Elizabeth 1672, Abigail 1678, Andrew 1681.

King Philip's War. His father-in-law, Thomas Millett, had gone to Brookfield as its preacher in 1674. Brookfield was besieged and burned on 2-4 Aug 1675, and by 28 Sept Millett was dead, when the Ipswich court granted "Mary Millet, the relict" administration of his estate (EQC 6:73). Gloucester itself was spared: Babson found no record that "any hostile Indian set his foot on our soil" (source, p. 206). But the town lost two of its men at the Narragansett fort in December 1675: Joseph Somes, slain in Capt. Joseph Gardiner's company, and Isaac Ellery, in Maj. Samuel Appleton's (Bodge pp. 156, 167). In March 1676 a committee of the General Court reported that "Cape Ann had made two garrisons besides several particular fortifications" (Babson p. 207), and the town took over its soldiers' wages from the treasury ("Glocester-Town Cr.," 24 Aug 1676; Soldiers in King Philip's War, p. 370). After the war he entered in the Town Book the soldiers' lots at Kettle Cove, granted, probably in February 1679/80, to fourteen men "for their 'service in the Indian war,'" among them John Stanwood, who later married Lydia Messer, and his brothers Philip and Samuel (Babson p. 207; Bolton, p. 30).

In 1688 he was among the Gloucester men "fined at the Superior Court in Salem for the non-compliance of the town with a warrant for the assessment of one of those odious taxes" under Andros; their complaint lists paying "the Shott for said justices by their order at the Taverne," and "all but Somes were fined forty shillings each; to which three pounds one shilling each were added for fees" (Babson pp. 210-211). The "Thomas Millet" fined with him was his brother-in-law. In 1693 he was exempted from the poll tax: "Thomas Riggs, Sen. is decrepit in his lims." In 1695 he married Elizabeth Frese. He died on 26 Feb 1721/2, aged about 90, "town clerk about 50 y."

His notebook. A pigskin notebook inscribed "Thomas Riggs, his Booke, 1656" holds 12 pages of shorthand that no one could read. It also carries the verse "And if this booke whereon you Looke by Casualty be loste, restor to me, for I am he That knowe best what it Coste." (Boston Sunday Globe, 16 Mar 1913, p. 7, quoted in TAG 82:122).

His house. His first land at Gloucester, in 1658, was at Goose Cove, and in 1661 he bought houses and lands of Matthew Coe and Thomas and John Wakley near it. In 1860 Babson wrote: "A part of an old house in that section of the town is still shown as the original tenement erected by him" (p. 131). It stands on Vine Street, by Goose Cove at Annisquam: the Gloucester Daily Times (8 June 2026) describes the Thomas Riggs Sr. House as squared-log construction, with elements dated to 1661 (record). In a later article the Times reports that the city council unanimously approved a preservation restriction on it (record).

Open questions

• The original 1688 Superior Court record behind Babson (Massachusetts Archives).
• The notebook of 1656, last described in the Boston Sunday Globe in 1913.
• The dating of the house (elements of 1661): the Gloucester Daily Times articles themselves.