Richard Scott

Richard Scott (1605–1679) was an early settler of Providence Plantations in what became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He married Katherine Marbury, the daughter of Reverend Francis Marbury and sister of Puritan dissident Anne Hutchinson. The couple emigrated from Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, England with an infant child to the Massachusetts Bay Colony where he joined the Boston church in August 1634. By 1637, he was in Providence signing an agreement, and he and his wife both became Baptists for a time. By the mid-1650s, the Quaker religion had taken hold on Rhode Island, and Scott became the first Quaker in Providence. Life Richard Scott was born 1607 in Glemsford, Suffolk, England, the son of clothier Edward Scott of Glemsford. Records are lacking concerning his childhood, but he appears as a young man in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire where he was married on 7 June 1632 to Katherine Marbury, the daughter of Francis Marbury and a younger sister of Anne Hutchinson. The couple's first child was baptized in Berkhamsted in March 1634, and within months of this date the young family boarded a ship for New England. John Austin suggests that they sailed on the Griffin, but Robert Anderson rejects that hypothesis, stating that Scott was admitted to the Boston church on 28 August 1634 while the Griffin did not land until several weeks later. About August 1637, Scott was in Providence Plantations where he and 12 others signed an agreement submitting themselves to the collective agreements made for the public good. This document was signed by Providence inhabitants who arrived too late to be included in an earlier division of lands, and by those who were minors during the earlier division.