Jonathan was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, in 1705 to William Randall III and his wife, Abial. Jonathan married Patience Bowen on June 12, 1737. They are rumoured to have received enslaved people as a wedding gift from Patience’s grandfather, as well as inherited them when his father died in 1742.
Jonathan was a captain in the Revolutionary War. He served the Patriots as Assistant of the General Assembly in Rhode Island between 1774 and 17761. All five of Jonathan and Patience’s children were born in Cranston. Around 1778, they moved to Pomfret and brought at least three enslaved people with them, whom he still owned when he died in 17912. His estate was passed down to his heirs, including his grandson, George Sr.3
3 Footnotes
- Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England Vol. VII 1770 to 1776. https://archive.org/details/cu31924071194876/page/n3/mode/2up ↩
- Rhode Island Vital Extracts, 1636–1850. 21 volumes. Providence, R.I.: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1891–1912. ↩
- Do we want an image of the will? Or do we link this to our google doc? Or do we make a separate WP page and hyperlink it? In other words, do we just want a citation or do we want the reader to get to the original site/doc? ↩
Note: We don’t need to have footnotes or a bibliography visible to the reader if we only want the information in the pop-ups.