Francis Colegrove - in Colonial Rhode Island

In Colonial Rhode Island

The earliest records of people with the name Colegrove in Britain can be traced to the 16th century and were found in the Oxfordshire area of England. The surname is thought to have originated from a grove along the little River Cole, a tributary to the River Thames, near Coleshill.

Records can be scantly put together that seem to imply that Francis Colegrove came to America from England between 1680 to 1688. He had a daughter named Elizabeth around 1688. Francis married a woman named Ann in Rhode Island. A likely reason Francis moved to Rhode Island from Britain, was that many separatists and Baptists from the Swansea area of Wales were moving to the American colonies for religious and political freedom.

Francis, who was a farmer, and his wife joined the Newport Sabbatarian Baptist Church of Newport, Rhode Island, which was the first Seventh Day Baptist group in North America in August of 1698, being baptized as adults. Stephen Mumford came to the colonies in 1665, and formed the Newport Church, where Francis and Ann attended, in 1671. During the 17th century, many Baptists, as well as many non-conformists and separatists, found refuge from persecution in Britain and other colonies such as Massachusetts, in the colony of Rhode Island, which had been set up by Baptists Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson in the 1630s and 1640s.