John Wightman

     John Wightman was born in 1598 at England. He was the son of Edward Wightman and Frances Darbye. John Wightman was baptized on 7 January 1598 at Staffordshire, England.¹ He died in 1669 at Rhode Island.¹
     John Wightman, the immigrant, with four of his five sons (his wife probably having died in England), reached Newport in Rhode Island in 1654. They made their way to Richard Smith's trading post at Wickford in the Narragansett country, where Valentine Whitman, eldest son of John Wightman, had been employed for six years as an interpreter to the Indians at the trading post. He was also a member of the general assembly. Daniel settled at Newport and was one of the twenty constituent members of the Second Baptist Church formed in 1656, and for a long time a preacher and assistant pastor. In the Quidnesset section, north of Wickford, the youngest son, George, located on a farm tract that was purchased from Richard Smith, who was also our ancestor.¹