Newton, Roger, - 1683

Rev. Roger Newton immigrated to New England around 1638 and studied at Harvard College before moving to Hartford, where he was the student of the Rev. Thomas Hooker. Newton married Hooker’s eldest daughter, Mary, and preached to the first settlers of Farmington. On Oct. 13, 1652, he was ordained the first pastor of the Farmington church and did missionary work among the Tunxis Indians, a few of whom became members of the church and could vote on town affairs. Newton was one of the witnesses of the agreement between the colony of Connecticut and the Tunxis Indians in 1650. He left the Farmington church in 1657 and sailed for England, where he remained for several years. He returned to New England on the eve of the restoration of Charles II and moved to Milford, Connecticut, where he joined the congregational church on July 29, 1660, and was ordained its second pastor on Aug 22. He received young men into his family to train them for the ministry, including Abraham Pierson (the first President of Yale College), and remained in Milford until his death on June 7, 1683. Caroline Gaylord Newton, Rev. Roger Newton, Deceased 1683, and One Line of his Descendants ([Durham, Conn: [s. n.], 1914]), 3-10; Ermina Newton Leonard, Newton Genealogy, Genealogical, Biographical, Historical: Being a Record of the Descendants of Richard Newton of Sudbury and Marlborough, Massachusetts 1638, with Genealogies of Families Descended from the Immigrants Rev. Roger Newton of Milford, Connecticut, Thomas Newton of Fairfield, Connecticut, Matthew Newton of Stonington, Connecticut, Newtons of Virginia, Newtons near Boston (Salem, Mass: Higginson Book Company, [1915]), 700; Mabel S. Hulburt, Farmington Church and Town (Stonington, Conn: The Pequot Press, 1967]), 8; William Richard Cutter, New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial; A Record of the Achievements of Her People in the Making of Commonwealths and the Founding of a Nation (4 vols., New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1913), vol. 3, p. 1730; John Davis Skilton, et al., ed., Doctor Henry Skilton, and His Descendants (New Haven Conn: Press of S. Z. Field, 1921), 31; Heman Rowlee Timlow, Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Conn (Case, Lockwood and Brainard Company, 1875), cviii.