Jeremiah Clarke (1605 – 1661)

is my 10th great grandfather

Daughter of Jeremiah

Daughter of Sarah Clarke

Son of Sarah

Daughter of John

Son of MARGARET

Son of Benjamin

Son of Paul

Daughter of Valentine

Son of Sarah LaVina

Son of Jason A

Son of Ernest Abner

I am the daughter of Richard Arden

I will visit his grave in Newport in April, and plan to learn as much about him as I can.  There has been some work done on his ancestry, which leads back to those tricky Plantagenets who just about married everyone everywhere.  Here are notes on his family tree:

In early preparations for his forthcoming Magna Carta Ancestry, Douglas Richardson has also traced the matrilineal line of my second royally-descended immigrant forebear, Acting Gov. Jeremiah Clarke of Rhode Island, to Sancha Blount, daughter of Sir Thomas Blount and Margaret Gresley, and granddaughter of Sir Walter Blount and the famed Sancha de Ayala, sister of a great-great-grandfather of Ferdinand I (1452-1516), generally considered the first king of United Spain, husband of Isabella of Castile and sponsor of Columbus. For more on Sancha, her Spanish ancestry and her immigrant American and presidential descendants, see National Genealogical Society Quarterly 51 (1963): 235-38, my Ancestors of American Presidents, 1st ed. (1995, hereafter AAP), pp. 365-68, and Register 152 (1998): 36-48, the latter a brilliant piece by Nathaniel L. Taylor and Todd A. Farmerie. Sancha Blount, granddaughter of Sancha de Ayala, married Edward Langford, and had a daughter Alice Langford who married John Stradling of Dauntsey and Richard Pole of Isleworth, later Sir Richard Pole, husband also of Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury and niece of Kings Edward IV and Richard III. John and Alice left a daughter, Anne Stradling, who married Sir John Danvers. From the 1895 English Danvers genealogy, plus a recent successor, and the 1878 English Chester of Chicheley genealogy, the line to Clarke is clear. Sir John Danvers and Anne Stradling had a daughter Anne, wife of Thomas Lovett and John Wyke and mother in turn of Elizabeth Lovett, wife of Anthony Cave. Mary Cave, a daughter of these last, married Sir Jerome Weston and was the mother of both Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland, Lord Treasurer under Charles II, and Mary Weston, wife of William Clerke and mother of Acting Gov. Jeremiah Clarke of Rhode Island.