General Notes

2  SOUR S200


Joseph's parents were Edward Riggs (1614-1668) and Elizabeth Roosa (103.) Riggs. Edward, born in England, came to this country in the early summer of 1633 with his family. He settled first in Boston  where he assisted his father in caring for the sick. In 1635, he married Elizabeth Roosa. In 1637, he  was a sergeant in the Pequot War, rescuing a group from an Indian ambush. Because of this, he was always considered a hero and called Sergeant Riggs. In 1640, he was a settler at Milford, Connecticut, coming from Boston where he had located earlier. He and some others purchased Indian land and started Derby, Connecticut, where the site of his home is still called Riggs Hill. He built his home and a stockade there. In 1661, he housed in secret and protected Whaley and Goff,    two of the English Parliament that condemned and ordered the execution of Charles I prior to Cromwell's Puritan reign and who were sought by agents of Charles II after the Restoration. Edward was not a member of the church, but apparently considered himself a Puritan.

In 1665, Edward visited New Jersey, then spent a year preparing for the proposed colony there, his wife with him as the first white woman to spend a summer in Newark. He and his sons Edward and  Joseph were original proprietors there. Agents had recruited new settlers for Newark from Milford,  Guilford and other communities. Edward oversaw the building of the Common Pound, was viewer of fences, had charge of draining swamps, surveyed lots, laid out roads and owned a wolf pit in the new colony. In 1668, a year after the colony was organized, he died there. Elizabeth remarried to Caleb Carwithie.