“In 1633, an agreement was entered into between himself and the other old settlers, in the division of the lands, that he should have fifty acres allotted to him near his house forever. In 1635, he sold forty-four of those acres to the company for £30, retaining the six acres upon which was his orchard, and soon afterwards he removed to Rhode Island, living near Providence until the time of his death, which occurred on the 26th of May, 1675. A few years after leaving Boston he sold the orchard of six acres to a man named Pepys. He was not in any manner driven away from Boston by the Puritan Fathers, but holding certain ideas which did not agree with those of his neighbors, he concluded to move to a new location, from similar motives to those which led John Davenport to leave New Haven and go to Boston after the union of the New Haven colony with the Connecticut colony at Hartford. All of the accounts and records of Rev. William Blackstone show him to have been a religious man, with literary tastes, of correct, industrious, thrifty habits, kind and philanthropic feelings, living for several years on Boston Neck, and demonstrating the ability of the white man to live in peace with only Indians for his neighbors. While living in Rhode Island he frequently went to Providence to preach the gospel, and was highly esteemed by all the settlers of that colony. In July, 1659, he married a widow named Sarah Stevenson, and by her he had one son, John Blackstone. The inventory of his estate after his death describes him as having a house and orchard, 260 acres of land, interests in the Providence meadows, and a library of 186 volumes of different languages. A river of Rhode Island and a town in Massachusetts were named Blackstone in his honor. “His only son, John, married in 1692, and about 1713 moved to the town of Branford, where he took up his residence on lands southeast of the centre of the town, and bounded southerly by the sea. “The son of this John Blackstone was born in 1669, and died in Branford, January 3, 1785, aged nearly eighty-six. His son, John Blackstone, was born in Branford in 1731, and died August 10, 1816, aged eighty-five. The son of this last John Blackstone, Timothy Blackstone, was born in Branford in 1776, and died in 1849, at the age of eighty-three. This Timothy Blackstone was the father of Hon. James Blackstone, who was born in Branford, in the old homestead of his father and grandfather, in 1793.