Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

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rights. . . . Their children, too, who were just coming to years, were
thereby subjected to an admirable training, fitting them to occupy the place
and do the work of the founders, when those sturdy yeomen should cease
from their care and toil.
" ' One by one they were dropping into the grave. .
. . And
now 'good old John Ogden,' whose wanderings for forty years had justly
entitled him to rank with the ' Pilgrim Fathers'—the acknowledged pioneer
of the town, in whose house the first white child of the settlement was
born, the accepted leader of the people, a pillar in the church and state,
honored and trusted by all— just as the year 1681 is expiring, hes down
and dies ; leaving the impress of his poHtical and religious principles, not
only upon his children, but upon the community that he had so largely
aided in founding. He was a man of more than ordinary mark—a man of
sterling worth ; of whom the town, as well as his numerous posterity,
should be gratefully mindful. He was called a 'malcontent,' and regarded
as ' the leading malcontent of Elizabeth Town ;' but surely the man that
was held in such high esteem by the accomplished, sagacious and pious
Winthrop, the man who, both at Southampton and here, had been an
honored magistrate, loved and trusted by the people, and, during the Dutch
rule, the virtual Governor of the English portion of the Province, is not
to be ranked with restless agitators because of his persistent opposition to
an arbitrary government. A true patriot, and a genuine Christian, he
devoted himself while living to the best interests of the town, and dying
bequeathed to his sons the work of completing what he had so fairly and
effectually inaugurated—the establishment of a vigorous plantation founded
on the principles of civil and religious liberty.'""
John Ogden had, as we have seen, a brother Richard (2). In 1667
this Richard was of Fairfield, Conn.; where he was made a freeman in
1668, and in 1670 was a large proprietor. "In 1695 a company of emi-
grants from Fairfield County, Conn., purchased the territory between
Cohansey and the Delaware Bay. Samuel, Jonathan and John Ogden
(1695) were amongst this number." Some have supposed these emigrants
to New Jersey to have been children or grandchildren of the first John
' Id., pp. 196-97.
233