Josias Lyndon, 35th Colonial Governor of Rhode Island

A founder of Yale University.

Lyndon was the son of Samuel and Priscilla (Tompkins) Lyndon of Newport, he was grandson of Josias Lyndon of Newport, and the great grandson of Augustin Lyndon, a shipwright of Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Lyndon married in 1727 Mary Carr, the daughter of Edward and Hannah (Stanton) Carr, and granddaughter of Governor Caleb Carr. The couple were childless.

In 1728 Lyndon was made a freeman of Newport, and having been educated in the Newport Grammar School, he became a scrivener (scribe). He went to work the same year as the Clerk of the Assembly, which he continued uninterrupted for nearly forty years until 1767. After serving a term as governor, he resumed this position again from 1770 until 1777, just before he died. As the recorder of colonial affairs, he became familiar with nearly every piece of legislation and every official manuscript written over a period of nearly half a century. At the time of Lyndon's election to governor in 1768, there was of bitter acrimony between one camp led by Samuel Ward and the other camp led by Stephen Hopkins, both of whom had already served multiple terms as governor. Lyndon was elected almost unanimously as a peace and compromise candidate.

Most of Lyndon's tenure as governor was spent in correspondence with a representative of the King of England, expressing concerns of the colony over the unjust taxation initiated by the Stamp Act. Fifteen letters from the Colonial Secretary, Hillsborough, in London, and as many replies by Lyndon concerning the constitutional rights of the colony were the focus business of this administration. The most importance act during Lyndon's term was the valuation of the Rhode Island colony, an amount that came to a little more than two million English pounds.

When war with Britain came to the colonies and Newport was occupied, Lyndon found safety in Warren, Rhode Island where he died of smallpox in 1778. He was buried in a cemetery on Serpentine Road, along the bank of the Kickamuit River in Warren

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josias_Lyndon

LYNDON served as colonial Governor of Rhode Island from 1768-1769. He supported the movement to defend the rights of the colony against royal aggression and wrote King George III, denying that Rhode Islanders were disloyal, adding that "All they ask is to be treated as free subjects and not as slaves." He refused reelection and returned to his clerkship. When the British took possession of Newport during the Revolution, Lyndon fled to Warren, his wife's family home, where he died of smallpox in 1778.

• page 205 of The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island: Comprising Three Generations of ...By John Osborne Austin
• page 59 of Book Notes: Consisting of Literary Gossip, Criticisms of ..., Volumes 29-31