The
Genealogical Mystery of Thomas Tew,
the Rhode Island Pirate
Copyright 2012, John D. Tew
The meeting
between Thomas Tew and the Royal Governor
of New York,
Benjamin Fletcher, as imagined by American
illustrator Howard Pyle (1853 – 1911)
from the Time-Life Seafarers volume, The Pirates (p. 68).
When
Heather’s Nutfield Genealogy blog became
the first “Featured Blog” in The Weekly Genealogist newsletter of NEHGS, I took
a gander and found, to my surprise, a November 4, 2011 piece on the Rhode
Island Pirate, Thomas Tew. It is rare
enough to find information on my Rhode Island Tew family, but anything
potentially relating to the genealogy of Thomas Tew, the pirate, always grabs
my immediate attention. It was the
possibility of being related to a pirate that first sparked my interest in
family history back in the early 60s when I was not yet a teenager. I recall how I discovered Ol’ Thomas was from
Newport, Rhode Island and how I became really excited because I knew I was a
direct descendant of Richard Tew and his wife, Mary (Clarke) Tew, who came to
Newport from Maidford, Northamptonshire, England. I have ever since been on the lookout for
anything that might confirm a family relationship to an actual and hugely successful
pirate.
Heather mentioned the possibility of Ol’ Thomas being the
brother of her ancestor, Seaborn Tew, and so I immediately contacted her to ask
about any source material she might have.
We corresponded on the subject and the result was her very kind
invitation to provide a guest piece about Thomas Tew, the pirate, for her blog.
The BLUF
(“bottom line up front) is that I am sorry to report after literally decades of
searching many leads about Thomas Tew’s parentage and possible descendants, I
cannot confirm for Heather or myself any relationship to Thomas Tew. But then, as presented below, others might be
closer to descent from Ol’ Thomas than I or anyone else with the last name
Tew. A summary of a partial collection
of references to Thomas Tew and his family history will demonstrate why.
Much has been written about Thomas Tew and his brief but
fabulously profitable exploits as a pirate.
The most consistent and salient points are worth brief mention.
• He
lived in Newport, Rhode Island.
• In 1693-94 he had one of the most
successful pirating voyages in history and returned with booty worth more than £100,000 [approximately $16,168,000 today]. Each crew member’s share was worth about $195,157 in today’s dollars.
• He
obtained a privateering commission from the corrupt Royal Governor of New York, Benjamin Fletcher.
•
He died on the voyage of his ship,
Amity, to the Red Sea in September 1695 during an attempt to board another Indian
merchantman.
There is no authoritative or definitive genealogy for Thomas
Tew the pirate, but various writers about pirates have opined on the family
history of Thomas Tew. In almost all
cases the explanation is brief and frustratingly lacking in specific source
citations for assertions about Ol’ Thomas’s parentage and progeny.
» The Genealogical
Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (James Savage, 1860-62) states that Richard Tew,
son and heir of Henry Tew, came to
Rhode Island with his wife, Mary Clark, in 1640. Mary gave birth to their daughter on June 4, 1640 during the voyage
from England. The baby was appropriately named Seaborn. According to Savage, Richard and Mary had two additional children after arriving in Rhode
Island – daughters Elnathan and Mary
and “perhaps others.” Savage mentions
no sons.
» John Osborne Austin states in his One Hundred And Sixty Allied Families (1893), “There was a Thomas Tew [described
as the privateer turned pirate],who
was perhaps brother of Henry [the Deputy Governor of Rhode Island in 1714].”
BUT, Austin names only four children of the parents of Deputy Governor Henry Tew. In agreement with Savage, Austin states that
Henry’s parents, Richard Tew and Mary
(Clarke) Tew, came to Rhode Island from Maidford,
Northamptonshire, England in 1640.
Austin names their children as:
Seaborn, born during the voyage in 1640; her sisters Elnathan and Mary, born in 1644 and 1647 respectively; and
Seaborn’s only identified brother, the
future Deputy Governor, Henry, born in 1654.
» Austin further states equivocally, “There
was a Henry Tew of Boston, mariner,
who died in 1712 . . . It
becomes a matter of conjecture whether this Henry
Tew was not a son of Thomas the pirate, and a nephew of Deputy Governor Henry Tew, of Newport.”
» The
Time-Life series, The Seafarers: THE
PIRATES (1978), tells the story of Thomas
Tew, but without any specific source citations for the genealogical “facts” in the narrative. It is stated that
in April 1694 Tew docked his ship, the
Amity, “in his native Newport, Rhode Island.” Thomas is described there upon his return from his 15-month voyage to the Indian Ocean and back as
“a man of modest reputation,
suddenly the cynosure of all eyes, lionized by the gentry in their handsome frame houses on the hill overlooking the
harbor.” Following the reception in Newport, it is said that, “Tew and his
family traveled to New
York. There he was feted and dined by
the Royal Governor,Colonel
Benjamin Fletcher. . . Mrs. Tew and the two Tew daughters attended gala functions at the
Governor’s mansion, dressed in rich silks from the
Orient and glittering with diamond jewelry that the captain had brought back with him. The Tews, in short, were the cream of East
Coast society, prominent (if recently arrived) members of a colonial
aristocracy of wealth and
accomplishment.” There is not a single
mention of any children other than
two unnamed daughters – and no mention of Thomas’s parentage.
» A 1995 book by British writer David
Cordingly, “the world’s foremost expert
on pirates,” continues the narrative that Thomas Tew had only daughters. Mr. Cordingly states authoritatively, “As far as can be gleaned from the meager information on the subject, very few of the
pirate captains had wives and
families. Henry Morgan was married but
had no children. Captain Kidd had a
wife and two daughters who lived in New York.
Thomas Tew was married
and also had two daughters.” (Under The Black Flag --- The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates,
p. 71.) There are no specific citations to the meager information supporting this
statement about Ol’ Thomas.
» Citing to S.C. Hill’s “Notes
on Piracy in Eastern Waters” in Indian
Antiquary (Jan. 1923 – Oct.
1928), the author Alexander Boyd Hawes writes of the lineage of the pirate Thomas Tew, “[He] came from a respected Rhode
Island family. Richard Tew, native of England, settled early
in Newport. He was named in the Colony’s Charter of
1663. His son Henry became Deputy Governor of the Colony in 1714. The pirate Thomas Tew was probably son of an earlier Thomas, a mariner who lived in
Newport and was probably Richard’s
brother. So the pirate was probably
Richard’s nephew and Henry’s cousin.” (Off
Soundings – Aspects of the Maritime History of Rhode Island, p.23)
» And finally, without citation to any
specific source for the assertion, author Douglas
R. Burgess, Jr. stated flatly in his 2009 book The Pirates’ Pact – The Secret
Alliance Between History’s Most Notorious
Buccaneers and Colonial America,
“Thomas Tew was a gentleman. His
grandfather was Richard Tew, a Northampton
man who settled in Newport, Rhode Island in 1640 and soon became an administrator for the colony.” Since most genealogical sources assign only four children to Richard
Tew and his wife Mary -- and only one of them
was a son, the future Deputy Governor of Colonial Rhode Island, Henry Tew – this author is asserting the
pirate Thomas Tew was the son of the one
time Deputy Governor of Rhode Island! I
have never seen any source document
to support this assertion.
As the above examples
demonstrate, the information available on the lineage of Thomas Tew the pirate
is far from consistent and so far lacks any specific, hard sources for the
various assertions in writings on genealogy or about pirates. Various claims are made about the parentage
of Thomas. He is at times the brother of
Henry Tew, the Rhode Island Deputy Governor, or at other times Henry’s son. And then still at other times he is the son
of a brother of Richard Tew who is also named Thomas. The one repeated assertion seems to be that
the pirate had two daughters. Only one
conjectural reference is made to a son of Ol’ Thomas and that is Austin’s
question about whether the Boston mariner, Henry Tew could be a son of the
pirate Thomas Tew. So, until some
reliable evidence comes to light to support the existence of a son of Thomas
Tew the pirate, the bad news for those of us bearing the surname Tew is that if
Thomas Tew only had daughters he would have, as some in genealogy say, "daughtered out" and no one living today
with the last name Tew would be descended from him -- unless a female
descendant later reacquired the last name Tew via marriage to a male Tew.
.jpeg) |
This is a bottle of Thomas Tew Rum
produced by the Newport Distilling Company,
Middletown, Rhode Island |
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John D. Tew was born in Providence, Rhode Island and at various times has lived in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He is a New Englander at heart even though he currently resides in Loudoun County, Virginia. He has been researching his family history off and on over the last several decades as his education and work pursuits would allow. His principal lines of interest are currently Tew, Carpenter, Cooke, Shearman,Freeman and Hasselbaum -- all of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
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