Herodias Long (c. 1623 — after 1674)

FamilySearch PID: L5CT-V7X

In 1658, Herodias Long Gardiner walked sixty miles from Aquidneck Island ↗ to Weymouth, Massachusetts ↗, with a child at her breast, to publicly protest the Puritan persecution of Quakers ↗. She was arrested, brought before Governor John Endicott ↗, sentenced to ten lashes, and held in prison for fourteen days.¹

The walk is the act for which the modern biography by JoAnn Butler — Rebel Puritan: A Scandalous Life, reviewed in The American Genealogistby Jane Fletcher Fiske — names her.²She is John’s tenth great-grandmother through the maternal Perry/Swiftdescent — ten generations from her Newport household with Lt. George Gardiner through Westcott, Peckham, Harrison, Winter, Swift, and Perry to John’s grandfather, Francis Swift Perry.

She walked sixty miles, a child at her breast, into the colony that had whipped Quakers for less.

A note on the surname: Herodias Long bears the maiden name of an early-seventeenth-century English family unrelated to the Fall River Long family ancestry of John, Perry, and Patrick. The descent into this family runs through her common-law partner of more than twenty years, Lt. George Gardiner, not through her own Long surname.

Religious Freedom and the Aquidneck Founders

Twenty years before the walk, in the spring of 1638, Anne Hutchinson ↗ and her followers were exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for the religious-dissent trial that scandalized Boston. They crossed to Aquidneck Island and built a colony on conscience — the settlement that became the town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island ↗. Herodias Long and her first husband John Hicks did not arrive at the founding; they crossed to Aquidneck by about 1640, joining a community already established on the protection of liberty of conscience.⁸

The Aquidneck charter protected liberty of conscience. The Massachusetts Bay Colony did not. The 1658 walk is what happens when a woman who had spent nearly twenty years inside the first of those two charters chooses, deliberately and with a nursing infant, to cross the line into the second. The lashing was the predictable cost; the walk was the political statement that made the cost matter.

Three hundred and eighty-eight years after the Hutchinson exiles founded Portsmouth on Aquidneck — the community Herodias would join by about 1640 — her tenth great-grandson John Long keeps rental property on the same island. The continuity is not symbolic; it is geographic. Aquidneck was Portsmouth then and is Portsmouth now.

The Rhode Island Dissident Cohort

Herodias stands inside a chronological cohort of Rhode Island religious dissenters who paid an institutional cost for conscience. Roger Williams ↗ was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in October 1635 and founded Providence the following year. Stukely Westcott — also John’s tenth great-grandfather, by the parallel Westcott line that meets the Gardiner descent at Caleb Westcott’s mid-eighteenth-century marriage — was banished from the same colony on 12 March 1638, three years after Williams, and was one of the thirteen original proprietors of Providence. Anne Hutchinson ↗, banished from the same colony in the same year as Stukely (and already named above as the founder of the Aquidneck community Herodias would join), connects later by marriage: descendants of Anne’s son Capt. Edward Hutchinson married into Stukely’s great-granddaughter’s line, making the Hutchinson family cousins-by-marriage to John at the third generation below Stukely. Herodias’s 1658 walk to Weymouth and her ten lashes under Governor Endicott extend the cohort by another twenty years. The four are not co-defendants in the same court, but they are co-residents of the same colonial moment.

From London to Aquidneck (1637–c. 1640)

Herodias Long was born about 1623 in England; the earlier records give her birthplace as London or Middlesex, but the precise parish has not been confirmed. On March 14, 1636/7 she married John Hicksat Saint Faith’s Church under Saint Paul’s, London — she was about fourteen.⁸ The Hicks family appears on a 1637 passenger list to Weymouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony.³ Their Weymouth residence lasted into the early 1640s; by about 1640 the household had crossed to Aquidneck, joining the colony the Hutchinson exiles had founded two years earlier.

Lt. George Gardiner of Newport

Lt. George Gardiner (FamilySearch PID: LZVY-GGS) was born on February 15, 1599 in Ealing ↗, Middlesex ↗, England.⁴ By March 20, 1639 he was resident in Newport, one of the early arrivals to the Aquidneck colony. The rank Lt. reflects colonial militia service in Rhode Island. He died in Newport on October 22, 1677 and was buried there the same day.

The First Divorce: Hicks (1644–1645)

Herodias and John Hicks had two children — Hannah and Thomas — before their marriage broke.⁸In 1644–45, Herodias filed for divorce in Newport, citing in her petition “many grievances and extreme violence” and stating that Hicks had taken her inheritance with him to Long Island.¹ The colony granted the divorce. Hicks himself filed a second, cross-jurisdictional petition in New Amsterdam on June 1, 1655 — an unusually well-documented double dissolution of a transatlantic colonial marriage. He died in Hempstead, Long Island, between April 29 and June 14, 1672.

The Common-Law Household with Gardiner

Beginning around 1644, Herodias and Lt. George Gardiner lived together as husband and wife in Newport. They had six children together — Henry, George, William, Nicholas, Dorcas, and Rebecca.⁸ Their union was never formalized as a marriage; it was, in the language of the colonial courts, a common-law household.¹ In 1664, Herodias herself petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly to be separated from Gardiner, and in the same proceeding both were fined for what the court named the “horrible sin of uncleanness” in having lived together unmarried for twenty years.

The descent into this family runs through their son, George Gardiner II (PID: MLZH-F8N), who carried the Gardiner line forward to Hannah Gardiner, Caleb Westcott, and the Peckham–Harrison–Winter–Swift descent that ends at John’s grandfather Francis Swift Perry.

The Petition of Horod Long (1665)

In 1665, one year after the “horrible sin of uncleanness” fine, Herodias petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly again — this time in her own name and under the spelling Horod Long. The petition survives in the published Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the Bartlett edition.⁵ That she filed under her birth surname, in her own voice, at a time when most women appeared in colonial records only through their husbands, is the act for which she is named a founding mother of the colony in modern treatments.

John Porter and the Contested Marriage (1665–1671)

The opening of the Porter chapter has its own document trail. In May 1665, an “ancient woman” named Margaret Porter complained to the Rhode Island General Assembly that John Porter had left her dependent on her children; Porter made compensation to release the restraint, which is the act that freed him to enter the next household.⁸The initial Herodias–Porter cohabitation was publicly framed under the pretense of her being his house servant.⁸

In 1667, both were indicted for cohabitation. Both were acquitted, separately. In 1671 they co-signed deeds together as husband and wife. According to most writers, Porter eventually married Herodias; the historical record on whether the union was ever formalized in the way the law would have required is contested.⁸ John Porter (FamilySearch PID: LCTZ-XJR) died after April 25, 1674, in Kingston, Rhode Island. He was Herodias’s third partner; none of their household carries the descent line into this family.

Double Descent via Cousin Marriage — Two Paths from Herodias to John

Herodias is John’s ancestor by way of two independent descent paths that converge at the mid-eighteenth-century marriage of Caleb Westcott to his second cousin Hannah Gardiner. Both Caleb and Hannah were Herodias’s great-grandchildren — Caleb through her son George Gardiner II, and Hannah through her son Nicholas Gardiner (FamilySearch PID: KN4L-7T1). Their daughter Elizabeth Westcott (b. ~1760) inherits Herodias twice over.⁸

Cousin marriage at the second-cousin remove was a Quaker-community signature pattern in eighteenth-century Rhode Island. It was institutional, not exceptional: Quaker meeting structure encouraged marriage within the community, and after a few generations on a small island the community itself was a network of cousins. The Westcott–Gardiner union is one instance of that pattern, and the family’s descent inherits both Gardiner branches because of it.

Two distinct women in this chain share the name Hannah Gardiner. They are easy to conflate; the birth years distinguish them:

• Hannah Gardiner (1682–1756) (FamilySearch PID: LHH8-J1M) — Caleb Westcott’s mother, daughter of George Gardiner II.
• Hannah Gardiner (1723–1770) (FamilySearch PID: LCJR-J7W) — Caleb Westcott’s wife, daughter of George Gardiner (b. 1696), who was the son of Nicholas Gardiner.

The Society of the Cincinnati cousinship is a separate structure on the same family. The most recent common ancestor between John and Captain Benjamin Lawton Peckham is not Herodias but Lt. George Gardiner Sr (1599–1677)— through his son Benoni Gardiner by his first wife Sara Slaughter, who died at sea in 1637 (Benoni was born in London in 1636, before Herodias joined George Sr c. 1644; Herodias is Benoni’s stepmother, not his mother). The Peckham line descends George Sr → Benoni; John’s line descends George Sr → both Nicholas (Path B above) and George Gardiner II (Path A above). John and Captain Peckham are fourth cousins eight times removed via Lt. George Gardiner Sr.

Two distinct genealogical structures live in this same family: a double descent from Herodias to John through the cousin-marriage convergence, and a Cincinnati cousinship to Captain Peckham through George Sr’s first marriage to Sara Slaughter. Both connections are real; the mechanisms are different.

The Maternal Descent to the Brothers

Twelve generations of the family’s maternal line connect Herodias Long to the living generation. The chain runs in two parallel paths through her two sons by Lt. George Gardiner Sr, converging at the Westcott–Gardiner cousin marriage in the early eighteenth century, and continuing from there as a single line through the Peckham, Harrison, Winter, Swift, and Perry families of southeastern Rhode Island and Massachusetts — to Francis Swift Perry, to his daughter Carol Perry, and, through her marriage to John Patrick Long, to John, Perry, and Patrick Long. Several intermediate ancestors are placarded elsewhere in the archive on SwiftPage, WinterSwiftPage, CincinnatiPage, and PerryPage.

Path A — Through George Gardiner II

Path B — Through Nicholas Gardiner

Convergence — From Elizabeth Westcott to Francis Perry

Elizabeth Westcott (b. ~1760), daughter of Caleb Westcott and Hannah Gardiner (1723), inherits Herodias twice over — once through her father’s Path A descent and once through her mother’s Path B descent. From Elizabeth the chain continues as a single line.

Fall River Continuity: Fanny P. Harrison (1813–1892)

Fanny P. Harrison is the bridge generation between Herodias’s seventeenth-century Newport world and the nineteenth-century Fall River, Massachusetts world that anchors much of this archive — the same Fall River where the Long, Sullivan, Coogan, and Manion families settled in the same era. Born January 25, 1813 in Massachusetts, she lived through the 1850, 1860, and 1880 census enumerations in Fall River and died there October 18, 1892, buried at Oak Grove Cemetery ↗.⁶ Her mother was Mary Peckham of the Peckham line documented on SwiftPage; her grandson Richmond Chamberlain Winter carries the chain into the twentieth century.

Honest Acknowledgments

Death date.The closest record is “after April 25, 1674” — the date of John Porter’s death, which Herodias outlived. Anderson’s 1995 NEHGS treatment and the Wikipedia article both anchor here. The FamilySearch record carries a broader “before 1705” primary fact and a set of alternates spanning December 17, 1672 through 1722. This page uses after 1674 as the conservative anchor and notes the wider FS range openly rather than smoothing it into a single date.

Parents.Herodias’s parents are not linked on FamilySearch. Some genealogies tentatively assign her to a Thomas Long of Sandwich, Kent (b. ~1582), but the Mayflower-era English baptism record has not been definitively matched. Until a primary source confirms her parentage, this page does not assert it.

Children count.The accessible Portsmouth History Notes blog companion to Moriarty 1952 gives the household as three children by Hicks and nine by Gardiner. The fuller institutional record — Anderson 1995, Austin 1887, Miller and Stanton 1937, and the Wikipedia compilation drawing on multiple Moriarty articles across 1943, 1945, 1952, and 1963 — gives two by Hicks (Hannah, Thomas) and six biological children by Lt. George Gardiner Sr (Henry, George, William, Nicholas, Dorcas, Rebecca). This page follows the institutional count. See the next entry on Benoni Gardiner.

Benoni Gardiner (the stepson).Wikipedia and Portsmouth History Notes both list Benoni Gardiner as Herodias’s son. The FamilySearch parent record plus Sara Slaughter’s documented 1637 death establish Sara as Benoni’s biological mother and Herodias as stepmother. This correction resolves a long-standing gap in the operator’s Cincinnati Society research.

Double descent.Earlier drafts of this page surfaced only one of two descent paths from Herodias. The full picture is double descent through cousin marriage — both Caleb Westcott and his wife Hannah were Herodias’s great-grandchildren through her two sons George II and Nicholas. Their daughter Elizabeth Westcott inherits Herodias twice over.

Aquidneck arrival. An earlier draft of this page, and the companion editorial at /history/the-women, placed Herodias at the 1638 Aquidneck founding with the Hutchinson exiles. Anderson’s 1995 NEHGS treatment places her arrival on Aquidneck at about 1640. She joined an established community; she did not co-found it.

The Gardiner union.Older treatments — including the companion editorial at /history/the-women — describe Herodias’s second relationship as a marriage to George Gardiner. The 1664 separation petition, in which both parties admitted before the Rhode Island General Assembly that they had lived as husband and wife without formal marriage for twenty years, is the record that resolves the question. This page follows the petition.

The 1644–45 divorce date.FamilySearch attaches a December 3, 1643 divorce-petition record; the Moriarty 1952 account and downstream secondary literature give 1644–45 for the proceeding’s resolution. The two are consistent with each other (filing 1643, decree 1644–45); this page uses the Moriarty bracket.

Notable Descendants

Herodias Long’s descent is wide. The Wikipedia article on her lists, among others, the singer Karen Carpenter ↗ (1950–1983); the American-West painter Charles Marion Russell ↗ (1864–1926); the rodeo artist Earl W. Bascom ↗ (1906–1995); the actor Victor French ↗ (1934–1989); the religious leader Harold B. Lee ↗ (1899–1973); and the 30 Rock writer Daisy Gardner ↗ (b. 1976).⁸Each descends from Herodias by paths independent of the Westcott–Peckham branch that runs into this family; the shared ancestor is Herodias herself.

Sources

1. G. Andrews Moriarty, Herodias (Long) Hicks-Gardiner-Porter, A Tale of Old Newport, in Rhode Island History, July 1952, pages 84–92 — the peer-reviewed authoritative account of the 1644–45 divorce petition language (“many grievances and extreme violence”), the Hicks inheritance dispute, the twenty-year Gardiner common-law household, the 1658 walk and lashing under Governor Endicott, the 1664 separation petition and “horrible sin of uncleanness” fine, and the 1666 Porter cohabitation. Accessible companion treatment: Portsmouth History Notes, Founding Mothers: Herodias Long Hicks Gardiner Porter: “So scandalous a life” (June 27, 2017), portsmouthhistorynotes.wordpress.com.
2. JoAnn Butler, Rebel Puritan: A Scandalous Life— reviewed by Jane Fletcher Fiske in The American Genealogist. The modern biography from which the “Rebel Puritan” framing is drawn.
3. Robert Charles Anderson et al., The Great Migration and The Great Migration Begins, 1620–1635(New England Historic Genealogical Society) — for the 1637 Weymouth arrival and the Hicks family passenger record; and Divorce, Annulment, and Separation in 17th Century New York for the 1655 New Amsterdam cross-jurisdictional divorce.
4. G. Andrews Moriarty, The Parentage of George Gardiner of Newport, R.I., The American Genealogist— peer-reviewed source for Gardiner’s Ealing, Middlesex origins and Newport arrival. Paired with Clara Gardner Miller and John M. Stanton, Gardiner-Gardner Genealogy: Including the English Ancestry of George Gardiner Immigrant Ancestor of Newport, RI (Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1937).
5. The petition of Horod Long, 1665, in John Russell Bartlett (ed.), Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England— primary source for the self-filed General Assembly petition.
6. FamilySearch primary records for Fanny P. Harrison (PID 9F78-WDW), including the 1850, 1860, and 1880 Fall River census enumerations and the 1892 Oak Grove Cemetery burial.
7. FamilySearch source descriptions for Herodias Long, PID L5CT-V7X — 31 attached source descriptions across the FSREADONLY, DEFAULT institutional, and published-genealogy tiers, including Caroline Robinson’s The Gardiners of Narragansettand Roscoe Whitman’s history and genealogy of the Gardiner-Westcott descendants.
8. Wikipedia, “Herodias Gardiner” ↗ (article last edited May 18, 2026) — consulted for the corrected post-1674 death anchor, the Saint Faith’s Church marriage date (March 14, 1636/7) to John Hicks, the two-by-Hicks / seven-by-Gardiner children count with names, the c. 1640 Aquidneck arrival, the Margaret Porter abandonment record (May 1665), the “pretense of being his house servant” framing of the initial Porter cohabitation, the 1667 indictment and acquittals, the 1671 co-signed deeds, and the contested-marriage framing for the Porter chapter. Underlying bibliography from the Wikipedia article: Anderson 1995, The Great Migration Begins, 1620–1635(NEHGS), pages 1503–4; John Osborne Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887); and additional Moriarty articles in The American Genealogist in 1943, 1945, and 1963 that extend the 1952 paper cited above.