Herodias Gardiner

Herodias Gardiner , born Herodias Long, was the wife of three early settlers of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and was also a zealous Quaker evangelist who was whipped in Massachusetts for sharing her religious testimony with others in her former home town of Weymouth. Possibly from Somersetshire in England, and married at the age oforin London, she was unhappily brought to the American colonies by her first husband, John Hicks, where they settled in Weymouth. The couple had two known children, and moved to the Rhode Island Colony, but she soon separated from her husband, and looking for maintenance, settled in Newport with George Gardiner, with whom she lived for aboutyears as his commonlaw wife.

Herodias Long was born in England about 1623, but her place of nativity is not known. One possibility for her place of origin is Somersetshire, where in early 1639 John Aylesford, who owned land in Little Ockenbury, and in the Barbadoes, left a legacy of five pounds to Odias Long. According to her testimony in court many years later, she was sent to London following the death of her father, and here, unknown to her friends, she married John Hicks. She wasoryears old when they were married at Saint Faiths Church , and their marriage licence was datedMarch 16367. Shortly after their marriage, to her great grief, they immigrated to New England, and settled in Weymouth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Here they lived until about 1640, when they moved to Aquidneck Island, probably settling in the town of Newport. They had two children together, but soon after moving to Rhode Island differences arose between them, and Herodias separated from Hicks, and consummated a relationship

Source: Wikipedia