When George Lawton immigrated to Rhode Island in 1639, along with his brother Thomas, as far as is known he was a single man. However that didn’t last too long as he married Elizabeth Hazard shortly thereafter. By 1660 they were the proud parents of ten children, of which Mary was the third born child in 1645.
In the meantime a young man named John Babcock, wanting to also try his luck in the Colonies, indentured himself to George Lawton for several years for the price of his passage to the new world. John was just one year older than George’s daughter Mary.
John and Mary fell in love and asked George for permission to marry. George, believing the young indentured servant should not even be considering marriage, much less to his daughter, told them the marriage was unthinkable.
In 1662 John and Mary decided to take things into their own hands, and one dark night they stole away from George’s home to strike out on their own. They made their way from Portsmouth to Newport, and in some manner came by a small boat. Climbing aboard they began to row along the coast westward. Through the open ocean they traveled until they felt they were far enough away from home that they would not be discovered. They then entered a sheltered cove of what would be known as the Pawcatuck River, dividing Rhode Island from Connecticut in the future.
The young couple married themselves, calling on the moon and stars to witness their solemn vows. Settling on the east bank of the Pawcatuck River on Mussatuxet Cove near what one day would become Westerly, Rhode Island they had no neighbors except the Niantic Indians who were friendly to them in all manners.
It was several months before George and Elizabeth heard anything about the headstrong couple, but finally after enough inquiry from the Indians they were to locate them. All was forgiven, but the couple continued to live there.
About 200 years later Mary Anne Salisbury wrote a ballad about the young couple titled “The Pioneers” which is 70 stanzas in length. One stanza is:
Two hundred years have sped apace,
and wrought in man’s behoof;
and thousands now their lineage trace
to John and Mary’s roof.
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