Nicholas Rich (c.1660 – 1726), likely born as Nicollas Le Riche, is my most distant American colonial male-line ancestor, as determined by DNA evidence, and is estimated as my 8th-great-grandfather, although the count of generations is uncertain. His first (known) wife and my ancestor was Abigail (1661-02-22 – 1697×1713), daughter of John and Mary (née Warren) Green, and granddaughter of Abraham Warren. He later married widow Grace Lewis, maiden name unknown, with who he had no children. Evidence suggests he hailed from Jersey (the island), and his father may have been a man named Élie.
For the evidence linking me to Nicholas, see Ryder paternity. For Nicholas’s deep ancestry, see Rich origins.
Nicholas’s earliest documented residence is Salem, Massachusetts. He later moved to Wenham, MA and then Attleboro, MA, before settling in Preston, Connecticut.
Known residences of Nicholas
1682–1687 Salem, MA 1688–1697 Wenham, MA 1713 Attleboro, MA 1716–1726 Preston, CT
The earliest discovered record of Nicholas Rich in America is a fine in May of 1682 in Salem. In 1683, he was listed as a taxpayer of Salem, and there is another tax record there for him dated 1686[/7?]-01-17.
On 1688-01-16, he was accepted as a townsman of Wenham.
He married Abigail, daughter of John and Mary (Warren) Green, who were from Salem, probably in Salem around 1683. Mary’s father was Abraham Warren. Abigail was still alive on 1697-02-20, when she was party to a land sale, and the family was “of Wenham”.⟮1⟯FamilySearch. She died before 1713, when a land record, described next, lists Grace, Nicholas’s second wife. Grace was the widow of Christopher Lewis but her maiden name is unknown.
On 1713-07-13, Nicholas was in Attleboro, when he appears with his wife on a land record where he calls himself “I, Nicholas Rich together with Grace my wife of the town of Attleborough, County of Bristol, Mass., ‘House Carpenter’….” In another record he is a “house Right” (housewright), so his likely lifelong occupation was housing construction.
By 1716-10-24, he was living in Preston, CT, when land records call him “Nicholus Ritch of Preston”.⟮2⟯
On that day he gifted his wife property in Preston “for divers good considerations me thereunto moveing but more especially for the love and good will that I have unto my loving wife Grace Ritch”⟮3⟯; this is boilerplate verbiage for land gifts. On 1720-03-02, she returned that same land “for love and affection which I bare unto the said Nicholus Rich my husband.”⟮4⟯ This back-and-forth transfer is hard to make sense of, especially since marital property was generally held in common. It may have been done for legal or tax reasons.
On 1726-05-03, Nicholas Rich sold property in Preston.⟮5⟯⟮6⟯This record seems to have been missed by previous researchers, who only say Nicholas died after 1720. On 1726-10-21, Nicholas’s children, having inherited his remaining property there, sold it to the same buyer.⟮7⟯ Thus Nicholas died between those dates. Grace is not mentioned and so is presumed to have predeceased him.
There is no documented relationship between Nicholas and any other Rich, although unfounded claims about the ancestry of colonial Riches are widespread. However, DNA evidence has provided crucial insight.
Tests from many descendants have shown that Nicholas’s Y chromosome is a close match to that of Michael DeRich, another Massachusetts settler of unknown parents. This implies they are related within a few generations in a male line. The evidence is summarized in this comparison of the only differing STR values:
| 393 | 464 | 534 | 549 | 533 | 504 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nicholas | 12 | 14 16 17 17 | 16 | 12 | 12 | 18 |
| Michael | 13 | 15 16 17 17 | 17 | 13 | 13 | 17 |
The first two differences, in DYS393 and the fast-changing DYS464 multi-marker, are confirmed through a large number of Rich men who were tested on 43 markers. The remaining ones are derived from four 111-marker tests; two descendants of Nicholas, including me; and two of Michael DeRich’s great-grandson. Thus, these differences could be from any of the extra ~14 generations separating me from the nexus of these latter testees rather than between Nicholas and Michael, and are thus not currently very informative. We therefore have limited data to estimate the relationship between the two men, and can only vaguely assert that it is not very distant.
The important point, however, is that the evidence makes it highly probable that Nicholas and Michael have their origins in the same general area. Michael’s surname DeRich indicates that the surname was originally French (and a de/le alternation is common). And we have specific information about his ethnicity.
Michael’s widow, Mary DeRich (née Bassett) was accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials, and jailed for several months before (like most) being released. Documents refer to Mary’s husband as having been of Jersey origin. The outbreak of King William’s War grew ethnic tensions between the English and Jerseyans, who were regarded as French. Englishwomen who had married Jerseymen were considered particularly suspect, and several in Salem were accused of being witches.⟮8⟯Bryan F. LeBeau, The Story of the Salem Witch Trials (2016), p. 103. Google Books.
Nicholas himself had moved from Salem to Wenham in the 1680s and missed the hysteria. However, given that Michael has a French name and records indicate his ethnic origins are a small island off the coast of France, and that Nicholas also lived in Salem probably as an immigrant, had the same surname, and has a close DNA match to Michael, it is very likely that Nicholas is also of Jerseyan origin.
There is also a colonial Thomas Rich of Brookfield, MA whose DNA is a convincingly close match to Nicholas, with the only reconstructed difference being on the DYS444 marker. There is much less DNA data on Thomas, and so far as I know no descendant tests beyond the 43-marker panel.
At least one record, that of his 1697 marriage to the widow Mary (Petty) Taylor, refers to him as “Thomas Rich alias Larich”⟮9⟯, pointing to an original name similar to Le Riche. This provides additional support to the Jersey hypothesis.
Nicholas was fined in 1682 in Salem, and so was of age, and his second child Abigail was born 1687-10-02⟮10⟯, so we can estimate his birth to be around 1660, and certainly not much later.
I searched Jersey baptisms, and found three possibilities:⟮11⟯
The 1648 birth was apparently illegitimate, and so is nearly excluded by DNA evidence (unless, by coincidence, the unrecorded father is also a Le Riche), and is also on the old side to be Nicholas. The 1642 one is even older, and would have Nicholas having children perhaps well into his 60s; there is also a 1690 death record in Trinity of a Nicollas Le Riche, who may be either of these people. By contrast, St. Helier is the site of Jersey’s main port, and also the most urban and prosperous area of Jersey, so it is a likely place to emigrate from. There is no further record of this 1656 Nicollas, no marriage, nor death, nor children recorded, which is consistent with his emigrating.
Jersey is a small island with a 17th century population of perhaps 10,000 people, so the chance of coincidence is less, and the correspondence is significant. This is not proof of the identity of the 1656 Nicollas with Nicholas, but it is extremely plausible.
This Nicollas Le Riche was the son of Elie or Élie Le Riche and Marie Duvey or Du Vey, who married in St. Helier on 1653-03-01. He had a twin sister Elizabeth (β 1656-11-23 – ⊥ 1657-01-13) and an older brother Jean (β 1654-12-24). Marie was baptized in 1619, daughter of Thomas and Martha/Marthe who married 1616-11-25.
There is a Michiel Le Riche, son of Helier, baptized in St. Helier on 1646-09-05,⟮13⟯ who may be the Salem Michael. Thomas Le Riche, however, is too common a name for me to guess which (if any) is the colonist.
Finally, an amusing coda to all of this is that I was myself born in New Jersey.
We can trace the Le Riche family back with increasing levels of speculation.
There are older children born in St. Helier to Elie Le Riche and Elizabeth Le Breton (⊥ 1652-12-06): Elie (β 1641-07-04), Renault (β 1643-01-11), and Jeanne (β 1644-02-04).⟮13⟯ This appears to be a previous marriage of Elie. The chronology lines up: certainly this could not be Elie’s father, and he married Marie a few months after Elizabeth died. This gives Nicollas three additional half-siblings.
An important clue is other names on the baptism record, who are often family members. The baptism of Renault includes Jean Le Riche and Jeanne Le Riche. A couple with these names appears in a Le Riche family history posted on Jerripedia, specifically Jean Le Riche and Jeanne Valpy, said to have married in the 1600s (the decade).⟮14⟯ Again, given the low population of the island, one would not expect too many coincidences. This estimated marriage date is roughly what we would expect for Elie’s parents, in which case Renault’s grandparents witnessed his baptism. So there is a likelihood that Elie can be attached to this tree as their child, hooking me into a large documented Le Riche family.
Supporting this guess is onomastic evidence. Under these identifications, the names of Elie’s six children are, in order, the same as himself (Elie), his paternal grandfather (Renault/Regnauld), his mother (Jeanne), his father (Jean), his paternal uncle (Nicolas), and his sister (Elizabeth). While any one match may be coincidence, all six put together is quite suggestive. At least some connection to this family seems nearly certain, given the recurrence of names and its size on this small island.
As such, I have speculatively added names from this tree to the pedigree below. However, I have not verified this research, and some aspects of it seem suspicious, such as time gaps which may suggest a missing generation, and other such issues. If it is roughly correct, there is a line back to Matthieu/Macy Le Riche born around 1400.
Nicholas had of record six children, all with Abigail, with three sons and nine paternal grandsons, candidates for my ancestor:
I consider the most likely candidate to be Elisha, son of Samuel, but others are plausible. Based on the above, there is an outside chance that Elisha was named after his great-grandfather.
This is based on the above successive plausible but unproven identifications.
Jeanne Valpy may be the daughter of Guille Valpy dit Janvrin and Ester Reede baptized 1596-11-21 in St. Saviour⟮16⟯, although this would make her young for the estimated marriage date.
Jean de Gruchy was the son of Jean de Gruchy (
