Roger Conant (c. 1592 – 1679) was the leader of the company of fishermen who founded Salem, Massachusetts (then called Naumkeag) in 1626. He was later supplanted by the governor sent by the Massachusetts Bay Company, John Endicott. He nevertheless remained in high standing with the community, giving long service as a juror and member of the Board of Selectmen, with duties including the establishment of boundaries for new communities.
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Roger Conant was baptized in East Budleigh, Devonshire, England on April 9, 1592.[1] He was the eighth and youngest child of Richard Conant and Agnes Clark. Some sources say that he served an apprenticeship in London as a salter.[2]
He married Sarah Horton in 1618 in London. He immigrated to Plymouth Colony in 1623 on the ship the Anne[3] with his wife and his son Caleb, possibly aboard the ship 'Anne' with his brother Christopher.[4] In 1624, he relocated to Nantasket because he was uncomfortable with the strictness of the Separatists. He also had his first child in America, Lot Conant.
In 1625, he went to Cape Ann to assess the struggling colony that had been overseen by Thomas Gardner since 1624. By 1626, he had obtained permission from the Dorchester Company to move the colony to the mouth of the Naumkeag river. This settlement, that was successfully established by some of the "old planters", became Salem, Massachusetts and, in Conant's words, laid the "foundation" for the Commonwealth. Conant was its first governor but, in 1627, was replaced by John Endicott. He remained active in town affairs and is today memorialized in a statue across from the Salem Common.[5][6] He died on November 19, 1679 in Beverly, a nearby town which he also helped found.[7]
Upon his death he left a large estate to his family. At the time of his death he owned 200 acres of land at Dunstable but was not improved. He also owned another 77 acres or so around Dunstable as well. his estate was valued at 258 pounds and 10 pence.
One of the earliest known genealogies of Roger Conant and his descendants is the volume written by his descendant E. W. Leavitt and privately printed in 1890: "A Genealogy of One Branch of the Conant Family, 1581-1890."[8] An earlier Conant genealogy, published in Portland, Maine, in 1887 and written by Frederick Odell Conant also delved into the English origins of the Conant family.[9]
Shipton, Clifford Kenyon (1945). Roger Conant, a Founder of Massachusetts. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. p. 171.