David I. Babcock

Biography

David Babcock’s will, concerning his Rhode Island household, reveals both the scale of his property and the human consequences of the way he chose to distribute it. Written on April 10, 1782 and proved on March 10, 1783, it provided farms for five surviving sons—David, Jonathan, Gideon, Abijah and Asa—and made provisions for daughters Ruth, Dorcas, Mary Denison and Miriam Watson. Gideon was appointed executor.

David was born in 1700 to George Babcock and Elizabeth Hall. He married Dorcas Brown on February 24, 1730/31, beginning a marriage that lasted more than fifty years. His father’s earlier will had placed the home farm in David’s share and had also assigned him two enslaved people, Bristo and Geney. Those provisions show that the family’s accumulated property included people held in bondage as well as land and buildings.

David’s own will named two enslaved women, Phylis and Coocoo, among the property intended for Dorcas. Their appearance in the document preserves their names, but the account does not disclose their histories or what happened to them after probate. The will also singled out a silver tankard for his son David, excluding it from the plate provided to his wife.

David died in 1783. His estate arrangements give a detailed view of his final household priorities: support for his wife, separate provisions for children, and the continuation of landed property within the family. They also document his participation in slavery, a part of that household economy that the surviving names make impossible to treat as an abstraction.

The family record also uses David I. Babcock and calls his son Gideon Picket Babcock.