William Anthony was born in Portsmouth, RI 31 Oct 16751 and died in Portsmouth on 28 Dec 17442. He married Mary Coggeshall on 14 March 1694. She was born in Portsmouth on 18 Sep 16753 and died in Portsmouth after 17394. William and Mary later removed to Swansea, MA. They had fourteen children.
Mary Coggeshall was the daughter of John and Elizabeth (Timberlake) Coggeshall. John Coggeshall was son of Major John Coggeshall and grandson of John Coggeshall who was first president of Rhode Island. The Coggeshalls were from an ancient family in the county of Essex, England who possessed ten manors and estates in Essex and Suffolk. Their coat of arms is one of the oldest in English Heraldry. Back in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Coggeshall name was written with the preposition ”de Coggeshall.” John Coggeshall the first, settled earliest in Roxbury, Mass. arrived in Boston on the ship ‘Lyon’, Sept. 16, 1632. John was an Anne Hutchinson sympathizer. In 1938, when Massachusetts became too warm for him and the other Hutchinsonites, they went to Rhode Island, bought the island of Aquineck, and helped settle Pocasset (Portsmouth), later the center of Quakerism5.
Children of William Anthony and Mary Coggeshall born in Portsmouth, Rhode Island6
- William Anthony, d. in infancy
- Abraham Anthony, b. 29 Sep. 1696; m. Elizabeth Grey
- Elizabeth Anthony, b. 2 May 1698; m. Edmond Slade
- Mary Anthony, b. 8 Dec 1699; d. in infancy
- John Anthony, b. 1700; d. in infancy
- Alice Anthony, b. 22 May 1705; m. James Chase
- Anne Anthony, b. 17 March 1707; m. Peleg Wilbur
- John Anthony, b. 16 Nov. 1708; m. Lydia Luther
- Amey Anthony, b. b. 16 Nov. 1708; m. Isaac Chase
- William Anthony, b. 26 Oct 1709; m. Alice Eddy
- James Anthony, b. 9 Nov. 1712; m. Alice Chase
- Job Anthony, b. 10 April 1714; m(1). Hannah Luther, m(2). Bertha Eddy, m(3). Abigail Chase
- Benjamin Anthony, b. 10 June 1716; m. Martha Luther
- Daniel Anthony, b. 19 May 1720; was published to Mary Chase but died before marriage