Samuel Wilbur Jr.

His father, Samuel Wilbore, had been an early settler in Boston who was dismissed from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for supporting the dissident ministers Anne Hutchinson and John Wheelwright, becoming one of the signers of the compact that established the town of Portsmouth.

Beginning in 1656 Wilbur held a number of important positions within the colony, including Commissioner, Deputy to the General Assembly, Assistant to the Governor, and Captain in a Troop of Horse.

Wilbur was held in high esteem within the colony and was one of a small group of men named in the Royal Charter of 1663, signed by King Charles II of England, and becoming the guiding document of Rhode Island's government for nearly two centuries.

[1] As a youngster, Wilbur and his two surviving brothers, Joseph and Shadrach, sailed to New England with their parents, settling in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where his father was made a freeman in March 1633.

[2] In 1657 he was one of seven men who bought a large tract of land in the Narraganset country, called the Pettaquamscutt Purchase, which would later become South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Notable descendants of Samuel Wilbur Jr. include Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry,[7] American hero of the Great Lakes during the War of 1812; his younger brother Commodore Matthew C. Perry,[7] who compelled the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854; and Stephen Arnold Douglas[8] who debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858 before a senate race and later lost to him in the 1860 presidential election.