True Moon Travel

August 9, 2022 | Newport, RI

Portrait of Reverend Thomas Hiscox by Robert Feke (1745).

Thomas Hiscox (1686-1773), a Newport native, served as 4th pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Congregation in Westerly, RI. Hiscox was married to John Clarke’s great niece, Bethia Clarke. (See John Clarke post.)

Thomas & Bethia were my 7th great grandparents:

Rev. Thomas & Bethia (nee Clarke) Hiscox > Edith Hiscox > Nancy Crandall > Rev. John Cottrell > Clymena Cottrell > Peter Stillman Cottrell Tubbs > John Herbert Tubbs

Fun fact: Hiscox was pastor to Rhode Island Gov. Benedict Arnold, the great grandfather of the Revolutionary War solider of the same name. Elder Hiscox conducted Arnold’s funeral. (From: Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America: A Series of Historical Papers Written in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Organization of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, Celebrated at Ashaway, Rhode Island, August 20-25, 1902 · Volume 2.)

Hiscox’s portrait was commissioned by Henry Collins and remained in his estate. Collins and his half-brother Richard Ward were among the trustees of the First Baptist Church in Newport, with which Hiscox was associated. Collins (1699-1764) was a Newport merchant, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. He was nicknamed, “Newport’s Lorenzo de Medici” for his generous and enthusiastic patronage of the emerging cultural life of colonial Newport. He donated the land on which the library was built, once known as a bowling green.

Read more about Henry Collins and his family connection to the Vanderbilts:

Redwood History: Henry Collins, 1699-1765

Countess Gladys Vanderbilt Széchényi inherited The Breakers and the Hiscox portrait from her father, Cornelius Vanderbilt II and her mother Alice Moore Flagg Vanderbilt, a descendent of Collins’ niece Mary Ward Flagg. I

n 1991, Gladys’s descendants gave a collection of eight paintings, including the portrait of Thomas Hiscox, to the Redwood Library & Antheneum. It was the wish of Countess Sechényi that the portraits remain together as a group in Newport. Since the family enjoyed a long association with the Redwood Library and a majority of the people depicted in the paintings are part of the history of Newport, it was felt that the Library was the appropriate repository for the portraits.

Learn more about Gladys here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Vanderbilt_Széchenyi