Herodias Gardiner

Who is Herodias Gardiner?

Herodias Gardiner, born Herodias Long, was the wife of three early settlers of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and was also a zealous Quaker evangelist who was whipped in Massachusetts for taking her testimony to her former home town of Weymouth. Possibly from Somersetshire in England, and married at the age of 13 or 14 in London, she was unhappily brought to the American colonies by her first husband, John Hicks, where they settled in Weymouth. The couple had two known children, and moved to the Rhode Island Colony, but she soon separated from her husband, and looking for maintenance, settled in Newport with George Gardiner, with whom she lived for about 20 years as his common-law wife.

In 1658 she and a friend made a difficult journey to Massachusetts to present her Quaker message, and they were brought before the Governor, then whipped and imprisoned. A few years later, in 1665, she left Gardiner, and went to live with prominent and wealthy John Porter in the Narragansett country west of the Narragansett Bay. She left behind many court records documenting her marital turmoils.