Joseph Arnold

Who was Joseph Arnold?

Joseph Arnold was a pre-revolutionary resident of North Kingstown and Exeter in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He is most noted for having a very large progeny, having had 16 children of whom 15 grew to maturity, married, and had children of their own, giving him at least 89 grandchildren. He was the great great grandfather of presidential hopeful Stephen Arnold Douglas who debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858, and lost to him in the 1860 presidential election. He was an ancestral link between Douglas and many prominent early Rhode Islanders such as Governor Benedict Arnold and two founders of the Rhode Island colony, Samuel Wilbore and John Porter.