The Family of Thomas Dickinson

Thomas Dickinson and his wife, Mary Crandall , were married on the 20th of May in 1748. Soon after their marriage they had a son, Samuel, our ancestor, who was born on the 20th of December in 1748. This family lived in North Stonington, New London, Connecticut.

For most of the 18th century, this town's inhabitants focused on carving out homesteads and farms from virgin forests. This was a slow, generations-long process, as pioneers girdled massive, centuries-old trees until they rotted and fell to the ground, and then began the difficult work of clearing ground and moving boulders. Roads began to be forged through the receding wilderness, beyond just cattle paths and old Pequot trails. Colonial surveyors in 1753 marked out the future route of the Pawcatuck-Voluntown Road (today known as Route 49). In 1768, a weekly stagecoach was opened between Norwich, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island via North Stonington and Pawcatuck; this road became the Norwich-Westerly Road, today known as Route 2.

The paragraph above, from Wikipedia, gives us a brief idea of how Thomas and his neighbors spent their days in the 1700s. 

THOMAS DICKINSON
BORN: 1726 in Kingston, Rhode Island
MARRIED: 20 May 1748 in North Stonington, New London, CT
DIED: 1790 in Rhode Island

MARY CRANDALL
BORN: 1726 in Naragansett, RI
DIED: 1813 
SOURCES: (I am unable to cite my sources here today because my genealogy database has disappeared from my computer all of a sudden. I apologize and will add the sources when I am able to restore my database from backup copies ASAP)