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Stephen Arnold Douglas, the presidential aspirant who ran against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election, was born in Vermont and has an immediate ancestry that is almost entirely from New England. His Douglas ancestors, upon emigrating from England in the early 1600s, settled in Connecticut where they lived for several generations until his grandfather, Benajah Douglas, moved to Stephentown, New York. From there the family moved to Brandon, Vermont, where Stephen A. Douglas was born.
Both of Douglas' grandmothers were Arnolds, and both of them descend from early Providence proprietor, William Arnold, each through a different one of his sons. His paternal grandmother, Martha (Arnold) Douglas, was the daughter of Stephen Arnold who left Rhode Island to settle in Stephentown, New York. Stephen was the son of Joseph Arnold of North Kingstown and Exeter, Rhode Island who links Douglas with several prominent colonial Rhode Islanders. Through Joseph Arnold, Douglas descends from Benedict Arnold, the first governor of the Rhode Island colony under the Royal Charter of 1663, and the older son of William Arnold. In this line he also descends from two signers of the compact that established the first government in the Rhode Island colony, they being Samuel Wilbore and John Porter. He also descends from Wilbore's son, Samuel Wilbur, Jr. who was mentioned by name in the Royal Charter of 1663, and who, with Porter, was an original purchaser of the Pettaquamscutt lands that became the town of South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Additionally, through his paternal grandmother, Douglas descends from Indian captive Susanna Cole and her famous mother, Anne Hutchinson, as well as early Newport settler George Gardiner and his common-law wife Herodias Gardiner.
Douglas' maternal grandmother, Sarah (Arnold) Fisk, was a descendant of William Arnold through his younger son, Stephen Arnold. She also descends from early Rhode Island Baptist minister Pardon Tillinghast.
In the following ancestral chart, persons 1-7, 10-11, 14-15, 20-23, and 28-31 are all documented in the book The Arnold Memorial, published in 1935 by Elisha Stephen Arnold, a fairly close relative of Douglas. Persons 8-9 and 16-17 are documented in a New England Historical and Genealogical Register article that was captured in a collection of Connecticut genealogies. The remaining persons, and a few additional dates, all come from online sources which are found under "External links."