Biographical Sketches

William Price (d. 1749) was an Anglican minister who apparently spent all of his life in his native England, mostly in the town of Beckley. He married in 1694 Elizabeth Izard (d. 1754) and had eleven children: Elizabeth, Roger (1696-1762), Thomas, John, Sarah, Mary, William, Susannah, Philadelphia, Catherine, and Cornelius.

Roger Price, the eldest son, was educated at Oxford, where he took his B.A. at Balliol College in 1717. After his admission into Priest's Orders, he accepted a chaplaincy at Widdaw, a trading outpost on the coast of Guinea. He left Guinea to become the minister of St. Ann's Parish in Jamaica for three years. He then returned to England for a two-year stay at the Parish of Leigh in Essex. In 1729, he accepted a position at King's Chapel in Boston (New England). The Bishop of London gave Price commissarial power over all the churches in New England in 1730. In 1734, Price communicated his intention of leaving the Church and returning permanently to England. It was soon after this time, however, that he met and subsequently married in 1735 Elizabeth Bull (d. 1780), the daughter of John Bull and Mary Sweet of Boston. He gave up his intention of leaving New England and remained in the Church. He retired at Hopkinton in 1748 and returned to England on orders in 1749, where he remained until his death in 1762.

Roger and Elizabeth had six children: William (1737-1802), Henry, Elizabeth (1736-1826), Thomas, Mary, and Andrew (1747-1827). After Roger died in 1762, William and Elizabeth journeyed back to New England to try to sell some of their father's Boston and Hopkinton properties. William and Elizabeth remained in America for the rest of their lives. Elizabeth never married and supported herself through the management of the estate. William Price, a career army man, married Mary Lawton in 1765. Andrew, whose letters are numerous to both William and Elizabeth, attended Oxford's Magdeline College, becoming a minister in April of 1777.

William Price and Mary (Lawton) had two daughters: MaryAnn and Olivia. Olivia married Robert Hall, a lawyer in Troy, New York. MaryAnn married Lawson Valentine, of the merchant firm Parker, Goodnow, & Valentine of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lawson died prematurely, leaving MaryAnn with four children: Andrew P., Frances E., Edward L., and Patrick B. Valentine. MaryAnn (Price) Valentine married (2nd) in 1825 Isaac Osgood, a friend of Lawson Valentine and an attorney for Valentine's merchant company.

Of the three Valentine children who were living at the time of their mother's remarriage, two had children. In 1838, Andrew married Elizabeth Finch and had two sons, Lawson and Edward. Frances married in 1847 James Weston, a Boston lawyer, and had three children: Mary, Ann, and Edward.

Captain Isaac Osgood of Andover, Massachusetts, married in 1747 Betsy Flint. They had four sons: Kendell (d. 1801), David (1748-1822), Joshua, and Jacob. Kendell became a physician and settled in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He married and had two children, Elizabeth and Isaac Osgood. Isaac went on to become a Cambridge attorney and later the second husband of MaryAnn (Price) Valentine. Joshua and Jacob were apparently yeoman farmers.

David Osgood was the third minister of the First Congregational Church of Medford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1771 and married in 1786 Hannah Breed (d. 1818). They had three children: Lucy, Mary, and David Osgood. The son David graduated from Harvard in 1813 and became a distinguished Boston physician. Rev. Osgood's fame was to rest not on his preaching, but on his political polemics. Of the 22 of his sermons which were separately published, eleven were on political subjects, and several of those were widely reprinted.