Short summary of the Colonial Era of Rhode Island: 1636-1765

Block Island is an island off southern Rhode Island at the eastern entrance to Long Island Sound. It is named for Dutch explorer Adriaen Block who visited the island in 1614, while exploring the New England coast, sailing up the Connecticut River, and mapping the coast of Manhattan. Block Island was first settled in 1661. It became part of Rhode Island in 1663 under the Charter of that year.

Providence, was founded in 1636 as a settlement by English clergyman Roger Williams, after he was banished in 1635 by the Massachusetts Great and General Court. Williams selected the name in gratitude for "God's merciful providence" that the Narragansett have granted him title to the site.  

The land upon which Roger Williams planted his town of Providence was purchased by him from the Narragansett Indians.   Roger Williams made Providence a haven for persecuted religious dissenters. He thought of Providence as a "lively experiment" in religious liberty and church-state separation. And so it became such.

Portsmouth, originally alled Pocasset,  was first the result of William Coddington, who in 1637 was notified to leave Massachusetts. With the help of Williams, he settled on the site of Portsmouth, in the northerly part of the island of Rhode Island, which was then call Aquidneck.  Subsequently Portsmouth became the home of Anne Hutchinson, when she was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638. She brought more settlers who were attracted to the colony by the promise of religious freedom. Disagreements between Hutchinson and Coddington arising at Portsmouth, Coddington, with a minority of his townsmen, in 1639 moved southward on the island and began the settlement of Newport.

Samuel Gorton, another refugee from Massachusetts, in 1638 came first to Portsmouth, and later to Providence, creating discord at both places by denying all power in the magistrates. Gorton finally, in 1643, purchased from the Indians a tract of land in what is now the town of Warwick, and settled there.

The four towns, Providence, Warwick, Portsmouth, and Newport, lying in an area only about thirty miles in length, for many years constituted the municipal divisions of the colony.

In 1644 Roger Williams secured from the English Parliament the first charter, which was accepted by an assembly of delegates from the four towns.  In 1663 Williams secured a royal charter from Charles II, which provided for a colonial government which was the most liberal of all the colonial charters.  The charter provided for a General Assembly, with power to enact all laws necessary for the government of the colony, such laws being not repugnant to but agreeable as near as might be to the laws of England, "considering the nature and constitution of the place and people there"

The royal charter of 1644 was intended by Charles II to be an experiment in religious liberty, It ordained that no person should be in any way molested on account of religion.  As a result the Providence Plantations  gave protection to Quakers in 1657 and to Jews from Holland in 1658.

Providence during its first forty years (1636 to 1676) was exclusively a fishing and farming village, laid out along "the Towne Street", a dirt road which wound along the eastern shore of the Providence River. This road (present-day North and South Main streets between Olney and Wickenden streets) was the main artery of Providence for the duration of the colonial period and beyond.

The town was greatly destroyed during King Philip's War. In the years following  some commercial activity began, and new or farming families moved outward to the town's remote lands bordering upon Connecticut to the west and Massachusetts to the north. Despite this growth, however, the population of the entire municipality was only 1,446 when the first colony-wide census was taken in 1708.

The general relationship of the counties of MA, CT, and RI in 1703 time helps to give some idea of the events of the day and how they effected the various groups in these three colonies.

By 1730 the population of Providence was 3,916, and so many farmers had moved into the "outlands" of Providence that three large towns were set off from the parent community in 1731 (Scituate, Glocester, and Smithfield). Before the colonial period came to a close, an inner ring of three more farm towns (Cranston, Johnston, and North Providence) were carved from Providence's territory. The Providence city that remained was less than six square miles, with about 4000 persons, around the river and predominately commercial in character. 

Rehoboth in the 1700's was part of Massachusetts.  The present (2003) towns of East Providence and and the present part of Pawtucket east of the river were then (1774)  part of Rehoboth

Bowen's "Early Rehoboth" shows that Rehoboth was roughly comparable to Providence at the time .  The Massachusetts census of 1763-65 shows that Rehoboth had 617 families and a population of 3,637. The Rhode Island census of 1774 shows Providence with 655 heads of families and a total of 3,950 persons.

By the middle of the 1760s-- the eve of the Revolution--Providence had a flourishing maritime trade, a merchant aristocracy, a few important industries, a body of skilled artisans, a newspaper and printing press, a stagecoach line, and several impressive public buildings. 

Rhode Island was part of the tremendous growth of New England.  Between 1750 and 1770, the American colonies grew from 1 million to 2 million people and continued to double every 20 years. [Wood 1991, p. 125].

Shipbuilding was well established in New England before the Revolution, and in New England, Massachusetts was preeminent. A visiting Englishman reported back to London in 1769 that 389 vessels totaling 20,000 tons had been built in the colonies that year. Massachusetts accounted for 35 percent of the vessels, launching 137, with an average tonnage of 60. In 1774, one-third of the British merchant fleet was American-built; by 1775, the colonies were building 35,000 gross tons of shipping annually.

Rhode Island was not a factor in ship building, but it was in ship operation.  Most of the Rhode Island free male population was in one way or another involved in ship operations or the merchant trade.

There were four  Brown brothers who were prominent in the Providence area, because of their astute understanding of how to make money in this new economy.  It is summed up well as follows.

In the economic realm, the famous Brown family of Providence rose to new financial, commercial, and industrial heights, surpassing in stature even the celebrated merchants Aaron Lopez, Joseph Wanton, and Christopher Champlin in Newport and James D'Wolf of Bristol. The resourceful Brown brothers -- Nicholas (1729-91). Joseph(1733-85), John (1736-1803), and Moses (1738-1836)- guided by uncles Obadiah (1712-62) and Elisha (1717-1802), laid the groundwork in this turbulant age for the remarkable commercial and industrial advances of the early national period. http://www.rilin.state.ri.us/studteaguide/RhodeIslandHistory/chapt3.html

Revolutionary Providence: 1765-1790

England's  passage of the Sugar Act in 1764, levying a duty on sugar and molasses imports so essential to Providence distilleries and to the "triangular trade" in rum and slaves, set in motion a wave of local protest which crested in 1the 1770's. As the colonies edged toward the brink of separation with England because of subsequent measures such as the Stamp Act, the Townshend Duties, the Tea Act, and the Coercive Acts, the town of Providence became a leader of the resistance movement.  autonomy including the power to tax.

Rhode Island was a good place for a smuggler.  The colony was only 1,200 square miles (about 50 miles long and 25 miles wide) but it had 384 miles of coastline, with many bays and coastal indentions  fit for ships to land.  The few ships of the English Navy in the colonies could not stop smuggling entirely. An English ship at Newport would only be able to ship entering one of the three entrances of Narragansett Bay and headed to the merchants at Providence.

In June 1772 Providence merchants and sailors burnt the customs sloop Gaspee, and in June 1775 they burnt tea in Market Square. Providence citizens led the way in calling for the Continental Congress, in founding a Continental navy, and, on May 4, 1776, in renouncing allegiance to the king.

Providence in 1774 had 4,321 inhabitants, with 655 families residing in approximately 370 dwellings.  A 1776 survey shows 726 Providence men capable of bearing arms. There were six distilleries, two spermaceti candle works, two tanneries, two gristmills, a slaughterhouse, a potash works, and a paper mill. Some two hundred tradesmen and artisans represented more than thirty-five different services and skills. Economic activity was dominated by three mercantile firms: Nicholas Brown and Company, Joseph and William Russell, and Clark and Nightingale.

Fortunately, Providence escaped enemy occupation, a fate that arrested Newport's growth.  In December 1776 a three-year occupation of Newport began, forcing many of that town's inhabitants to take refuge in Providence--a reversal of the pattern in 1676 during King Philip's War, and a reversal of the relative importance of Rhode Island's two principal towns.

During the war American troops were quartered in Providence en route to various campaigns, though perhaps a thousand were permanently stationed here as a protective force. French troops moved in and out of Providence from July 1780 to May 1782, and it was from this point, in June 1781, that Rochambeau's army began its fateful march southward to Yorktown.

Business enterprise in Providence was not  destroyed during the Revolutionary War. During the three-year blockade of Narragansett Bay, Providence entrepreneurs imported their wares through the ports of New London and New Bedford.

With war ended, Providence resumed its pattern of growth. Its citizens and entrepreneurs weathered a postwar depression (1784-86) and then scaled new economic heights. When American ships were barred from the British West Indies in 1784, local merchants replaced this important colonial trading partner with ports in Latin America and the Orient.

From Town to City: 1790-1832

During the early years of the republic, Providence moved into the front rank of the nation's municipalities, first as a bustling port and then as an industrial and financial center. Providence merchants, especially the Browns, experimented in manufacturing. Samuel Slater was their first important protégé. The transition begun by Slater in 1790, was on its way to completion by 1830. Manufacturing had replaced maritime activity as the dynamic element in the economy.  Providence's four major areas of manufacturing were base metals and machinery, cotton textiles, woolen textiles, and jewelry and silverware. Industry became become the principal outlet for venture capital and the primary source of wealth.