Isn’t there an island in a bay in the state of Rhode Island with the island named Rhode Island? I thought the state got its name from that island, while the Providence Plantations referred to the mainland. At least that’s my recollection of history. Anybody who knows better should educate all of us.
I heard that officials of Brown University have their panties in a twist over the role of their founders in the slave trade. Brown is in Providence, Rhode Island.
I used to have a US senator who lived in a compound.
He’s dead now.
Hi Dilbert - you’re right. Roger Williams (my direct 13X grandfather) founded Providence & it’s plantations in 1636 on the mainland after being banished from Mass, he laid out 50 or 52 plots along today’s Main Street and I think they were twelve acres each. His plot was right across from a spring - where the Roger Wliams National Memorial is today.
Another group founded Aquidneck Island and a sort of battle went on to get a royal charter for a couple of decades, which finally was granted in 1688 as “RI and...Plantations”. Another ancestor was among that 1st group on Aquidneck as an indentured servant (stole corn in Boston). His son married Roger Williams daughter.
There were slave plantations in RI though so that part of history is true, and RI was a major slave trading state.
~Rhode Island - first in war, last in peace ~
Explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano likened what is now Aquidneck Island (in the Narragansett Bay) to the Island of Rhodes in the Med...