Providence Plantations

George Waye made his mark, an anchor, on this grant

Roger Williams

Banished by the Puritans in 1635, Williams bought land from the Indians and established Providence Plantation at the head of Narangasett Bay. Henry Way, George Way, and other friends and supporters of Roger Williams, bought land and built there.

Roger Williams is listed as passenger on The Lyon, Feb. 1630/31

Roger Williams was one of the earliest settlers of Dorchester. He requested to be made freeman 19 October 1630. He went to Windsor probably in 1635.

-History of the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts

"Roger Williams justly claims the honor of having been the first legislator in the world, in its latter ages, that fully and effectually provided for and established a full, free and absolute libery of conscience."

-Governor Hopkins

“Was not the covenant of Works—i. e., Puritanism challenged to the death by the covenant of grace—i. e., by Antinomianism and Anabaptism; by the doctrines of the inward light, by the very spirit of Roger Williams, now in exile?...

...The Plantations north and south were unlike as a yeast cake varies from a wholesome loaf of bread. Williams, educated and lofty—but not a political and social organizer—was alone in his university training; his neighbors, many of them able, were not instructed men. In Newport, Coddington, Clarke, Coggeshall, Jeffries, the Hutchinsons, were men of wealth and culture, eminent before they emigrated to New England. Among the very first schools supported by taxation in America was Lenthall’s “publick school” at Newport in 1640. In formal legislation, in courts, church and school, Newport was in advance of Providence."

-Early Rhode Island: A Social History of the People, Weeden, William