A short history of Rhode Island

by George Washington Greene

The increase of population called for a revision of the statute of legal residence. “New comers were required to give a month’s notice of intention to become residents, after which if they remained one year without being warned to leave they were admitted as lawful inhabitants of the town.” A freehold estate of thirty pounds sterling also gave a legal residence. “Apprentices having served their time in any town, might elect their residence there, or return to the place of their birth. Paupers not having acquired a legal settlement might be removed by the councils on complaint of the overseer of the poor, to the place of their last legal residence or to that of their birth.” So careful was the watch kept over the conditions and privileges of citizenship. The Board of Trade called for a new census. “The population was found to consist of thirty-four thousand one hundred and twenty-eight souls, of whom twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and fifty were whites, the remainder blacks and Indians. Newport contained forty-six hundred and forty souls, Providence thirty-four hundred and fifty-two.”

The lottery had taken a strong hold upon the innate love of chance. The two first lotteries had been applied to public improvements. The third was formed for the relief of an insolvent debtor. Henceforth we meet it as a common relief in business misfortunes and a natural assistant in new enterprises.

The winter of 1748–49 was made memorable in Rhode Island annals by the death of John Callender, her first historian and pastor of the First Baptist Church in Newport. Among the public works of the year which the growing commerce of the Colony called for, was a light-house at the south end of Conanicut, still known as Beaver Tail Light.

Depreciation began to make itself deeply felt as the interests of English commerce became more and more interwoven with those of colonial commerce. Their raw products were the only articles that the colonies could give in exchange for English manufactures. Their West India trade was their only source of coin. Colonial bills out of the colonies were worthless. The subject was brought before the House of Commons, which called for a full and accurate statement of the condition of the currency. A committee was appointed by the Assembly to prepare the statement, and Partridge the colonial agent directed to present and support it. By this report it was shown that three hundred and twelve thousand three hundred pounds in bills of credit, emitted to supply the treasury since May, 1710, of which one hundred and seventy-seven thousand had been burned at various times and one hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds were still outstanding, amounting in all in sterling money to about thirty-six thousand pounds.

An interesting incident of this year was the organization of a Moravian mission.

The statute book records several new criminal statutes. It is an illustration of domestic relations that the first divorce was granted by the Assembly in 1754—more than a hundred years after the foundation of the Colony. And it may be taken as proof of the feelings of the Colony towards England, that a large number of English statutes were transferred to the colonial statute book. New precautions against fire were taken in Newport by the formation of firewards, and a fire engine was sent for from England. Providence soon followed the example. Another step was taken towards a satisfactory distribution of the territory by forming East and West Greenwich, Coventry and Warwick into a new county under the name of Kent County, with East Greenwich for its county town. The new county was required to build a court house at its own expense, which was partly done by lottery. Four years later another town was formed from Providence County and incorporated under the name of Cranston. In spite of the increased depreciation of the currency the Colony continued to grow in numbers and strength. Seventeen hundred and fifty-two was made memorable both in England and her colonies by the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Henceforth the new year begins on the first of January instead of the twenty-fifth of March.

But the great event of the year was the decision of the lawsuit for the possession of the glebe lands in Narragansett, a suit of nearly thirty years standing, and which after passing through many phases was decided in favor of the Congregationalists against the Episcopalians, upon the ground that “by the Rhode Island charter all denominations were orthodox, and that a majority of the grantors when the deed took effect were Presbyterians or Congregationalists.”

Meanwhile paper money was doing its bad work. The calendar of private petitions bears sad witness to the evil. Bankruptcy became frequent, and among the bankrupts of those days of gloom was Joseph Whipple, the Deputy-Governor, who, surrendering all his property to his creditors was relieved by a special act of insolvency. The spirit of enterprise though dulled, was not crushed.

The first recorded patent was granted in 1753. Parliament had passed an act to encourage the making of potash in the colonies, and Moses Lopez took out a patent for making it for ten years by a process known only to himself. The next year a similar patent was granted to James Rogers for the manufacture of pearl-ash. The industrial instinct which was to receive in the sequel so great a development, was already girding itself up for the trial. The spirit of association, also, was awakening. A society of sea-captains was incorporated for mutual assistance under the name of the Fellowship Club. From this grew the Newport Marine Society.

A new war was at hand, a war known to our childhood as the old French war, and the last waged by France and England for the dominion of North America. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had left the door wide open for new claims, and these soon led to a new war. Here again Rhode Island displayed great energy, sending Stephen Hopkins and Martin Howard, Jr., to represent her as Commissioners at the Albany Congress of 1754, in which Franklin brought forward his plan for developing by union the resources of the colonies, she took promptly the steps necessary for her own defence and complied cheerfully with the requisitions of the English commanders. In this as in former wars she sent out her privateers to harass the enemy’s commerce. But her part in the contest was a limited one. Her troops went as contingents not as armies. She had no generals to give their names to great victories, and when peace returned her soldiers and sailors returned cheerfully to the duties and avocations of common life.