Some of the sites of the early planters are interesting. Richard Scott, a Quaker and antagonist of Williams, lived on the lot next north of St. John’s churchyard. Mary Dyre went from here to be hanged on Boston Common. Near Dexter’s (afterward Olney’s) lane lived Gregory Dexter. Chad Brown, the ancestor of so many men of mark, lived on land now occupied by College Street. The purpose of the original allotment was to give fronts upon the “Towne Streete” and river, and equal shares of farm-lands. According to Dorr[71]:
“This attempt at democratic equality only created a multitude of small estates widely separated, and in some instances nearly or quite a mile apart. Besides his home-lot of five acres, each proprietor had a ‘six-acre lot,’ at a distance from his abode; and in a few years one or more ‘stated common lots,’ which he acquired by purchase from the Proprietary, or by their occasional land dividends among themselves.”
The chief holdings were on “Providence Neck,” but they gradually extended into “Weybosset Neck.”
The latter years of Roger Williams were largely occupied by controversies with his neighbors, including his especial opponent, William Harris. The germs of a new State, rendered indestructible by the complete separation of church and state, if slumbering, yet lived in spite of the petty social stagnation of an agricultural community.
Early in the eighteenth century, the plantation took a new departure. Nathaniel Browne, a shipwright, had been driven out from Massachusetts, because he had become “a convert to the Church of England.” In 1711 the town granted him one half-acre on “Waybosset Neck on salt water,” and again another half-acre for building vessels. His vessels were among the first to sail from Providence for the West Indies. Horse-carts and vehicles had been used before 1700 by the wealthy, but Madame Knight’s journey to New York from Boston in 1704 shows that the saddle and pillion were the common conveyance along the bridle-paths. Galloping on the Town Street was prohibited in 1681. Through Pawtucket, the Bostonians came by the present North Burying Ground into the Town Street, then crossed Weybosset Bridge on their way toward the southwest. In the wider part of Weybosset thoroughfare, there stood a knoll, which has been levelled away. The road swept around and created the bulging lines of the street. Travel went on through Apponaug and North Kingstown, over Tower Hill and by the Narragansett shore, over the Pequot path toward New York. At this period, the road was opened toward Hartford, and improved communications were made with the surrounding towns. It was not until 1820 that a direct turnpike was opened from Providence to New London.
Of more importance even was the way into the world outward, through the bay. Pardon Tillinghast had been granted land twenty feet square for a storehouse and wharf “over against his dwelling-place,” in 1679-80, at the foot of the present Transit Street. There was struggle and competition for “lands by the sea-side,” or “forty-foot lots, called warehouse lots,” throughout this time, and complete division of the shore privileges was not effected until 1749. All these restless movements showed that the town was waking up and sending its commerce abroad into foreign countries. The first effectual street regulations were in 1736.
The next church organized after the First Baptist followed the faith of the Six-Principle Baptists. The Friends, as they were expelled from Massachusetts, settled in various towns of Rhode Island. Mention has been made of Richard Scott. In 1672 George Fox visited Newport, and he held a meeting “in a great barn” at Providence. Here was a contestant worthy of our doughty champion, Williams. They disputed with voice and pen, recording their angelic moods in these argumentative titles: The Fox Digged out of his Burrowes begged one side of the question; this was answered with equal logic in A New England Firebrand Quenched. The Friends built a meeting-house about 1704.
The First Congregational Pedobaptist (now Unitarian) Society was formed about 1720. They built a house for worship in 1723, at the corner of College and Benefit Streets, where the Court House now stands. This building became the “Old Town House,” when the society moved to its present location at the corner of Benevolent and Benefit Streets. Meanwhile the adherents of the Church of England, yet to become the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, were gathering in our town. There is some dispute as to the first movements, but Dr. McSparran of Narragansett affirmed that he “was the first Episcopal minister that ever preached at Providence.” The society thus formed finally took the name of “St. John’s Church, in Providence.” The church was raised in 1722, on the spot where the present building succeeded it in 1810. It will be observed that these new ecclesiastical developments moved along with the broader commercial life which was animating the community.
Any historical student should examine Rhode Island for what it is, and even more for what it is not. Roger Williams and his fellows tried a “lively experiment” as daring as it was fruitful. They severed church and state, cutting off thereby the help of an educated clergy. They founded a political democracy, tempering it with the best aristocracy to be obtained, without the ordinary facilities of education derived through such help. Neither the Williams Independents nor the Quakers followed the common formulas of education, which were generally in the hands of Anglicans or Presbyterians. This does not prove that societies can safely drop scholastic education. Many communities have failed for lack of such education. It does prove that the Anglo-American stock engaged in political and economical development will educate itself. At first sight, it was hardly to be expected that isolated and unlettered Providence would be prominent in resisting England, or in forming a new government. But she did this, in full share, and the embodiment of her citizenship, the type of her republican character, was in one man, Stephen Hopkins—“great not only in capacity and force of mind, but also—what is much rarer—in originative faculty.”
Born a farmer in 1707, removing to Providence in 1731, a member of the General Assembly in 1732, Chief Justice in 1739, one of the committee to form Franklin’s plan of colonial union at Albany in 1754, a signer of the Declaration in 1776—we have here the full measure of a republican citizen, whether by the standard of Cato, or by the later models of Franklin and Washington. “A clear and convincing speaker, he used his influence in Congress in favor of decisive measures.”