Portsmouth

231 Pages·1991·7.13 MB·English

POCASSET (PORTSMOUTH, RHODE ISLAND)
“I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t
like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan
comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll
show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’
love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’
without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or
Rome, but not befur.”
— Dunne, Finley Peter,
OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY,
New York, 1902
1613
William Hall was born in London. He would marry with Mary Thomas (1619-1680), have a son Benjamin Hall
(1650-1729), and die during 1675 in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
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1638
Friend Richard Borden, son of a Kent wool merchant, relocated from Boston to Portsmouth, Rhode Island and
was assigned five acres of land. (He became the 19th signer of the compact creating the government of
Aquidneck. His son Matthew, who would be born at Portsmouth on 16 May 16th of this year, would be,
according to Quaker records, “the first English child born on Rhode Island.”)
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PORTSMOUTH RHODE ISLAND
An outpost was established at Pawtuxet in what would become Rhode Island, by William Harris and the
Arnold family. Other nonconformists coming down into the bay region, such as William Hutchinson and Anne
Hutchinson and William Coddington, were founding Pocasset (now Portsmouth) and signing the “Portsmouth
Compact.”
William Coddington was chosen as governor.
According to John Farmer, the 1st (white) settlers of Rhode Island were:
• Roger Williams
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PORTSMOUTH RHODE ISLAND
• William Aspinwall
• Arther Fenner
• John Thockmorton
• Samuel Wildbore
• Henry Reddock
• William Arnold
• John Porter
• Thomas Sucklin
• William Harris
• John Sandford
• Christopher Smith
• Stuckey Westcot
• Edward Hutchinson
• Richard Pray
• Thomas Olney, Senior
• Thomas Savage
• Nicholas Power
• Thomas Olney, Junior
• William Dyre
• Stephen Northrup
• John Greene
• William Freeborn
• Edward Hart
• Richard Waterman
• Philip Sherman
• Benjamin Herendon
• Thomas James
• John Walker
• Edward Inman
• Robert Cole
• Richard Carder
• John Jones
• William Carpenter
• William Baulston
• James Matthewson
• Francis Weston
• Henry Bull
• Henry Neale
• Ezekiel Holleman
• William Coddington
• William Man
• Robert Williams
• John Clark
• _____ Jinckes
• John Smith
• Edward Cope
• Roger Mawry
• Hugh Bewitt
• Chad Brown
• Edward Manten
• William Wickenden
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PORTSMOUTH RHODE ISLAND
• Daniel Brown
• Shadrach Manton
• John Field
• Henry Brown
• George Shepherd
• Thomas Hopkins
• John Brown
• Edward Smith
• William Hawkins
• Samuel Bennett
• Benjamin Smith
• William Hutchinson
• Hugh Bewett (the mason)
• John Smith
• Edward Hutchinson, Jun
• Adam Goodwin
• John Smith, Sr.
• John Coggeshall
• Henry Fowler
• John Smith, Jr.
• John Smith (Jamaica)
• Epenetus Olney
• Lawrence Wilkinson
• Daniel Williams
• Christopher Onthawk
• Joshua Verin
• John Sayles
• Richard Scott (this Baptist would become a Friend, very likely the 1st in Rhode Island)
• Joan Tyler
• Joshua Winsor
• Valentine Whitman
• George Way
• William White
• Thomas Walling
• John Warren
• John Whipple
• Matthew Waller
• Robert Williams
• Joseph Williams
• William Wickenden
• Robert R. West
• Pardon Tillighast
In Aquiday, Rhode Island, a male with the family name of Collins, a male with the family name of Hales, and
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Mistress Anne Hutchinson were accused of witchcraft. We have no record of further action.
1. “Aquiday” was Aquidneck Island, now containing the towns of Portsmouth, Middletown, and Newport.
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March 22, Thursday (1637, Old Style): Part of the problem was that Mary Dyer, a woman associated with Mistress
Anne Hutchinson, had given birth to a child, stillborn, characterized by Governor John Winthrop as a
“monster.” The Reverend John Cotton, repentant, confided to the court his role in the secret burial. When
exhumed, the body had seemed to lack a skull. Goody Hawkins, who assisted at the birth, was summoned to
provide a description of the child as born. The baby’s “thornback” birth defect was being ascribed by the
Puritans to the influence of antinomianism.
The group led by Mistress Hutchinson was expelled by an ecclesiastical court upon a charge of “traducing
the ministers,” and she herself was excommunicated and ordered “as a Leper to wthdraw yorselfe owt of the
Congregation.”
Forasmuch as yow, Mrs. Huchinson, have highly
transgressed & offended, & forasmuch as yow have soe
many ways troubled the Church wth yor Erors & have
drawen away many a poor soule, & have upheld yor
Revelations: & forasmuch as yow have made a Lye, &c.
Therfor in the name of our Lord Je: Ch: & in the name
of the Church I doe not only pronownce yow worthy to
be cast owt, but I doe cast yow out & in the name of
Ch. I dow deliver you up to Sathan, that yow may learne
no more to blaspheme, to seduce & to lye, & I dow
account yow from this time forth to be a Hethen & a
Publican & soe to be held of all the Bretheren &
Sisters, of this Congregation, & of others: thefor I
command yow in the name of Ch: Je: & of this Church as
a Leper to wthdraw yorselfe owt of the Congregation;
that as formerly yow have dispised & contemned the Holy
Ordinances of God, & turned yor Backe one them, soe yow
may now have no part in them nor benefit by them.
She would take refuge by abandoning Boston for Paumanok Long Island in New York, and a number of people
influenced by her heresy would take refuge, initially with the Reverend Roger Williams at Providence
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Plantations and then at Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island, an island also known as Rhodes Island.
RHODE ISLAND RELIGION
2. So named because mistaken with Block Island, which had originally been compared as similar in coastal outline on the map, or
in appearance from the sea, or in some respect or other, to the much larger island of Rhodes, of the Eastern Mediterranean.
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William Dyer and Mary Dyer were of course among those who sought refuge in Rhode Island on this
Narragansett turf.
Note that at this point the Dyer family had not yet been tainted by Quakerism — the Reverend Williams, in
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tolerating them at this point, was not by that fact tolerating Quakers. It may be that the Reverend’s track
record was good, overall, at least for that era, but in fact he didn’t like Quakers in the same way he didn’t like
Papists, which in our own day and age would be taken as a sign of religious intolerance rather than as a sign
of religious tolerance:
They admit no interpreter but themselves, for the
spirit within, they say, gave forth the Scripture, and
is above the Scripture, ... and that all they do and
say is scripture — Papists and Quakers most horribly
and hypocritically trample it under their proud feet.
June 27, Tuesday (Old Style): Samuell Gorton was admitted as an inhabitant of Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island.
READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT
3. In addition, this is often overlooked but in fact in the Dyer family, only Mary Dyer and her son Will ever became Quakers.
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1639
William Hall, an inhabitant of Newport, Rhode Island, joined with several others to found the town of
Portsmouth. William was spelling his name Haule.
A house was constructed for Friend Nicholas Easton, eventually facing Farewell Street, the first dwelling
constructed in Newport, Rhode Island. This dwelling would burn in 1641 and be replaced, and upon the death
of Nicholas Easton in 1676, it and the property on which it stood would be bequeathed to the Newport Friends.
This piece of land eventually would be used in 1699 for the Great Meetinghouse of the Friends.
At Portsmouth, Samuell Gorton joined Mistress Anne Hutchinson in ousting William Coddington.
Upon Coddington’s return to power Gorton would himself get turned out.
READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT
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In this year the Gortons had their daughter whom they named Mahershalalhashbaz.
The most wonderful name and one which was the least likely to
have been selected from all the names appearing in the Bible was
that of Mahershalalhashbaz, and there were, previous to 1680,
two persons in the Colony bearing this name, one a daughter of
Samuel Gorton of Warwick, whose peculiarities brought on him no
end of troubles, while the other was a son of Mary Dyer, she who
was hung for the crime of being a Quaker, on the grounds now
comprising the beautiful Public Garden and Common in Boston.
4. Cf. ISAIAH 8:1-3, where the longest name in the BIBLE usually appears as “Maher-shalal-hash-baz.” In Hebrew this meant “To
speed to the spoil, he hasteneth the prey.”
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