USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Rehoboth > Early Rehoboth, documented historical studies of families and events in this Plymouth colony township, Volume IV > Part 8
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From the earliest days of the English settler, the western boundary line between the Wampanoag (Pokanoket) and Narragansett Indian tribes were the eastern shores of Narragansett Bay and the Paw- tucket (later called Seekonk) River north to the Pawtucket Falls. The Plymouth Colony patent covered the territory from Cape Cod west to the Pawtucket River. In 1636, Roger Williams obtained from Miantonomi, Sachem of the Narragansetts, the territory west of the east bank of the Pawtucket River. At some time between 1638 and 1641, Ousamequin, Sachem of the Pokanokets and head of the Wampanoags, twice sold the territory east of the east shore of the Pawtucket River to two different sets of proprietors of the Seekonk (Rehoboth) plantation.
In July 1636 a band of Pequot Indians attacked a party of traders at Block Island and murdered Capt. John Oldham in his shallop off the mouth of Narragansett Bay. Captain Oldham, who was of
* These areas are scaled from the 1949 map of the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, compiled by Thomas E. Harding, Pawtucket City Engineer.
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The 1795 Survey
Watertown, Massachusetts, carried on an extensive trade by water with the Indians. The Massachusetts court sent an expedition of ninety men under command of John Endicott against the Indians and took Block Island "by right of conquest".
From Block Island, Endicott extended his expedition into the heart of the Pequot country. The Pequots opened negotiations with the powerful Narragansett Indians to form a league against the English to drive them from the country. At the request of the Boston magistrates, Roger Williams intervened and was successful in preventing the Pequots from winning over the Narragansetts. In October 1636, Miantonomi went to Boston and concluded a formal alliance with the Bay government against the Pequots.
As a reward for services, Massachusetts granted Block Island to John Endicott, Richard Bellingham, Daniel Denison, and William Hawthorne. A long distance from Boston, the Island was not very desirable and in 1660 was sold to a company of Massachusetts men. It was settled two years later.
In the late autumn of 1637, several of the Boston Antinomians deputed Dr. John Clarke and a few others to seek out a place for settlement. While their vessel was passing around the Cape, Dr. Clarke and others journeyed overland to Providence to see Roger Williams "who readily presented two places before us in the same Narraganset Bay, the one upon the main, called Sowames, the other called then Acquedneck, now Rode-Island". Dr. Clarke relates how he and Roger Williams, accompanied by two others, journeyed [through Seekonk] to Plymouth to find out whether the lands in question were claimed by that government. The answer was "that Sowwames was the garden of their Patent, and the flour in the garden", but if Aquedneck was decided upon, "they should look upon as free, and as loving neighbors and friends should be assistant unto us upon the main " *.
Before he went to Plymouth with Dr. John Clarke, Roger Wil- liams knew perfectly well that Sowams, the home of the Indian Sachem Ousamequin, was in the Plymouth Colony patent which covered all of the land to Narragansett Bay, for he himself, a fugitive from Massachusetts, had been asked in 1635 to leave Seekonk, the land adjoining Sowams, and move across the Pawtucket River and out of the Plymouth patent. He must have also known that Ply- mouth would not allow men banished from Massachusetts to settle some four miles south of Seekonk where he himself had unsuccess- fully attempted to settle.
Following part of the advice of the Plymouth Colony magistrates, Roger Williams proceeded to negotiate the purchase of not only Aquidneck, but other Islands in Narragansett Bay:
24 Mar. 1637/8-"Cannonnicus and Miantunnomu ye two chief Sachims of the Nanhiggansitts, by vertue of our generall command of this Bay as allso the perticular subjectinge of the dead Sachims of Acquednecke and Kitackamuckqutt, themselves and land unto us", sold to "Mr. Cod- dington and his friends united unto him the great Island of Acquednecke * John Clarke, Ill Newes from New England (London, 1652, reprinted in 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. II, p. 1.
1
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Early Rehoboth
and the rest of the Islands in the Bay excepting Chibachuwesa [Pru- dence] formerly sold to Mr. Winthrop, the now Governor of the Massa- chusetts and Mr. Williams of Providence; also the grasse upon the rivers and coves about Kitickamuckqutt and from these to Paupau- squatch for the full payment of forty fathom of white beads to be equally divided between us". Witnessed by Roger Williams and Ran- dall Holden [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. I, p. 45].
6 Aug. 1638-" Memorandum-I, Ousamequin*, freely consent that Mr. William Coddington and his friends united unto him make use of any grasse or trees on ye maine land on Powakasick Side" for which he received five fathoms of wampum as gratuity for himselfe and the rest. Witnessed by Roger Williams and Randall Holden [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. I, p. 47].
When Roger Williams arranged for William Coddington and asso- ciates for the purchase from the Narragansett Sachems of the Island of Aquidneck for the establishment of a new English settlement, he was following the friendly advice given him and Dr. John Clarke by the Plymouth Colony magistrates, but when he included in the purchase of this Island (and others) the grass and trees in the Sowams territory, after having been particularly told that Sowams was not only the "garden spot" but was the "flouer in the garden" of the Plymouth patent, he certainly was not playing fair and above board with the Plymouth magistrates.
Apparently Roger Williams was not entirely satisfied that the Narragansett Sachems had a good Indian title to the Sowams lands, for in order to strengthen the title and plug all possible loop-holes, he thought it necessary to obtain a Memorandum from Ousamequin, sachem of the Pokanokes and chief Sachem of the Wampanoags, who held the Indian title to the Sowams lands in the Plymouth Colony patent. This Roger Williams double cross of the Plymouth Colony magistrates, which surprisingly has escaped the attention of historians, laid the foundation for a bitter boundary line dispute between two colonies that continued through two centuries before it was finally settled. Roger Williams knew the bounds of the Ply- mouth patent, for on 10 Nov. 1637, about the time he and Clarke visited Plymouth, he wrote from Providence the following letter to Governor John Winthrop at Boston:
. On the Narragansett side the natives are popolus; on the Massa- chusetward Plymouth men challenge, so that I presume if they come to the place where first I was, Plymouth will call them theirs [which they successfully did]. I know not the persons yet in general could wish (if it be either with countenance or connivance) that these ways might be more trod into these inland parts, and that amongst the multitudes of the barbarous the neighbor- hood of some English Plantation (especially of men desiring to fear God) might help and strengthen . . ." [Narr. Club Publications, vol. VI, p. 80. See Early Rehoboth, vol. II, p. 34].
On 14 Mar. 1643/4, Roger Williams obtained from Parliament a "Free Charter of Civil Incorporation and Government for the
1 * At a town meeting held at Portsmouth 29 Aug. 1644, it was "ordered that Ousamequin with ten men shall have leave to kill ten deare uppon this Island within the libertie of Portsmouth . . . to bring the deare to the towne to Mr. Brenton and Mr. Baulston and they to view them, and neither Ousamequin nor any of his men shall carry any deere or skins off from the Island, but at the towne of Portsmouth; and to depart from the Island within five days" [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. I, p. 81].
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The 1795 Survey
Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay in New England". It was not a mere land patent, nor was it a trading charter like that of Massachusetts, for it granted full power and authority to rule themselves. The bounds of the new colony were set forth as follows:
"bordering Northward and North-East on the Patent of the Massachusetts; East and South-East on Plymouth Patent, south on the Ocean, and on the West and Northwest by the Indians called Nahigganeucks, alias Narragansets [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. I, p. 144].
Roger Williams returned from England with the charter of the Colony of Providence Plantations in September 1644. He came overland from Boston to Seekonk where his friends in fourteen canoes met him (probably in Seekonk Cove) and carried him in triumph to Providence *.
Soon after it was known in New England that Roger Williams had obtained a charter for the Colony of Providence Plantations, the neighboring colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay attempted to exercise their jurisdiction in this charter. In November 1644, the Plymouth Court appointed John Brown (afterwards of Seekonk) a commissioner to go to Aquidneck and warn the inhabitants that "a great part of their supposed government is within the line of the government of Plymouth" and to forbid them "to exercise any authority or power of government within the limits of our letters patent". Nine months later, the Massachusetts Council sent Roger Williams the following letter:
"Sr, wee receaved lately out of England a charter from ye authority of ye high Courte of Parliament, beareing date 10th December, 1643, whereby ye Narragansett Bay, & a certaine tract of land wherein Providence & ye Iland of Quidny are included, wch wee thought fitt to give yow, & other our country men in those pts, notice of, yt yow may forbeare to exercise any jurisdiccon therein, otherwise to appeare at our next Gennerall Courte, to be holden the first 4th day of ye 8 month, to shew by what right yow claime any such juris- diccon; for wch purpose yo self & other yor neighbors shall have free liberty to come, stay, & retourne, as the occacon of ye said buisnes shall require. Datd at Boston, in ye Mattatusetts, 27: 6 m. [August] 1645. To Mr Roger Wms, of Providence, by order of ye counsell.
"INCREASE NOWELL, Sect"
[Mass. Bay Records, vol. III, p. 49.]
This action of the Plymouth Court, six years after the non-juris- dictional agreement with Roger Williams and Dr. John Clarke in 1637, is not hard to understand, for although the new 1643 Provi- dence Plantations charter carefully co-ordinated its east and south- east boundary line to that of the Plymouth Colony patent, Ply- mouth had not forgotten Roger Williams' previous double cross in including Sowams property in the purchase of Acquidneck. The opposition to this charter on the part of Plymouth and Massachu- setts was to later cost the latter colony the loss of considerable terri- tory, for Clarke and Williams were to retaliate effectively by making a land grab of more than 200 square miles of Plymouth territory.
At a Court of Election held at Providence 16 May 1648, William
* Richard Scott's letter in Fox and Bwenyeat, N. E. Firebrand Quenched, vol. II, p. 47.
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Coddington was elected President and then suspended pending certain bills of complaint exhibited against him. Not attending the court to clear himself, Jeremy Clarke was chosen in his place [Bart- lett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. I, pp. 208, 211].
In January 1649, William Coddington sailed for England where he represented to the Council of State that he had discovered those Islands; that he had purchased them from the Indians (all of which was untrue); that he had lived in quiet enjoyment ever since, and was now desirous of being governed by English laws under the pro- tection of the Commonwealth. On 3 Apr. 1651 he was commis- sioned Governor of the Islands for life.
On his return to Aquidneck in the late summer of 1651, sixty-five of the inhabitants of Newport and forty-one of Portsmouth joined in requesting Dr. John Clarke to proceed to England to seek a repeal of the commission. The inhabitants of Providence and Warwick raised £200 to send Roger Williams to England for the same purpose. Although Clarke and Williams represented different towns, they were working for the same purpose and sailed together from Boston to England in November 1651. On 2 Oct. 1652 Parliament revoked Coddington's commission and empowered the magistrates and peo- ple of the Colony to administer the government by virtue of previous instructions until further instructions should be given. Williams and Clarke remained in England working for a new charter-Wil- liams returned in the spring of 1654, and Clarke remained until he obtained the new charter on 8 July 1663.
The "Charter of the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New Eng- land and America", granted by King Charles II in 1663, was the basis for Rhode Island's easterly boundary line claims. The bound- ary along the Pawtucket or Seekonk River to the Pawtucket Falls and north to the Massachusetts south line is set forth in the Royal patent as follows:
. . From the ocean on the south, or southwardly, vnto the mouth of the river which runneth towards the towne of Providence, from thence along the eastwardly side or banke of the sayd river (higher up called by the name of Seacunck river), vp to the ffalls called Patuckett ffalls, being the most west- erly lyne of Plymouth Colony, and so from Sayd ffalls, in a streight lyne, due north, untill itt meete with aforesaid lyne of the Massachusetts Collony" [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. II, pp. 18, 19].
In drafting this new Rhode Island and Providence Plantations charter, Roger Williams and Dr. John Clarke were not forgetful of the trouble caused them by Plymouth Colony's opposition to the Providence Plantations charter of 1643. In retaliation, and there appears to be no other reason, they went all out and grabbed some 210 square miles of Plymouth Colony territory by deliberately mov- ing the Rhode Island line east into Plymouth Colony.
This new eastern boundary line took into Rhode Island about a third of the town of Rehoboth, all of the Sowams lands, all of what was five years later the town of Swansea, and many other towns. On the south end of this new boundary line Rhode Island gained
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The 1795 Survey
some 166 square miles, and on the north end the "Attleborough Gore" containing some 34 square miles. In the final adjustment by Royal decree in 1746, this claim was cut down and Rhode Island awarded some 122 square miles represented by the towns of Bristol, Tiverton, Little Compton, Warren, and Cumberland.
As soon as Rhode Island received its new charter it asked the Connecticut and Plymouth colonies to appoint commissioners to join with those from Rhode Island in running the western and east- ern boundary lines. Not much progress was made with Plymouth as is seen by the following record:
1 June 1663-At a Court of Election held at Plymouth "it is ordered . that a letter shall be drawn vp . . and sent to Road Island in answare to theires . . . [that] the court . . see no cause to admit of a treaty with them concerning our lands claimed and pretended by them to bee purchased, it being but to make a dispute in matters that are cleare and out of controversy [Plymouth Colony Records, vol. IV, p. 44].
4 May 1664-At a Rhode Island General Assembly held at Newport, Capt. John Greene and Lieut. Joseph Torrey were "commissioned, and fully impowered to repayre vnto Secounck, alias Rehobath, vpon the last day of this presant month of May, being Tuseday: Then and ther to meette and begin to treat according to instructions given you with two commissioners, in lycke manner autherized from and by the government of the Massatusitts; and in the sayd treaty to continue as long as cause requireth, for the full and finall issuing and composing (if it may be) of all those vncomfortable differances and greivances that have occa- sionally of late yeares arisen, concearning pretences about the place and plantation called Ascoamacott, on the east side of Pawcatuck river" [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. II, p. 50].
Soon after it obtained its new charter, Rhode Island took over the jurisdiction of Block Island. At a Rhode Island General Assembly held at Newport 4 May 1664, James Sands and Thomas Terry were appointed Selectmen of Block Island and authorized to appoint a third selectman; the three to appoint constables and a clerk for keep- ing public records. James Sands, Joseph Kent [later of Swansea], Thomas Terry, Peter George, Simon Raye, William Harris, Samuel Dearing, John Rawsbone, John Davies, Samuel Staple, Hugh Wil- liames, Robert Guterry, William Tosh, Tollman Rose, William Carhoone [later of Swansea], Tristome Dodge, John Clark, and William Barker, inhabitants and housekeepers at Block Island, were admitted freemen of the colony [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. II, p. 58].
In June 1664, Plymouth had complained to Rhode Island of in- trusions upon her territory and in October following Rhode Island proposed the appointment of a committee to determine the bound- aries between the two colonies. In October 1664, Mr. Roger Wil- liams, Capt. John Sanford, Capt. John Greene, and Joseph Torrey [formerly of Rehoboth] were appointed a committee to consider running the west and east boundary lines of the Rhode Island colony.
Early in 1664, the King appointed a Royal Commission to reduce the Dutch at New Amsterdam, to survey the general condition of the New England colonies, to settle colonial disputes, and define the boundary lines of the several chartered jurisdictions, all subject,
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however, to the approval of the King. The commission, consisting of Col. Richard Nicholls, Sir Robert Carr, Col. George Cartwright, and Mr. Samuel Maverick, arrived at Boston in July 1664.
The Royal Commissioners' expedition sailed for New Amsterdam on 8 July 1664. The Dutch surrendered to the English on the 29th of the following month. Colonel Nicholls was proclaimed Deputy Governor of New York and took military possession of the New Amsterdam territory. The other three commissioners later re- turned to New England.
In February of the following winter, the Royal Commission met at Rehoboth and settled the boundary line between Rhode Island and Plymouth Colony. Extracts from the records leading up to and including the final settlement follow:
27 Jan. 1664/5-Leaving Newport, Sir Robert Carr sailed down Narragansett Bay and stopped at Bullock's Cove where he spent some days with Capt. Thomas Willet, of Rehoboth, the Plymouth Colony Assistant, and persuaded him to go to New York as its first mayor [Arnold, Hist. of Rhode Island (1860), vol. I, p. 314].
15 Feb. 1664/5-Three of the Royal Commissioners returned from New York, leaving Colonel Nichols in command of the New Amsterdam territory taken from the Dutch. Preparations were made to visit the several colonies and also to consider Rhode Island's claim to territory [Ibid., vol. I, p. 314].
17 Feb. 1664/5-The Royal Commissioners set sail for Plymouth where they presented the King's letter and four proposals to the General Court on 22 February [Plymouth Colony Records, vol. IV, p. 85].
The mission was successful and the commissioners returned to Rhode Island. When the King was informed of the "dutifulness and obedi- ence" of the people of Plymouth he wrote them a letter of commenda- tion. "Your carrage" he said "seems to set off with the more lustre by the contrary deportment of the Colony of Massachusetts" [Palfrey, Hist. of New England (Boston, 1860), vol. II, pp. 597-605].
23 Feb. 1664/5-At a Rhode Island General Assembly held at Newport, Deputy Governor William Brenton, Mr. William Baulston, and Mr. John Clarke were chosen to "plead the Collonyes interest in poynt of pattent with our friends of Plymouth . . . before his Majestyes Com- missioners at Seconck on Monday, being the 27 of this instant there to plead and make out on the Collonyes behalfe what may be requisitt". "The deputy pleading their insufficiency for to adventure vpon the voyage by reason of the season . . . they are excused." Mr. Roger Williams, Capt. John Sanford, and Capt. Randall Houldon, Assistants, and Capt. John Cranston, doctor of Physicke and Chirurgerie, were appointed to accompany Mr. John Clarke, late agent for the Collony to procure a pattent, were appointed to represent the colony and a "letter of credence" sent to Sir Robert Carr, Knight, George Cart- wright, and Samuel Maverick, Esquires [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. II, pp. 90, 91].
The Royal Commissioners met in the first meeting house at Seekonk (Rehoboth) on 27 Feb. 1664/5 where the eastern boundary line dispute between Rhode Island and Plymouth was considered and decided. This decision is found in the Rhode Island section of the report of the King's Commissioners concerning the New England Colonies, made in December 1665, as follows:
"Their [Rhode Island] Westerne bounds are determined with Connecticot; their Northerne bounds must be the Matachusets Southern line, wherever
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The 1795 Survey
it falls, which they complaine to be too Southerly. Their Easterne bounds. betwixt them and New Plymouth could not be determined by consent of both parties (Roade Island clayming a thread of land three miles broad, all the length of the mayne land lying next to the Nanhygansett Bay, which without great prejudice they of New Plymouth could not part with): wherupon the Commissioners appointed the water the naturall bounds, of each Collony to be their present bounds, untill his Majesties pleasure be further known.
"Mr. William Brenton*, Deputy Governor of Road Island, having bought a farme upon that thread of land, which he hoped would belong to that Col- ony, humbly desires his Majestie, that he may continue to possese that farme, though it fall within the limits of New Plymouth.
"And Dr. [John] Alcockt, a physician, having bought Block Island for four hundred pounds of some of Boston (who tooke upon them power never granted them, to sell it), and haveing been at great charges in planting of it, desires his Majestie that he may not be dispossessed of it, he submitting to the government of Roade Island, both these petitions to his Majestie are lost" [John Carter Brown Library, MSS. vol. I, No. 63, as printed in Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. II, pp. 128, 129].
Deputy Governor Brenton's purchase of Mattapoiset Neck in Swansea, Plymouth Colony, before 1660, was made with the full knowledge that under the new charter Rhode Island was grabbing a large section of Plymouth Colony territory.
When the King's Commissioners settled the boundary line by making "the water the natural bounds of each colony to be their present bounds, until his Majesties pleasure be further known", they settled nothing but simply confirmed the bounds of Plymouth Colony under its patent. However, the decision stood for the next forty-two years with only an occasional dispute over the southern boundary line of Massachusetts which generally subsided after the exchange of a few letters.
At a Rhode Island General Assembly held at Newport, 7 May 1705, the old territorial controversy was opened up again when the inhabitants of Providence petitioned that the boundary line between Rhode Island and "Massachusetts Bay according to the Rhode Island Charter might be run and fully known . . . viz the Collony north line running from Pawtuxett Falls untill it meets with the South bounds of Her Majesty's Province of said Massachusetts". Maj. William Hopkins, Mr. Joseph Jenks, and Mr. Thomas Olney were appointed Rhode Island commissioners. Massachusetts was to be asked to appoint commissioners [Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. III, pp. 528, 529].
* William Brenton was a freeman of Boston, Massachusetts, 15 May 1634; selectman, 1634, 1635, 1636, 1637; deputy 1635, 1636, 1637. He was at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 23 Aug. 1638 where he had charge of building the prison which was 12 feet long by 10 feet wide and 10 feet stud. On 29 Apr. 1639 he signed a compact with eight others preparatory to the settlement of Newport. President, 1660, 1661, 1662; commissioner, 1660, 1661, 1662, 1663; deputy governor, 1663, 1664, 1665, 1666; governor, 1666, 1667, 1668, 1669. On his death in 1674 he owned Mattapoiset Neck in Swansea, in the possession of Jared Bourne, Sr. The house and land were inventoried at £1,150 [Austin, Gen. Dict. R. I., p. 254]. At the outbreak of King Philip's War, this house was known as the Bourne Garrison and housed some seventy persons.
This Mattapoiset Neck property was purchased previous to 2 Oct. 1660 for on that date a General Court held at Plymouth ordered him to pay a tax of 10s [Plymouth Colony Records, vol. III, p. 202].
t John Alcock, of Roxbury, son of George, b. in England early in 1627, d. 27 Mar. 1667; Harvard College, 1646. He was a physician, but after leaving college went to Hartford, probably on call of his uncle Hooker, to teach school. He m. Sarah, d. 29 Nov. 1665, dau. of Richard Palgrave of Charlestown. He owned an estate on Block Island, distributed to heirs in 1677, "but how acquired I see not" [Savage, Gen. Dict., vol. I, p. 22].
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