Rhode Island Genealogy

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Rhode Island Genealogy Research Guide

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Rhode Island Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

Rhode Island’s records begin with the founding of Providence in 1636 and run through nearly four centuries of dense town record-keeping. One fact governs almost all of it: the town, not the county, is the unit of record. Deeds, probate files, and vital records were created and are still kept by the town or city clerk, and the counties serve only as judicial districts. Grasping that single point removes most of the difficulty from Rhode Island research.

• Capital: Providence. The General Assembly long rotated among several statehouses — Newport, Providence, East Greenwich, Bristol, and South Kingstown — and Providence became the sole capital in 1900.
• Statehood: May 29, 1790, the thirteenth and last of the original states to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
• Founding and charters: Roger Williams settled Providence in 1636; Portsmouth followed in 1638, Newport in 1639, and Warwick in 1642–1643. A parliamentary patent of 1644 joined the towns, and the Royal Charter granted by Charles II in 1663 served as the frame of government until 1843.
• Counties: 5. Providence and Rhode Island counties were created on June 22, 1703. In 1729 Rhode Island County was renamed Newport and King’s County was set off from Providence; Bristol County was created in February 1746/47 from territory transferred from Massachusetts; and Kent County, the last, was set off from Providence County on June 11, 1750. King’s County was renamed Washington County in 1781.
• Towns and cities: 39 municipalities — 8 cities and 31 towns. These, and not the counties, are the record-keeping jurisdictions.
• Land type: Rhode Island is a state-land state, not a federal (public-domain) state. Title descended from the patent and the charter to the colony, and from the colony to the town proprietors, who divided the land among the settlers — so there are no federal General Land Office records for Rhode Island.
• Nickname and motto: the Ocean State, also called Little Rhody; the state motto is a single word, Hope.
• Where records live: deeds, probate, and vital records are held by the town or city clerk. The counties have had no governmental function since 1846 and no county courthouse holds deeds or wills.

Libraries and Archives

Rhode Island’s principal collections cluster in Providence, with essential holdings at Pawtucket and Newport. Because the towns created and kept the records, the town and city clerks remain the first destination for original documents; the repositories below hold the government, court, and manuscript records that surround them.

• Rhode Island State Archives (Providence) — colonial and state government records from 1638 forward: legislative petitions, military records, colonial land evidences, the state censuses, and the open vital records transferred from the Department of Health. Its holdings are described in the online catalog.
• Rhode Island State Library (Providence) — the session laws, acts and resolves, and legislative journals of the General Assembly, with state publications and reports.
• Rhode Island Judicial Records Center (Pawtucket) — the historic records of the colonial and state courts, roughly 1645 to 1900, including civil and criminal case files, divorces, and naturalizations granted in the state courts.
• Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence) — the largest manuscript, newspaper, and genealogical collection in the state, including the 1865 state census manuscripts, the New England Yearly Meeting collection of Quaker records, and microfilmed town probate and land records.
• Rhode Island Genealogical Society — publisher of Rhode Island Roots and of indexes and abstracts to the town records.
• Providence Public Library — Rhode Island special collections, city directories, newspapers, and maritime material.
• Providence City Archives — the city’s council, land, probate, and vital records.
• John Hay Library at Brown University — rare books, manuscripts, and Rhode Island collections; the neighboring John Carter Brown Library holds early printed sources and maps of the Americas.
• Newport Historical Society — Newport manuscripts, church registers, and colonial town records; the Redwood Library and Athenaeum holds early Newport imprints and family papers.
• National Archives at Boston — the federal court, naturalization, passenger-arrival, census, and military records for Rhode Island.
• American Ancestors (New England Historic Genealogical Society) — published New England vital, church, and town records, with Rhode Island cemetery, census, and periodical databases.
• American-French Genealogical Society (Woonsocket) — the leading repository for the state’s French-Canadian families, with parish registers, repertoires, and a research library.
• Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and the Center for Reconciliation — the documentary history of African-heritage Rhode Islanders and of the state’s role in the slave trade.
• Tomaquag Museum — the state’s Indigenous-led museum and archive, documenting the Narragansett and the other peoples of southern New England.
• Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association — congregational, community, and cemetery records for the state’s Jewish families; Touro Synagogue at Newport, dedicated in 1763, is a National Historic Site.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive Rhode Island microfilm and digital collections, and the town and city clerks — who hold the original deeds, probate files, and vital records — together with local historical societies, keep the records of their own communities.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized Rhode Island records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($). Because so many originals remain in town halls, the online indexes are best used as finding aids that point back to the town clerk or the State Archives.

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of Rhode Island town, vital, land, probate, court, and naturalization records.
• Ancestry ($) — extensive Rhode Island vital, census, probate, military, naturalization, and directory collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — Rhode Island birth, marriage, and death collections and New England immigration records.
• Findmypast ($) — Rhode Island births and baptisms, deaths and burials, and church records.
• American Ancestors ($) — the Arnold vital records, the Rhode Island historical cemeteries database, the state census collection, and Rhode Island Roots.
• Rhode Island State Archives online collections — free; digitized vital records, state censuses, military records, and city and town directories.
• Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Database — free; a statewide transcription of gravestones and burials in the state’s historic cemeteries, maintained for the Rhode Island Advisory Commission on Historical Cemeteries and added to continually by volunteers.
• Chronicling America — free; the Library of Congress newspaper archive, including digitized Rhode Island titles.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized colonial records, town records, local histories, and law books.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.

Law and Government

Rhode Island’s colonial and state laws explain the jurisdictions and record-keeping practices that produced its genealogical records, and the printed colonial records are themselves full of names — admissions of freemen, land grants, petitions, and acts touching individuals. Most of the foundational volumes are digitized and free to read.

• Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England (John Russell Bartlett, ten volumes, 1636–1792) — the acts and proceedings of the General Assembly, with the text of the 1663 Royal Charter printed in the first volume; free on the Internet Archive and on HathiTrust.
• The Early Records of the Town of Providence (twenty-one volumes) — town meeting minutes, deeds, wills, and vital entries from the founding of the town; free on the Internet Archive.
• The acts and resolves and the annual session laws of the General Assembly, together with the colonial digests and revisions of the laws issued through the eighteenth century, are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust; the Rhode Island State Library holds the printed series.
• Petitions to the General Assembly (1725–1867): the Assembly sat as a general court, granting divorces and name changes, hearing land and estate matters, and acting on claims for military service. The petitions are at the Rhode Island State Archives and on microfilm at the FamilySearch Library, and they are among the most productive and least used Rhode Island sources.
• The 1663 Charter remained the frame of government until the Dorr Rebellion of 1841–1842 forced the adoption of the 1843 constitution and a broadened franchise; the suffrage, voter, and militia records generated by that struggle are at the State Archives.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Rhode Island towns were recording births, marriages, and deaths from the 1600s, and a law of 1698 required every birth, marriage, and death to be entered with the town clerk. Statewide civil registration began on January 1, 1853, under an act of 1850 as amended in 1852. The result is an unusually early body of town registers behind an early statewide series — but compliance in the first decades was uneven, so the town books and church registers remain indispensable.

Where the records are held. Birth and marriage records become public at 100 years old and death records at 50 years old; the open records are transferred to the Rhode Island State Archives, which has digitized them and continues to add to the collection as further records reach the statutory age. More recent records are held by the Rhode Island Department of Health and by the clerk of the town or city where the event occurred. A fee applies for certified copies.

• Town registers (1630–1945): Rhode Island Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records — free index and images on FamilySearch, and the single most important online collection for the state.
• Vital Record of Rhode Island, 1636–1850: James N. Arnold’s twenty-one-volume published series, arranged by county, town, church, and newspaper, is the foundational printed source; free as digitized volumes on FamilySearch and the Internet Archive, and searchable at American Ancestors ($).
• Births: Rhode Island Birth Index, 1636–1930 ($), with images in Rhode Island Birth Registrations, 1846–1921 ($); also on MyHeritage ($) for 1834–1922, and free on FamilySearch (state births index, 1819 and 1852–1900).
• Marriages: Rhode Island Marriages Index, 1851–1920 ($), with images in Rhode Island Marriage Registrations, 1853–1922 ($); also on MyHeritage ($) for 1850–1922, with a free town marriages index, 1639–1932, on FamilySearch.
• Deaths: Rhode Island Death Index, 1630–1930 ($), with images in Rhode Island Death Registrations and Records, 1852–1946 ($); also on MyHeritage ($) for 1850–1946, with a free town deaths and burials index, 1639–1932, on FamilySearch.
• Combined indexes: Rhode Island Vital Extracts, 1636–1899 ($) draws together the Arnold volumes and town registers, and Rhode Island Vital Records, 1846–1953 is a free index and images on FamilySearch.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped Rhode Island’s jurisdictions and records:

• 1636 — Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts, founds Providence on land granted by the Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi.
• 1638 — Anne Hutchinson, William Coddington, and their followers settle Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island.
• 1639 — Newport is founded at the southern end of Aquidneck Island.
• 1642–1643 — Samuel Gorton and his company settle Shawomet, later renamed Warwick.
• 1644 — A parliamentary patent unites Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport.
• 1647 — The towns meet and adopt a code of laws; the General Court of Trials is established.
• 1663 — Charles II grants the Royal Charter, guaranteeing liberty of conscience; it remains the frame of government until 1843.
• 1675–1676 — King Philip’s War. The Great Swamp Fight of December 1675 is fought in South Kingstown, and Providence is burned in March 1676; many of the earliest town records are lost or damaged.
• 1698 — An act requires births, marriages, and deaths to be registered with the town clerk.
• 1703 — Providence and Rhode Island counties are created, and the long boundary dispute with Connecticut over the Narragansett country is settled.
• 1729 — Rhode Island County is renamed Newport, and King’s County — later Washington — is set off from Providence County.
• 1747 — Bristol, Warren, Cumberland, Tiverton, and Little Compton pass from Massachusetts to Rhode Island under the royal boundary settlement; records of those towns from before this date remain in Massachusetts.
• 1750 — Kent County, the last of the five, is set off from Providence County.
• 1763 — Touro Synagogue is dedicated at Newport.
• 1764 — The college later known as Brown University is chartered.
• 1772 — Rhode Islanders burn the British revenue schooner Gaspee in Narragansett Bay.
• 1776 — On May 4 the General Assembly renounces allegiance to the Crown, the first colony to do so.
• 1776–1779 — The British occupy Newport. On the evacuation in October 1779 the town’s records — vital, probate, land, and council records — are shipped out by sea and go down with the vessel; recovered in 1782, many are water-damaged or illegible.
• 1778 — The Battle of Rhode Island is fought on Aquidneck Island; the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which enlisted Black and Indigenous soldiers, serves in the engagement.
• 1784 — A gradual emancipation act provides that children born to enslaved mothers after March 1 are born free.
• 1790 — On May 29 Rhode Island ratifies the U.S. Constitution, the thirteenth and last of the original states to do so.
• 1793 — Samuel Slater’s water-powered mill at Pawtucket begins spinning cotton, launching the textile industry that will draw generations of immigrants.
• 1824 — The first Providence city directory is published.
• 1841–1842 — The Dorr Rebellion challenges the property qualification for voting under the old Charter.
• 1843 — A new state constitution takes effect, replacing the 1663 Charter and broadening the franchise.
• 1853 — Statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths begins on January 1.
• 1861–1865 — The Civil War; Rhode Island raises infantry, cavalry, artillery, and a regiment of Black troops.
• 1860s–1920s — French-Canadian, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Cape Verdean immigration transforms the mill cities of the Blackstone and Pawtuxet valleys.
• 1900 — Providence becomes the sole capital and the rotating sessions of the General Assembly come to an end.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses were taken every ten years from 1790 through 1950, and Rhode Island appears in all of them, though the 1890 population schedules were almost entirely destroyed. They are free on FamilySearch and on the National Archives 1950 census site, and are also searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

Colonial and Revolutionary enumerations. Several early lists name individuals and have been published with indexes, making them far more accessible than their age suggests:

• Freemen’s lists, 1747–1755: a register of the men admitted as freemen — that is, qualified to vote — town by town; published in book form and useful as a census substitute.
• 1774 colony census: ordered by the General Assembly, it names the head of each household and counts the other members by sex and by age above and below sixteen, with the Indian and Black members of the household counted separately. It survives for every town but New Shoreham and was published by John Russell Bartlett; indexed on Ancestry ($).
• 1777 military census: an enumeration of every male sixteen and older, recording whether each was able to bear arms and noting those exempt as Quakers, Indians, or Black. Returns are missing for the towns then held by the British. It is at the State Archives, was published as The Rhode Island 1777 Military Census, and is indexed with images on Ancestry ($).
• 1782 state census: names the head of each household and counts the other residents by age, sex, and race; a few town returns are lost. Published as the Rhode Island 1782 Census.
• Compiled index: Rhode Island Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1740–1890 ($) searches many of these early lists together.

State censuses. Rhode Island took a census of its own every ten years on the half-decade from 1865 through 1935, so that with the federal series a family can be placed about every five years. The 1895 returns no longer survive except for the Town of Bristol’s copy, which is held by the Bristol town clerk. The 1865 manuscripts are at the Rhode Island Historical Society and the remainder are at the State Archives; images and an index to the whole series are on Ancestry ($) and at American Ancestors ($). What each census records varies by year:

• 1865: the first state census, taken just after the Civil War; it names every person and is every-name indexed.
• 1875: names every person; the index was prepared by volunteers working with the Rhode Island Genealogical Society.
• 1885: names every person, but is arranged by town, then by sex, then alphabetically by the first letter of the surname — not by household — so families must be reassembled from the separate entries. Free index and images on FamilySearch.
• 1895: taken, but the returns are lost apart from the Bristol copy.
• 1905: names every person and adds relationship to the head of household, birthplace, and immigration and naturalization detail. Free index and images on FamilySearch.
• 1915: names every person, with the same questions on birthplace, immigration, and naturalization. Free index and images on FamilySearch.
• 1925: names every person, with immigration and naturalization detail. Free index and images on FamilySearch.
• 1935: the last of the state censuses. Free index and images on FamilySearch.

Substitutes. Where a census is missing, city and town directories are the best way to place a family in a given year; Providence directories begin in 1824, the State Archives holds directories from that year forward, and images are on Ancestry ($). Tax lists and the freemen’s lists serve the same purpose for the colonial period, and the Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Database is a free substitute for the years when no enumeration survives.

Church Records

Rhode Island was founded on liberty of conscience, so no church was ever established by law and no single denomination dominates. That makes church records both varied and essential: before 1853 they are frequently the only record of a birth, marriage, or death, and they are scattered among the congregations, the denominational archives, and the Historical Society.

• Baptist. The First Baptist Church in America was gathered at Providence in 1638, and Baptist congregations spread through the colony; their registers are among the earliest kept anywhere in the region.
• Quaker (Society of Friends). Friends were numerous and influential, above all at Newport and in the Narragansett towns, and their meeting records — births, marriages, deaths, removals, and disownments — are unusually complete and reliable. The New England Yearly Meeting collection is at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and the meeting records are digitized in U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681–1935 ($).
• Anglican and Episcopal. Trinity Church at Newport dates from 1698 and St. Paul’s in the Narragansett country from 1707; the records of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island are deposited at the University of Rhode Island.
• Congregational. Congregational churches were gathered in Providence and the mainland towns from the early eighteenth century; their registers are held by the congregations and by the Historical Society.
• Roman Catholic. The Diocese of Providence covers the entire state and served its Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, Portuguese, and Cape Verdean parishioners. Sacramental registers of baptism and marriage remain with the individual parishes, while the Diocese of Providence Archives holds the diocesan records. Catholic burials from 1880 onward are indexed on Ancestry ($).
• Jewish. The Newport congregation dates from the 1650s and dedicated Touro Synagogue in 1763; the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association holds congregational, community, and cemetery records.
• Online. Rhode Island Town Births and Baptisms Index, 1639–1932 and Rhode Island Town Deaths and Burials Index, 1639–1932 are free on FamilySearch and draw on church as well as town registers, and Rhode Island Church Records, 1671–1899 ($) is indexed at Findmypast.

Court Records

Rhode Island’s courts changed names and jurisdictions repeatedly, and their records reach well beyond lawsuits into divorce, naturalization, debt, and the affairs of families. One point governs everything below: probate is not a court function in Rhode Island — it belongs to the town council — so wills and estates are not found among these records.

• General Court of Trials, 1647 to 1729 — the colony’s single trial court, sitting for the whole colony. Its earliest surviving records are published as the records of the Court of Trials of the Colony of Providence Plantations, 1647–1662, with images on Ancestry ($).
• Superior Court of Judicature, from 1729 — the colony’s higher court, replaced in 1798 by the Supreme Judicial Court, which became the Supreme Court in 1843.
• Court of Common Pleas, from 1729 — the county-level civil court, whose work later passed to the modern Superior Court.
• District Courts, from the 1790s — minor criminal matters and small civil suits, with county-wide jurisdiction.
• Divorce — before the courts assumed the jurisdiction, divorces were granted by the General Assembly on petition; those petitions are at the State Archives, and the later divorce files are among the court records.
• Where the records are: the Rhode Island Judicial Records Center at Pawtucket holds the colonial and state court records, roughly 1645 to 1900, including the county court files before 1901 and the naturalizations granted in the state courts.

Ethnic/Minority Records

A small territory holds an unusually layered population — Indigenous nations, a colonial economy deeply entangled with the slave trade, and successive waves of mill immigration. Knowing where a community settled points directly to the records most likely to document a family.

• Indigenous peoples. The Narragansett held most of the mainland west of the bay, with the Niantic along the southern shore, the Wampanoag to the east, and the Nipmuc in the northwest. King Philip’s War of 1675–1676 devastated these communities, and the Narragansett were afterward placed under state guardianship, which generated rolls, guardianship accounts, and land records now at the Rhode Island State Archives. The Narragansett Indian Tribe and the Tomaquag Museum are the principal points of research.
• African Americans. Newport and Bristol merchants — the DeWolf family of Bristol above all — made Rhode Island a leading American carrier in the transatlantic slave trade, and the colony held a substantial enslaved population concentrated in Newport and on the Narragansett plantations. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment enlisted Black and Indigenous men during the Revolution, and the gradual emancipation act of 1784 began the long end of slavery. Town council records (which registered manumissions), church registers, and the censuses are the core sources; the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, the Center for Reconciliation, and Brown University’s Slavery and Justice resources gather the documentary history.
• French-Canadians. The largest immigrant community in the state, drawn from Quebec to the textile mills of Woonsocket, Central Falls, Pawtucket, and the Blackstone Valley from the 1860s onward. The American-French Genealogical Society at Woonsocket is the leading repository; Quebec parish registers, the Drouin collection, and the border-crossing records carry these families back across the line.
• Irish. Present from the colonial period and arriving in force after the Famine of the 1840s, the Irish settled in Providence and the mill towns; Catholic parish and cemetery records are the essential sources.
• Italians. Federal Hill in Providence became the center of Italian settlement from the 1880s, with communities also in Johnston and Cranston; parish registers and naturalization files are the principal records.
• Portuguese and Cape Verdeans. Whaling and the maritime trades brought Portuguese and Cape Verdean families to Narragansett Bay from the early nineteenth century; they settled at Fox Point in Providence, and in East Providence, Bristol, and Tiverton. Parish registers, naturalization files, and the passenger arrivals at the bay ports document them.
• Jewish. The Newport congregation dates from the 1650s, and the eastern-European migration after 1880 settled in Providence. The Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association holds the community’s congregational, cemetery, and organizational records, and Touro Synagogue at Newport is a National Historic Site.
• Swedish, Polish, Armenian, and other communities formed around the mills and are documented in congregational registers, fraternal-society records, and naturalization files.

Immigration and Naturalization

Rhode Island had its own customs districts and its ports received vessels directly, but a great many of the state’s immigrants landed elsewhere and came on to the mills afterward, so the passenger record is only part of the story. Naturalization is very often the more productive line of inquiry.

• Passenger arrivals. Rhode Island Passenger Lists, 1798–1808 and 1820–1872 ($) covers the port of Providence, and a companion set abstracted by Maureen Taylor covers Providence with the ports of Bristol and Warren, 1798–1871 ($). Twentieth-century arrivals at Providence are held by the National Archives at Boston.
• Regional arrivals. New England Passenger and Crew Lists, 1829–1957 ($) covers the region’s ports together.
• Canadian border crossings. The St. Albans records, from 1895, document the French-Canadians who crossed into New England by rail and road; indexed on MyHeritage ($) and free on FamilySearch.

Naturalization. Before 1906 any court of record — federal, state, or county — could naturalize, so Rhode Island naturalizations are scattered between the state courts and the federal court; after 1906 the process was federalized and the paperwork becomes far more informative, naming the immigrant’s birthplace, vessel, and family. State-court naturalizations are at the Rhode Island Judicial Records Center, and the federal naturalizations are at the National Archives at Boston.

• Rhode Island State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1802–1945 ($) — the broadest single index and image set for the state.
• Rhode Island Indexes to Naturalization Records, 1890–1992 ($) — an index to the petitions filed in the federal courts.
• Rhode Island Naturalization Records, 1907–1991 and Rhode Island District Court Naturalization Indexes, 1906–1991 — free index and images on FamilySearch.
• U.S. Naturalization Records, New England, 1791–1906 ($) — the card index compiled to the region’s early naturalization petitions.

Land Records

As a state-land state, Rhode Island granted its own land and no federal land office ever operated here, so there are no General Land Office records. Title descended from the 1644 patent and the 1663 Charter to the colony, and from the colony to the town proprietors, who divided the common land among themselves and their successors. Two rules follow, and both are essential: deeds are recorded by the town or city clerk and never by a county, and the proprietors’ records document the first ownership of nearly every parcel.

Where the records are kept.

• Town level: deeds, mortgages, and the proprietors’ records are recorded and held by the town or city clerk, beginning at the founding of each town. There are no county deed offices anywhere in the state.
• Rhode Island State Archives: the colony’s own land evidences — the early volumes of grants, confirmations, and conveyances — together with survey, boundary, and Indian deed records.
• Published abstracts: Rhode Island Land Evidences, Volume I, 1648–1696, abstracted by Dorothy Worthington, is free to read and is the standard entry into the colonial evidences.

The purchases and the great tracts. Rhode Island was assembled parcel by parcel from the Narragansett and Wampanoag sachems, and knowing which purchase a farm fell within tells you which body of records to open.

• The Providence Purchase (1636): Roger Williams obtained the land at the head of Narragansett Bay from the sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi and conveyed shares to his associates. The original and later divisions are recorded in the Early Records of the Town of Providence.
• The Pawtuxet Purchase: the southern portion of the Providence lands, held by a separate group of proprietors whose long disputes with Providence run through the early town records.
• The Aquidneck Purchase (1638): Coddington and his associates bought Aquidneck Island from the same sachems; the island’s land was then divided by the proprietors of Portsmouth and of Newport.
• The Shawomet (Warwick) Purchase (1642): Samuel Gorton bought Shawomet from the sachem Miantonomi, and the resulting title dispute shaped the town’s early records.
• The Pettaquamscutt Purchase (1657–1658): a company of Newport and Boston men bought a large tract in the Narragansett country, in present-day South Kingstown and Narragansett; its records are the foundation of land title there.
• The Misquamicut Purchase (1660s): the lands in the southwestern corner of the colony, granted to men who had served in the Pequot War, became Westerly.
• The Atherton Company and the Narragansett country: Humphrey Atherton’s syndicate bought and mortgaged large Narragansett tracts in the 1650s and 1660s, touching off a jurisdictional struggle in which the royal commissioners named the disputed area the King’s Province in 1665; the boundary was not finally settled until 1703. The tangled titles that resulted are the reason so much early Narragansett land material sits in colony records rather than town books.
• The East Greenwich grants (1677): the colony granted land to veterans of King Philip’s War, laying out the town of East Greenwich.
• The eastern towns (1747): Bristol, Warren, Cumberland, Tiverton, and Little Compton came to Rhode Island from Massachusetts under the royal boundary settlement. Their earlier deeds and proprietors’ records were made under Massachusetts jurisdiction and remain in Massachusetts custody, so research in those towns before 1747 begins there.

Online, the town land records are digitized and listed town by town in the FamilySearch Catalog, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed deeds and proprietors’ records searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, witnesses, and abutting neighbors.

Military Records

Rhode Islanders served in every American conflict, and because the colony and the state raised, paid, and mustered their own troops, the State Archives holds a deep run of muster rolls, pay accounts, and service abstracts reaching back to the mid-1700s.

• Colonial wars: King Philip’s War (1675–1676), King George’s War, and the French and Indian War drew heavily on the colony’s militia. Rhode Island Colonial War Servicemen, 1740–1762 ($) indexes the men who served, and the published lists of soldiers and sailors in King George’s War, 1740–1748 ($) cover the Louisbourg expedition and the privateers.
• Revolution: the Rhode Island Revolutionary War Collection, 1775–1823 ($) brings together muster rolls, pay records, and related papers, and the Rhode Island Military Census of 1777 ($) lists every male sixteen and older. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which enlisted Black and Indigenous soldiers, fought at the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778.
• War of 1812 and the Dorr Rebellion: militia rolls and pay accounts are at the Rhode Island State Archives, which also holds the militia and suffrage records generated by the disturbances of 1841–1842.
• Civil War: Rhode Island raised infantry, cavalry, artillery, and a regiment of Black troops. The adjutant general’s published reports and the regimental histories are free on the Internet Archive, Union service records are free on FamilySearch, and the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Database is a free index to the state’s soldiers.
• World Wars: Rhode Island World War I Portraits, 1914–1918 ($) supplements the World War I draft registration cards on Ancestry ($), and the Rhode Island World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1940–1947 are free on FamilySearch.

Probate Records

This is the point at which Rhode Island research most often goes astray. Probate is a town function, not a county function. Wills, administrations, inventories, and guardianships were proved and recorded by the town council sitting as a court of probate — and, in the cities, by a probate court — and the record books and loose files are held by the town or city clerk. There is no county probate office and no statewide probate court.

• What survives: each town’s probate records begin at or soon after the town’s founding and run in a continuous series of record books, with the original loose papers often filed separately. The estate file — petition, will or administration, bond, inventory, and account — usually names the widow, the children, and their spouses.
• Records lost: Newport’s probate records were among those carried off at the British evacuation in 1779 and damaged when the vessel sank, and early Providence material was lost in the burning of the town in 1676.
• Where to look: the Rhode Island Historical Society holds microfilmed probate records and wills for many of the towns, and the FamilySearch Catalog lists the microfilmed and digitized town probate volumes town by town.
• Published abstracts: the Rhode Island Genealogical Register abstracts wills from the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth and remains the fastest route into the early probates.
• Online: Rhode Island Wills and Probate Records, 1582–1932 ($) is name-searchable across the towns, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate files searchable by every name they contain.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family in a particular town in a particular year, and in a state where the town is the unit of record they are among the most useful substitutes when a census or a deed is missing. Several consecutive years can show when a young man came of age, when a household moved away, and when an estate passed to heirs.

• Colony rate lists: the General Assembly levied rates on the towns, which assessed and collected them; the colony’s rate lists and the towns’ assessments survive from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at the Rhode Island State Archives and among the town records.
• Town tax and valuation lists: held by the town and city clerks, with many volumes microfilmed and listed in the FamilySearch Catalog; the Rhode Island Historical Society holds others among its town record collections.
• Freemen’s lists, 1747–1755: a register of the men qualified to vote, resting on a property qualification and therefore serving as both a tax and a census substitute; published in book form.
• U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862–1918 ($) — the Civil War–era and later federal income, license, and luxury taxes; the Rhode Island lists are also free on FamilySearch.