Founding and Colonial Era
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The area which is now Providence was first settled in June 1636 by prominent Baptist Roger Williams and other religious exiles. It was one of the original Thirteen Colonies of the United States. Williams had been exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his outspoken beliefs concerning distinction of state government and religion:
| โ | All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship | โ |
- โ Roger Williams
Williams secured a title from the Narragansett natives around this time and gave the city its present name. Williams also cultivated Providence Plantations as a refuge for persecuted religious dissenters, especially but not exclusively Baptists, as he himself had been exiled from Massachusetts. Baptist minister Chad Brown was a leading 17th century land owner in Providence and ancestor to the prominent Brown family and Nicholas Brown, Jr. for whom Brown University was later named. Providence Plantations was an agricultural and fishing community, though its lands were difficult to farm, and its borders were disputed with Connecticut and Massachusetts. During King Philip's War between the Wampanoag leader Metacomet (King Philip) and the English Colonists, the town of Providence was destroyed by a Native American coalition on March 29, 1676. Providence was one of two major English settlements burned to the ground - the other was Springfield, Massachusetts.
After the town was rebuilt, the economy expanded into more industrial and commercial activity. The outer lands of Providence Plantations, extending to the Massachusetts and Connecticut borders, were incorporated as Scituate, Glocester, and Smithfield in 1731. Later, Cranston, Johnston, and North Providence would also be carved out of Providence's municipal territory. By the 1760s, the population of the remaining urban core reached 4,000.
Read more about this topic: History Of Providence
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