Rhode Island
Coggeshall was soon a leader in Newport, and was granted 400 acres (1.6 km2) of land on the south side of the town, along present-day Bellevue Avenue. In the first election in 1638, he was elected as treasurer, and in 1640 he became an assistant to the governor, which position he held continuously until 1647. Coggeshall had a good working relationship with Roger Williams, and this relationship helped the four towns of Portsmouth, Newport, Providence and Warwick to unite and form the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in the Spring of 1647, under the patent that Williams had obtained from the crown in 1644. In May 1647 Coggeshall was elected the chief magistrate of the four-town colony being given the title of President. He had four assistants, one from each town, a general recorder and a treasurer. Under his administration the courts of justice were established and the first complete code of laws was written. Rhode Island historian and Lieutenant Governor Samuel G. Arnold made this tribute to the digest of statutes enacted under Coggeshall in 1647:
For simplicity of diction, unencumbered as it is by the superfluous verbiage that clothes our modern statutes in learned obscurity; for breadth of comprehension, embracing as it does the foundation of the whole body of law, on every subject, which has since been adopted; and for vigor and originality of thought and boldness of expression, as well as for the vast significance and the brilliant triumph of the principles it embodies, the Digest of 1647 presents a model of legislation which has never been surpassed.
— Samuel G. Arnold, writing of the laws established during Coggeshall's administration
Coggeshall was in office only briefly, dying of an illness in Newport on 27 November 1647 and being buried on his own property in Newport. While he is noted for being the first president of the united colony of four towns, he is also noted for helping to establish the three towns of Boston, Portsmouth, and Newport, and the two colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island.
Read more about this topic: John Coggeshall
Famous quotes containing the word island:
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)