William Coddington - Death, Family and Legacy

Death, Family and Legacy

Coddington died in office on 1 November 1678 and is buried in the Coddington Cemetery, Rhode Island Historic Cemetery, Newport No. 9, on Farewell Street in Newport, where several other colonial governors are also buried. His grave is marked not only with the original marker, but a taller monument erected some years after his death. His oldest son by his third marriage, William Coddington, Jr. was the governor of the colony for two terms from 1683 to 1685. His son, Nathaniel, married Susanna Hutchinson, a daughter of Edward Hutchinson and a granddaughter of William and Anne Hutchinson. His daughter, Mary, married Peleg Sanford, a colonial governor from 1680 to 1683, and the son of an earlier governor, John Sanford. His grandson William Coddington, the son of Nathaniel, married Content Arnold, the daughter of Benedict and Mary (Turner) Arnold, and granddaughter of Governor Benedict Arnold. The portrait often ascribed to Coddington actually portrays this grandson, who was very active in colonial affairs, but never a governor.

Coddington was usually at odds with Roger Williams, who described him in a letter, several years after the founding of Portsmouth (1638) as, "...a worldly man, a selfish man, nothing for public, but all for himself and private..." While highly critical of Coddington for obtaining a commission to govern Aquidneck Island separately from Providence and Warwick, Rhode Island historian and Lieutenant Governor Samuel G. Arnold had this to say of him: "He was a man of vigorous intellect, of strong passions, earnest in whatever he undertood, and self-reliant in all his actions." Historian Thomas Bicknell wrote, "...he rose to the achievement of a great personal and political victory, when foes became friends, his policy of statecraft vindicated, and Rhode Island Colony on Aquidneck assumed the position for which he had so stoutly contended and so shamefully suffered." A harbor, street, cemetery, and apartment complex in Newport bear his name, and a restaurant in Middletown, Rhode Island, the Coddington Brewery, is named for him.