Roger Williams (theologian) - Death

Death

Williams died between January and March 1683 and was buried on his own property. Fifty years later, his house had collapsed into the cellar and the location of his grave had been forgotten. In 1860, Zachariah Allen sought to locate his remains, but found nothing. In the grave that Allen thought was that of Williams, he found the apple tree root, but little else. Some dirt from the hole was placed in the Randall family mausoleum in the North Burial Ground. In anticipation of the 300th anniversary of the founding of Providence, the dirt was retrieved from the mausoleum and placed in an urn and kept at the Rhode Island Historical Society until a proper monument was erected at Prospect Terrace Park in Providence. The actual deposit of the “dust from the grave of Roger Williams” did not occur until 1939 when the WPA finished the monument. The apple tree root is now regarded as a curio and kept by the Rhode Island Historical Society at the John Brown House Museum.