RHODE ISLAND[1]
For organic acts relating to the land now included within Rhode Island see in other parts of this work:
- Charter of Virginia, 1606 (Virginia, p. 3783).
- Council for New England, 1620 (Massachusetts, p. 1827).
- Commission of Andros, 1688 (Massachusetts, p. 1863).
PLANTATION AGREEMENT AT PROVIDENCE—AUGUST 27–SEPTEMBER 6, 1640[2]
Wee, Robert Coles, Chad Browne, William Harris, and John Warner, being freely chosen by the consent of our loving friends and neighbors the Inhabitants of this Towne of Providence, having many differences amongst us, they being freely willing and also bound themselves to stand to our Arbitration in all differences amongst us to rest contented in our determination, being so betrusted we have seriously and carefully indeavoured to weigh and consider all those differences, being desirous to bringe to unity and peace, although our abilities are farr short in the due examination of such weighty things, yet so farre as we conceive in laying all things together we have gone the fairest and the equallest way to produce our peace.
1. Agreed, We have with one consent agreed that in the parting those particular properties which some of our friends and neighbors have in Patuxit, from the general Common of our towne of Providence, to run uppon a streight line from a fresh spring being in the Gulley, at the head of that cove running by that point of land called Saxafras unto the towne of Mashipawog, to an oake tree standing neere unto the corn field, being at this time the nearest corn field unto Patuxit, the oake tree having four marks with an axe, till some other land marke be set for a certaine bound. Also, we agree that if any meadow ground lyeing and joineing to that Meadow, that borders uppon the River of Patuxit come within the aforesaid line, which will not come within a streight line from long Cove to the marked tree, then for that meadow to belong to Pawtuxit, and so beyond the towne of Mashipawog from the oake tree between the two fresh Rivers Pawtuxit and Wanasquatucket of an even Distance.
- ↑ Rhode Island was first settled in 1636 by Roger Williams and other immigrants who had suffered persecution in Massachusetts, and who established at Providence “a pure democracy, which for the first time guarded jealously the rights of conscience by ignoring any power in the body politic to interfere with those matters that alone concern man and his Maker.”—Arnold.
- ↑ Text in Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England. (Providence, 1856), Vol. I, pp. 27–31.
