Stephen Hopkins was a Founding Father of the United States, a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and a signer of the Continental Association and Declaration of Independence. He was from a prominent Rhode Island family, the grandson of William Hopkins who was a prominent colonial politician. His great-grandfather Thomas Hopkins was an original settler of Providence Plantations, sailing from England in 1635 with his cousin Benedict Arnold who became the first governor of the Rhode Island colony under the Royal Charter of 1663.
The Gaspee Affair was a significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a Royal Navy customs schooner that enforced the Navigation Acts around Newport, Rhode Island in 1772. It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet boat Hannah on June 9 near Gaspee Point in Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown I attacked, boarded, and burned the Gaspee to the waterline.
Arthur Fenner was an American politician who served as the fourth Governor of Rhode Island from 1790 until his death in 1805. He has the seventh longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,641 days. Fenner was a prominent Country Party (Anti-federalist) leader. Around 1764, Fenner joined several others as a petitioner for the chartering of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
William West was an American militia general in the American Revolutionary War, Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, Deputy Governor of Rhode Island, and anti-federalist leader. West also was a party in the first U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1791, West v. Barnes.
Nicholas Cooke was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations during the American Revolutionary War, and after Rhode Island became a state, he continued in this position to become the first Governor of the State of Rhode Island. Born in the maritime town of Providence, he early in life followed the sea, eventually becoming a Captain of ships. This occupation led him to become a slave trader, becoming highly successful in this endeavor, and he ran a distillery and rope-making business as well. He is depicted as one of the affluent merchants in John Greenwood's satirical painting from the 1750s entitled Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam.
John Easton (1624–1705) was a political leader in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, devoting decades to public service before eventually becoming governor of the colony. Born in Hampshire, England, he sailed to New England with his widowed father and older brother, settling in Ipswich and Newbury in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As a supporter of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy, his father was exiled, and settled in Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island with many other Hutchinson supporters. Here there was discord among the leaders of the settlement, and his father followed William Coddington to the south end of the island where they established the town of Newport. The younger Easton remained in Newport the remainder of his life, where he became involved in civil affairs before the age of 30.
Joseph Wanton Sr. was a merchant and governor in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations from 1769 to 1775. Not wanting to go to war with Britain, he has been branded as a Loyalist, but he remained neutral during the war, and he and his property were not disturbed.
Henry Bull (1610–1694) was an early colonial Governor of Rhode Island, serving for two separate terms, one before and one after the tenure of Edmund Andros under the Dominion of New England. Sailing from England as a young man, Bull first settled in Roxbury in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but soon became a follower of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson, and was excommunicated from the Roxbury church. With many other followers of Hutchinson, he signed the Portsmouth Compact, and settled on Aquidneck Island in the Narragansett Bay. Within a year of arriving there, he and others followed William Coddington to the south end of the island where they established the town of Newport.
John Wanton was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, serving for six consecutive terms from 1734 to 1740. He was the son of Edward Wanton who was a ship builder, and who became a Quaker after witnessing the persecution of these people, also becoming a preacher of that religion. Edward Wanton had lived in York, Maine; Boston, Massachusetts; and Scituate, Massachusetts before coming to Rhode Island.
William Greene Sr. was a governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He was a clerk of the county court in Providence, deputy from Warwick, speaker of the Rhode Island Assembly, and then deputy governor from 1740 to 1743. He became governor for the first time in 1743 and served four separate terms for a total of 11 years, and died while in office during his final term.
Joseph Jenckes was a deputy governor and governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
Thomas Fry was a deputy governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The son of Thomas and Mary Fry of Newport and East Greenwich in the Rhode Island colony, he was a glazier by trade. He became a freeman of East Greenwich in 1690, aged about 24, and began a long career of civil service in 1696 when he became a deputy, serving in that role during most years over a period of three and a half decades. From 1698 to 1704 he was Justice of the Peace, he later served as Clerk of the Assembly for several years, and he was Speaker of the House of Deputies for ten years between 1713 and 1730. In 1707 he was appointed one of the commissioners to settle with Massachusetts the northern boundary of Rhode Island, and two years later he was appointed to a committee to run lines between the two colonies. In 1715, he and Andrew Harris were appointed by the Assembly to transcribe and to prepare for the press all the laws of the colony, and in 1719 he was allowed ten pounds for his efforts to get the laws printed.
George Hazard was a deputy governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
William Robinson was a deputy governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
Jonathan Nichols Jr. was a deputy governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He was the son of former Deputy Governor Jonathan Nichols Sr. and Elizabeth Lawton. Nichols became Deputy Governor in November 1753 when his predecessor, Joseph Whipple III, resigned amid the collapse of his personal fortune, and Nichols completed his term. In 1755 Nichols was again selected as Deputy Governor, completing his first one-year term, then dying during his second year in office.
Frances Latham (1610–1677), was a colonial American woman who settled in Rhode Island, and is known as "the Mother of Governors." Having been widowed twice, she had three husbands, and became the ancestor of at least ten governors and three deputy/lieutenant governors, and is related by marriage to an additional six governors and one deputy governor.
Richard Scott (1605–1679) was an early settler of Providence Plantations in what became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He married Katherine Marbury, the daughter of Reverend Francis Marbury and sister of Puritan dissident Anne Hutchinson. The couple emigrated from Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, England with an infant child to the Massachusetts Bay Colony where he joined the Boston church in August 1634. By 1637, he was in Providence signing an agreement, and he and his wife both became Baptists for a time. By the mid-1650s, the Quaker religion had taken hold on Rhode Island, and Scott became the first Quaker in Providence.
