On this day, all the way back in 1635, Roger Williams—the eventual founder of Rhode Island—was banished from Massachusetts.
Williams, born sometime around 1603, was a robust supporter of religious freedom and a prominent voice against the confiscation of lands from Native Americans. It was those strong moral convictions that got him kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Puritan convert had left England after losing faith in the Church of England, sailing to the Americas in 1630. Williams and his wife settled in Massachusetts, first in Boston and later in Salem. Eventually he found himself in Plymouth working as a preacher, something he’d not been allowed to do in other towns because of his political views.
His radical preaching was ultimately noticed by the authorities, who charged him with sedition and heresy for sharing “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions.” So, Williams went to the Narragansett Tribe (one of the Native American groups he’d built relationships with while in Plymouth), bought some land, and founded a town called Providence.
In his new colony, titled Rhode Island, he created a government built on guaranteeing religious liberty and separation of church and state. It ended up being the refuge in the North American colonies for Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and other minorities. Nearly a century after his death in 1683, his work would be a reference point for some of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson.
For more on Roger Williams, check out these articles on the websites of the National Park Service and the Library of Congress.
