Roger Williams
c. 1603 to 1683
Founder of Providence and champion of religious liberty
Founders and leaders
Roger Williams was a Puritan minister banished from Massachusetts in 1635 for arguing that the state had no business in a person's conscience. In 1636 he founded Providence as a refuge, and the colony of Rhode Island went on to write religious freedom into its founding charter, taking in Quakers, Jews and Baptists the Puritans would not tolerate. In 1638 he founded the First Baptist Church in America.
The strangest relic of him is a tree root. When his grave was opened in 1860, the root of an apple tree was found to have grown along the shape of a body, and the Rhode Island Historical Society has kept it ever since. On the Brown walk you hear how his colony shaped the college: Brown wrote religious liberty into its founding charter, the story told at University Hall.
This story has not been written in your language yet, so it is shown in English.
Where to meet them
Providence
- Van Wickle GatesStop 1, Brown, through the Van Wickle Gates
- University HallStop 2, Brown, through the Van Wickle Gates
- Soldiers Memorial GateStop 10, Brown, through the Van Wickle Gates