War of Independence
Home Page #1
Albany to Yorktown &
The Gaspee Affair
Home Page #2 (linked): Battle of Rhode Island and Casualties of War
Home Page #3 (linked): War at Sea and First Baptist Church
Warning! None of the names below are attached to the gravestones! If someone comes along at a later date to add a gravestone ALPHABETICALLY, all of the names will shift to the wrong gravestones. Either re-do the galleries to attach names to gravestones, or add any new gravestone to the end of the gallery.
Rhode Island's Revolution
The roots of revolution run deep in Rhode Island, in some ways dating to the original settlement by Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson and other like-minded dissenters in the 1630s. Throughout the 18th century, many Rhode Islanders, especially those engaged in shipping, challenged British authority through tax evasion and smuggling, and often openly disregarded the law.
Rhode Island’s legislature sent Stephen Hopkins to the Albany Congress in 1754. The congress was called to discuss how to improve relations with the Iroquois and other Indian nations, and to consider a common defense against France. But it also was the first meeting of colonial representatives and it served as a precursor to the later Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and the First Continental Congress in 1774. Delegates debated Benjamin Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union, which called for a union of eleven colonies, represented in a new legislature that would have responsibility for relations with Indians. Hopkins and the other delegates adopted the plan, but the colonies’ legislatures rejected it.
Instead the colonies remained politically disunited during the ensuing French and Indian War (the Seven Years War), though wartime service in distinct colonial units, separate from British units, helped to develop a sense of American identity during that conflict. Simeon Thayer of Providence fought in Roger’s Rangers during the French and Indian War, and later would lead local militias in the revolution.
Unity came to the colonies when victorious Britain, in order to pay for the war and for some of the expense of maintaining its larger North American empire, introduced new and higher taxes on the colonists, most notably through the Revenue Act (1764), Stamp Act (1765), Townshend Acts (1767), and Tea Act (1773). Each of these measures significantly impacted life in the colony.
In October 1762, William, Sarah, and Katherine Goddard started the first newspaper in Providence, the Gazette and Country Journal. Through this medium, and through the publication of several pamphlets, including Stephen Hopkins’ famous Rights of the Colonies Examined in 1764, the Goddards kept Rhode Islanders informed of developments and opinion during the crucial decade of the 1760s. Men and women responded by joining organizations like the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty, which Freelove Fenner Jenckes founded in Providence.
FROM ALBANY TO YORKTOWN
(Image to the right is linked to the walking tour of the old website)
Fenner Angell
William Barton
Jeremiah Dexter
French Monument
Sarah and Mary Goddard
Charles Haskell
Stephen Hopkins
Esek Jillson
Sylvanus & Amey Martin
Samuel McClellan
Simeon Thayer
Nathaniel Greene Totten
The Violent Turn: The Burning of the Gaspée
The colony was an active participant in the opposition to the Stamp Act in particular, but the most notable revolutionary event that occurred in Rhode Island was the Gaspée Incident of July 1772, the result of nearly a decade of dispute between the British government and colonials who increasingly felt they were losing their liberties to a tyrannical and foreign power. With so many prominent Rhode Islanders engaged in trade, British efforts in the 1760s to enforce trade laws and collect customs duties were met with complaints, flippancy, and resistance.
When the government of King George III ordered the HMS Gaspée to patrol the Narragansett Bay in order to halt rampant illegal smuggling, Rhode Island ship captains did their best to avoid detection. One of these men, Captain Benjamin Lindsay of the packet ship Hannah, lured the pursuing Gaspée into the shallows off Namquid Point (now Gaspée Point), where it ran aground on a sandbar. Seeing the British vessel stuck, Captain Lindsay went on to Providence, where he informed John Brown of the situation. As a leading shipping merchant (and smuggler), Brown issued a call for interested parties to meet at James Sabin’s Tavern to plan the Gaspée’s destruction. Among those who boarded the eight boats and rowed quietly out to the ship were John Burroughs Hopkins, who captained one of the long boats and was the son of Esek Hopkins, the brother of Stephen Hopkins. Two other long boat captains that night were Joseph Tillinghast and Christopher Sheldon. Among the other raiders were Simeon Olney, Paul Allen, Abiel Brown, Pardon Sheldon, and Joseph Brown, the brother of John Brown.
After boarding, eighteen-year-old Joseph Bucklin V apparently shot the officer in command of the Gaspée, Lieutenant William Dudingston, who had come on deck to confront them, and wounded him in the groin. Another young Providence man, twenty one-year-old John Mawney, administered medical attention and removed part or the entirety of the bullet. Dudingston survived and he and his crew were removed to Pawtuxet Village. The Gaspée was set ablaze and burned down to the waterline before its powder room exploded.
THE GASPEE AFFAIR
(Image to the right is linked to the walking tour of the old website)
