Jamestown - Indian, Conanicut. This island was a part of the island territory included in the Patent given to William Coddington by English authority in 1651. In January, 1654-55, Governor Coddington and Benedict Arnold bought Conanicut. It was incorporated as a town of Rhode Island Colony, November 4, 1678, and was named in honor of James II, who became King of England on the death of Charles II, February 6, 1685. This island lies in the mouth of Farragansett Bay, is six miles long and has an average width of one mile.

Villages: Jamestown and Conanicut Park.
Hills: Freeborn's, Beaver Tail.
Points: Beaver Tail, with light house, Bull's, Taylor's, North Point and lighthouse.
Islands: Conanicut, Dutch, Gould, and Rose.
Fortifications: Dumpling; Fort Brown, never completed; Dutch Island, 1861; Fort Hamilton on Rose Island, 1798-1800.
Ferry to Newport established, 1725.
Ferry to South Kingstown established 1748.

Little Compton - This town is one of the five received from Massachusetts by the change of the eastern boundary line and was incorporated into Rhode Island Colony, January 27, 1746-47, and was annexed to Newport county in 1747. Its Indian name was Sakonet. The original purchaseers were residents of Duxbury and Marshfield, including William Peabody, Josiah Winslow and others, in 1659. Capt. Benjamin Church was the first white settler in 1674. It was incorporated as a town in Plymouth Colony in 1682.

Villages: The Commons, Adamsville, and Sakonet.
Hills: Simmons and Wind Mill.
Points: Sakonet, Warren's, and Church's.
Historic: Treaty Rock, home of Awashonks, Queen of the Sakonet tribe, Indian burial ground, early settlers, and their graves,-Benjamin Church and wife Alice, William Peabody and his wife Betty Alden, John Alny, John Irish, Col. Sylvester Richmond, and his father Edward, Rev. I. R. Slicer's wind mill house, Ray Palmer's birthplace, and the birthplace home of the poet, George S. Burleigh.

Middletown - This town was a part of Newport until its incorporation, August 1753. It has no village nor post office. The country portion, or farming and heavily wooden section sought for a separate town to free themselves from the taxation and other expenses of the thickly settled town.

Hills: Honeymans, Slate, Bliss, Mars.
Ponds: Easton's, Peckhams and Gordners.
Points: Sachuest and Easton's.
Rocks: Paradise, Purgatory, Hanging Rock, under which Bishop Berkeley wrote "The Minute Philosopher," the Sisters, Dairyhouse, Half-Tide, Saddle, Whetstone, Devil and Squaw.
Beaches: Sachuest and Easton's.
Historic: Whitehall, residence of Bishop Berkeley, 1720-31; Coddington's Cove; Watch House near shelf of rocks, Samuel G. Arnold, the historian, had his home in Middletown, at the time of his death, July 14, 1880. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe had her home in Middletown.

Newport - The town of Newport was founded in 1639, by a body of men who were signers of the Boston-Portsmouth Compact of 1638, and precisely the same principles of civil liberty, social order and religious freedom, were established at Newport as had been put in practical operation in Portsmouth. Newport was the second  democratic town in Rhode Island. Porstmouth and Newport were the only towns of the group of four that made up early Rhode Island that were from the first essentially and absolutely democratic.

April 28, 1639, William Coddington, judge, Nicholas Easton, John Coggeshall, William Brenton, elders, and John Clarke, Jeremy Clarke, Thomas Hazard, Henry Bull, with William Dyre as clerke, agreed, at Pocasset(Portsmouth) "to propagate a Plantation in the midst of the Island or elsewhere, ... engaging ourselves to bear equal charges, answerable to our strength and estates in common; and that our determinations shall be by major voice of judge and elders, the judges to have a double voice."

On May 16, 1639, a plantation was begun at the southwest end of the Island of Aquidneck, called Newport, the new town to include all the lands from sea to sea on an east and west line, five miles to the north and east. Before August 9, 1639, fifty male members had been admitted to citizenship in the new town, Newport. Civil government was at once set up. Courts for the trial of civil and criminal cases were established and the various town officers were elected. William Coddington was chosen as judge, Robert Jeffreys treasurer, William Dyre, clerk, and Jeremy Clarke, constable. At a meeting of the General Court of Election held at Newport, March 12, 1640, it appears that the two towns, Pocasset and Newport acted as a "Bodie united," that eighteen persons were admitted freemen, that it was voted that the "chief magistrate of the Island shall be called Governour, and the next Deputie Governour and the rest of the Magistrates, Assistants." This union of the two towns constituted a civil government, styled a Colony on Aquidneck, afterwards styled the Colony of Rhode Island. The first regular order of the General Assembly was: "It is ordered that the Plantation at the other end of the Island shall be called Portsmouth."

At the first Colonial election, in 1640, Mr. William Coddington, of Newport, was chosen Governor, Mr. William Brenton, of Portsmouth, Deputy, or Lieutenant Governor, William Dyre, secretary, and Robert Jeoffreys and William Baulston, treasurers of the Colony.

The full record of the settlements at Pocasset and at Newport and the union of the two towns in the Colony of Rhode Island will be found in Rhode Island Colonial Records, Vol. I., pp. 45 to 116, inc.

Historic Localities and Buildings: Old Stone Mill, built by Governor Benedict Arnold, 1676; Old State House, begun 1739; Trinity Church, 1725; Friends Meeting House, 1700; Jewish Synagogue, 1763; Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House, first house of this order in America, 1720; Congregational Meeting House, 1729; Whitehall, Bisbop Berkeley's residence, 1731.

Newport was incorporated as a city June 1, 1784. George Hazard was the first mayor. This charter was repealed in March, 1787, and the people remained under a town government until May, 1853, when it was re-incorporatcd as a city.

Portsmouth - (Pocasset) - It may be truthfully affirmed, in the full light of historic truth, that the first town established and set in practical operation in Rhode Island was Pocasset, May 1638, on Aquidneck Island, and that "the Bodie Politicke," the guiding purpose that inspired it, was declared in Boston, March 7, 1638.

It may also be affirmed with equal historic certainty, which challenges all denial that the first town founded in Rhode Island was the first to place on record and put in full operation the principle of Democracy in civil affairs, and the absolute right of all men to worship God as their consciences directed.

Tiverton - Tiverton was a part of Plymouth Colony until the union of that Colony with the Bay in 1692, when it passed under the rule of the latter. On March 2, 1679-80, certain gentlemen made public announcement to use their utmost endeavor for the settlement of Pocasset, the Indian country new occupied by Tiverton and Little Compton. These persons were Edward Gray, Nathaniel Thomas, Christopher Almy, Thomas Waite, Job Almy, Daniel Wilcox, and William Manchester, the purchasers. Col. Benjamin Church had drawn a lot in Sakonet lands in 1674, and was building the first house in that section, when Philip's War broke out, June, 1675. He says he was the first Englishman to settle on the Pocasset Neck. Pocasset was the home of the Pocasset tribe, whose Queen was Weetamoo, the wife of Alexander, chief sachem of the Wampanoags, after teh death of his father, Massassoit, about 1663. After Alexander's early death, Weetamoo married Peter Nunnuit, who, in Philip's War took sides with the English, while Weetamoo remained faithful to Philip, her first husband's brother.

In 1694, Tiverton was incorporated as a town by Massachusetts Colony. In 1688, William Wanton settled in Pocasset from Scituate, Massachusetts, and began ship-building at Bridgeport, near the Stone Bridge.

In 1747, Tiverton was one of the towns that was set off to Rhode Island, and then included a part of the city of Fall River, which was ceded to Massachusetts, March 1, 1862, in exchange for Pawtucket and East Providence, then a part of Massachusetts.

Villages: Stone Bridge, Tiverton Heights, Tiverton Four Corners, and Bridgeport.
Hills: Fort Barton, Tiverton Heights, High, Windmill, Nanaquacket.
Ponds: North Watuppa, South Watuppa, Nonquit, Nauaquackett.
Historic: Col. William Barton was stationed at Tiverton Camp, 1777, when he planned the capture of Gen. Prescott. This camp is now Fort Barton. A small breastworks, called the Owl's Nest, was raised on Gould Island. The American troops had their quarters in Tiverton before and after the battle of Rhode Island, 1778.

Source: The History of the State of Rhode Island, Vol. 3., 1920, Transcribed by C. Anthony