William Blaxton (also spelled William Blackstone; 1595 – 26 May 1675)[1] was an early English settler in New England and the first European settler of Boston and Rhode Island.
Early life and education
An 1889 conjectural drawing of Blaxton's house in Boston, built between 1630 and 1635)
Blaxton joined the failed Ferdinando Gorges expedition to America in 1623. He eventually arrived in Weymouth, Massachusetts later in 1623 on the ship Katherine,[5] as a chaplain in the subsequent expedition of Robert Gorges. By 1625 all of his fellow travelers had returned to England and Blaxton moved five miles north to a 1 mi2 rocky bulge at the end of a swampy isthmus, surrounded on all sides by mudflats. Blaxton became the first colonist to settle in what would become Boston, living on the Western end of the Shawmut Peninsula by himself for more than five years.[6]
In 1629, Isaac Johnsonlanded with the Puritans in nearby Charlestown but the rockier highlands lacked easily tappable wells. Blaxton and Johnson were university contemporaries from Emmanuel College, Cambridge.[7][8]
In 1630 Blaxton wrote an historic letter to Johnson and his group that advertised Boston's excellent natural spring, and invited them to settle on his land, which they did on 7 September 1630.[9][10] One of Johnson's last official acts as the leader of the Charlestown community before dying on 30 September 1630 was to name the new settlement across the river "Boston," after his hometown in Lincolnshire, from which he, his wife (namesake of the Arbella) and John Cotton had emigrated to New England.[11]
Blaxton negotiated a grant of 50 acres (200,000 m2) for himself in the final paperwork, around 10% of the peninsula's total area. However by 1633 the new town's 4,000 citizens made retention of such a large parcel untenable and Blaxton sold all but six acres back to the Puritans in 1634 for £30 ($5,455 in adjusted USD). Governor Winthrop purchased the land through a one-time tax on Boston residents amounting to 6 shillings (around $50 adjusted) a head. This land became a town commons open to public grazing and now forms the bulk of Boston Common, the major park in present-day downtown Boston.[12]
The area that Blaxton settled was part of the Plymouth Colony until 1691, when it came under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1741; it finally became part of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He tended cattle, planted gardens, and cultivated an apple orchard, and he cultivated the first variety of American apples, the Yellow Sweeting. He called his home "Study Hill"[13] and was said to have the largest library in the colonies at the time, but his library and house were burned during King Philip's War around 1675.[14]
Roger Williams and Blaxton disagreed on many theological matters, but they remained lifelong friends. Williams frequently invited him to preach in Providence, among other churches throughout Rhode Island. According to one modern journalist Blaxton "is considered to be the pioneer clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States."[16]
Personal life
At age 64, Blaxton married a widow named Sarah Fisher Stevenson in Boston on 4 July 1659.[17] They had a son, John (1660–1743). Sarah died in June 1673 at the age of 48.[18]
Death and legacy
Blaxton died on 26 May 1675 in Lonsdale, Rhode Island at the age of 80, leaving substantial holdings in real estate.
Places and things named after William Blackstone in New England
In 2021, a stainless steel statue was erected in Pawtucket, Rhode Island at the corner of Exchange Street and Roosevelt Avenue. Inspired by an historical account of Blaxton's unpretentious manner, the statue is portrayed holding a book while riding a bull. The statue attracted criticism for commemorating a colonial settler[19] as well as the defense[20] that this criticism was misguided (the sculptor selected for the commission was Peruko Ccopacatty, an Aymara indian originally from Peru).[21]
^Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633. New England Historic Genealogical Society. Boston. ISBN088082042X. OCLC33083117.
^Banks, Charles Edward (1937). Topographical dictionary of 2885 English emigrants to New England, 1620–1650. The Bertram press. p. 96.
^Friends of the Public Garden and Common; Moore, Barbara W.; Weesner, Gail; Lee, Henry; McIntyre, A. McVoy; Webster, Larry. "History of Boston Common"(PDF). City of Boston. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
^Morison, Samuel Eliot (1963). The Founding of Harvard College. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. ISBN9780674314504.
^Morison, Samuel Eliot (1932). English University Men Who Emigrated to New England Before 1646: An Advanced Printing of Appendix B to the History of Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 10.
^Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data: Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).
^The Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island: Comprising Three Generations of Settlers who Came Before 1690, with Many Families Carried to the Fourth Generation - John Osborne Austin, George Andrews Moriarty, Genealogical Publishing Com, 1887 - Reference - 496 pages (Page 21)
Louise Lind. William Blackstone, Sage of the Wilderness, Heritage Books, 2017.
"The Independent Man" Newsletter of the Rhode Island Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. March 2012 (Number 3) – Mr Blackstone's River by Albert Klyberg.
The Blackstone family: being sketches, biographical and genealogical, of William Blackstone, and his descendants by Sargent, Lucius M. (Lucius Manlius), 1786-1867
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