Holden, Randall, 1612 - 1692

Randall Holden, one of the early settlers at Warwick, Rhode Island, migrated to New England from Salisbury, Wiltshire, by early 1638. He was a witness to the deed of the island of Aquidneck given by Canonicus and Miantonomo to Coddington, on March 24, 1638. Holden settled on the island before moving to Portsmouth, and then to Shawomet, where he became involved in the fraudulent purchase of sachem Pumham’s land in Jan. 1643. He was sentenced to hard labor by a Massachusetts court and, after serving several months in a Salem prison, returned to Shawomet. Shortly thereafter, he sailed with Samuel Gorton and John Greene to England to petition the Commissioner of Plantations about their grievances with the Bay Colony and to deliver the 1644 Narragansett petition to Charles I. Holden returned to Shawomet in1646, carrying a letter of protection signed by the commissioners of Plantations. There he held a number of important offices, including town treasurer, deputy, and assistant. He became councilman after the town received its official charter on March 14, 1649, served as a representative from Warwick to the Rhode Island General Assembly,  and was later made a justice of the court of common pleas. His name appears as one of the purchasers of Potowomut in 1654 from an Indian sachem. Oliver Payson Fuller, The History of Warwick, Rhode Island, From its Settlement in 1642 to the Present Time; Including Accounts of the Early Settlement and Development of its Several Villages; Sketches of the Origin and Progress of the Different Churches of the Town (Providence: Angell, Burlingame, and Company, 1875), 21, 24-30; Thomas Williams Bicknell, The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (New York: American Historical Society, 1920), vol. 1, 382-84; vol. 3, 1004-5; Wilkins Updike, A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island: Including a History of Other Episcopal Churches in the State, 2nd ed., vol. 1, (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1907), 396.