Smith, Richard, 1596 - 1666

Richard Smith, Sr., emigrated from Gloucestershire, England to New England around 1637.  He was an early settler at Taunton, Massachusetts but lived a Portsmouth, and Wickford Rhode Island and at New Amsterdam.  Smith operated a trading business in Narragansett Country, later acquiring Roger Williams’ post at Cocumscussoc in 1651. There Smith’s house was a center of activity in the Narragansett Country, serving as a public meeting house for settling disputes, signing deeds, discussions with Narragansett tribal leaders, and a listening post for colonial authorities.  During King Philip’s War, the residence was fortified and known as Smith’s Castle.  It was burned by Indians in 1676 but subsequently rebuilt.  Smith and his son of the same name were members of the Atherton Land Company and owned land throughout Narragansett and at Misquamicut. Thomas Williams Bicknell, The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Vol. 2 (New York: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1920), 472-473.  Martin, Profits in the Wilderness, 55, 64, 125. Robert Steven Grumet, Historic Contact: Indian People and Colonists in Today’s Northeastern United States in the Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 134.