William Blackstone - William Blackstone Memorial Park - Cumberland, Rhode Island - Etched in Stone on Waymarking.com

A pocket park named to honor William Blackstone on Broad Street in Cumberland, Rhode Island, includes a quote from him. Carved into an undulating granite curb, it reads:

“I looked to have dwelt with my orchards and my books in undisturbed solitude.”

It is part of a longer sentiment from a perturbed Blackstone, the first European settler in the area, in response to Governor Winthrop and his several hundred followers encroaching too much on Blackstone's homestead, hospitality, and beliefs in Shawmut, what is today Boston, Massachusetts, in 1634:

"I came from England because I did not like the Lords Bishops. I can't join you because I would not be under the Lords Brethren. I looked to have dwelt with my orchards and my books, and my young fawn and my bull, in undisturbed solitude. Was there not room enough for all of ye? Could ye not leave a hermit in his corner?"

In 1635, Blackstone - originally Blaxton - (1595 – 26 May 1675) settled at a new "corner" -- in Lonsdale, at the time part of Smithfield, now Lincoln, and a specific spot known as "Study Hill" in current-day Cumberland, is home to this park bearing his name. The "Lords Bishops and Brethren" he refers to are English Puritans, leaders of the Boston church, with whom he did not get along, and the monarchy. As for his books, the collection was considered the largest in the New World at the time: a library of 186 volumes.

Sources:
Pawtucket Past and Present, Slater Trust Company, 1917
Wikipedia
The Biography of THE REVEREND WILLIAM BLACKSTONE and his Ancestors and Descendents, by NATHANIEL BREWSTER BLACKSTONE, Member of N.E. Historic Genealogical Society, Homestead, Florida, 1974

Address: 531 Broad Street Cumberland, Rhode Island Website: [Web Link]

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