Block Island is an island of the Outer Lands coastal archipelago in New England, located approximately south of mainland Rhode Island and east of Long Island's Montauk Point. The island is coterminous with the town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island, and is part of Washington County. The island is named after Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, and the town was named for Shoreham, West Sussex, in England.
Block Island is a popular summer tourist destination known for its bicycling, hiking, sailing, fishing, surfing and beaches. It is home to the historic lighthouses Block Island North Light, on the northern tip of the island, and Block Island Southeast Light, on the southeastern coast. About 40 percent of the island is set aside for conservation, and much of the northwestern tip of the island is an undeveloped natural area and resting stop for birds along the Atlantic flyway. The Nature Conservancy includes Block Island on its list of "The Last Great Places", which consists of 12 sites in the Western Hemisphere.
Popular events include the annual Fourth of July Parade, celebration, and fireworks. The island's population can triple over the normal summer vacation crowd. As of the 2020 Census, the island's population is 1,410 living on a land area of ."Census - Geography Profile: New Shoreham town, Washington County, Rhode Island". United States Census Bureau.
History Before 1637
Block Island was formed by the same receding glaciers that formed the Outer Lands of Cape Cod, the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket during the end of the last ice age thousands of years ago.
The Niantic peopleThe Niantic people eventually merged with the Narragansett people. called the island "Manisses" (meaning "Manitou's Little Island"), or just "Little Island".Providence, RI : The Islands Archaeological sites indicate that these people lived largely by hunting deer, catching fish and shellfish, and growing corn, beans, and squash, presumably with the Three Sisters technique. They migrated from forest to coastal areas to take advantage of seasonal resources. One modern researcher has theorized that indigenous groups may have established a settlement as early as 500 BC, although there is no consensus on that idea.
Giovanni da Verrazzano sighted the island in 1524 and named it "Claudia" in honor of Claude, Duchess of Brittany, queen consort of France and the wife of Francis I. However, several contemporaneous maps identified the same island as "Luisa", after Louise of Savoy, the Queen Mother of France and the mother of Francis I. Verrazano's ship log stated that the island was "full of hilles, covered with trees, well-peopled for we saw fires all along the coast." Almost 100 years later, Dutch explorer Adriaen Block charted the island in 1614; he simply named it for himself,Rhode Island Office of the Secretary of State ; Rhode Island Office of the Secretary of State; retrieved on October 23, 2007. and this was the name that stuck.
Pequot War
The growing tensions among the tribes of the region in this time caused the Niantics to split into two divisions: the Western Niantics, who allied with the Pequots and Mohegans, and the Eastern Niantics, who allied with the Narragansetts.
In 1632, indigenous people (likely Western Niantics associated with the Pequots)See Wm. Bradford, Of Plimouth Plantation and Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth killed colonial traders John Stone and Walter Norton, and the Pequots of eastern Connecticut were blamed. A Pequot delegation presented magistrates in Boston with two bushels of wampum and a bundle of sticks representing the number of beavers and otters with which they would compensate the colonists for the deaths. They sought peace with the colonies and also requested help establishing concord with the Narragansetts, who bordered them to the east. The colonial authorities, in turn, demanded the people responsible for killing Stone and Norton, a promise not to interfere with colonial settlement in Connecticut, and 400 fathoms of wampum and the pelts of 40 beavers and 30 otters.Pastore, Christopher. Between Land and Sea: Narragansett Bay and the Transformation of the New England Coast pp.1-5
In 1636, John Gallup came across the boat of trader John Oldham, a noted troublemaker. Oldham had flirted with impropriety since the day that he landed on American soil. Not long after arriving in Plymouth in 1623, he "grew very perverse and showed a spirit of great malignancy," according to Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford. He was later accused of religious subversion and responded with impertinence, hurling invective at his accusers and even drawing a knife on Captain Myles Standish. He was banished from Plymouth and fled to Massachusetts Bay, settling first in Nantasket, then Cape Ann, and finally Watertown, where he continued to indulge his penchant for mayhem. Despite his unsavory reputation, Massachusetts Bay sought his extensive knowledge of the New England coast when they asked him to retrieve a hefty ransom on the colony's behalf. It was on this mission that Oldham was murdered and dismembered.
In August, the Massachusetts authorities dispatched a punitive expedition of ninety men to Block Island under the command of John Endicott to avenge Oldham's murder. The expedition was ordered by governor of Massachusetts Sir Henry Vane to "massacre all of the Native men on the island" and capture the women and children, who would then be sold into slavery. Upon arriving on Block Island, the expedition burned sixty Niantic wigwams and all the cornfields on the island. The expedition also shot every dog they could find, though the Niantic fled into the woods and the colonists killed fourteen people. Deciding that this murder spree and razing was insufficient, Endicott and his men sailed over to Fort Saybrook before going after the Pequot village at the mouth of the Thames River to demand one thousand fathoms of wampum to pay for the murder. They took some Pequot children as hostages to ensure payment, with these incidents being seen as the initial events that led to the Pequot War.
Settlement Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed the island by conquest. In 1658, the colony sold the island to a group of men headed up by Endicott. In 1661, the Endicott group sold the island to a party of twelve settlers that later grew to sixteen (of whom only seven actually settled there) led by John Allcock, who are today memorialized at Settler's Rock, near Cow's Cove. In 1663, island settler Thomas Terry gave six acres of land at the island's largest fresh pond and its surrounding area to four "chief sachems". Their names were recorded as Ninnecunshus, Jaguante, Tunkawatten, and Senatick, but they were known by the colonists as Mr. Willeam, Repleave (Reprive), and Soconosh. This land was given to "them being the Cheife Sachems upon the Island there Heires & Assignes Forever to plant and Improve".[P.30 New Shoreham Town Book, No. 1, G. E. Burgess Transcription 1924.] This land was then known as the Indian Lands. The Sachems called the Fresh Pond Tonnotounknug.[P. 21, New Shoreham Town Book, No. 1, G. E. Burgess Transcriotion 1924, Pp. 30-31] In 1664, Indians on the island numbered somewhere from 1,200 to 1,500. By 1774, that number had been reduced to fifty-one. A Dutch map of 1685 clearly shows Block Island, indicated as Adriaen Blocks Eylant ("Adrian Block's Island").
In the late seventeenth century, an Englishwoman called named Sarah Sands née Walker lived on Block Island. Sands is known for being New England's first woman doctor and she has also been suggested to be an early abolitionist. She married sea captain James Sands (one of the original sixteen settlers, as recorded by Settler's Rock) in 1645 and had possibly six children, including a daughter named Mercy, born 1663. In 1699, Scottish sailor William Kidd visited Block Island shortly before he was hanged for piracy. At Block Island, he was supplied by Mercy Sands (then Mrs. Raymond). The story has it that, for her hospitality, Kidd bade Mrs. Raymond to hold out her apron, into which he threw gold and jewels until it was full. After her husband Joshua Raymond died, Mercy moved with her family to what would become the Raymond-Bradford Homestead in northern New London, Connecticut (later Montville) where she bought much land. The Raymond family was thus said to have been "enriched by the apron".
Block Island was incorporated by the Rhode Island general assembly in 1672, and the island government adopted the name "New Shoreham".
Post-colonial period
During the War of 1812, Block Island was briefly occupied by a Royal Navy squadron under the command of Captain Sir Thomas Hardy in 1814. The occupying squadron consisted of the ship of the line HMS Ramillies, frigate HMS Pactolus, brig-sloops HMS Despatch and HMS Nimrod and bomb vessel HMS Terror. Hardy had taken his squadron to Block Island in search of food and to establish a strategic position at the mouth of the Long Island Sound, but discovered that nearly all of the island's livestock and food stores had already been transferred to Stonington, Connecticut. On August 9, 1814, Hardy's squadron departed Block Island for Stonington in part to capture the transferred food stores and livestock, but his pre-dawn raid on the town a day later was repulsed in the Battle of Stonington.
The original North Lighthouse was built in 1829, but it was replaced in 1836 after the original was washed out to sea. The ocean claimed the replacement lighthouse also, and the lighthouse that can be seen today was constructed in 1867. Construction began on Block Island's Southeast Lighthouse a few years later in 1873. Block Island has no natural harbors; breakwaters were constructed in 1870 to form Old Harbor. New Harbor was created in 1895 when a channel was dug to connect the Great Salt Pond to the ocean through the northwestern side of the island. The Island Free Library was established in 1874 and is Block Island's only public library.
Isaac Church was the island’s last recorded full-blooded Manisses Indian; he died in 1886 at age 100. He was survived by one son and one daughter whose descendants still reside in Rhode Island today. The landmark Isaac's Corner is named in honor of him, located at the intersection of Center Road, Lakeside Drive, and Cooneymus Road. Isaac is buried to the east of the four corners in the Historical Indian Burial Ground. In 2011, the Block Island Historical Society dedicated the Block Island Manissean Ancestral Stone. In attendance at the unveiling ceremony were descendants of the Manisses Indians, with Tiondra White Rapids Martinez, a direct descendant of Isaac Church, opening the ceremony in their native tongue.
During World War II, several artillery spotters were located on the island to direct fire from the heavy gun batteries at Fort Greene in Point Judith which protected the entrance to Narragansett Bay. Lookout positions for the spotters were built to look like houses. The US government offered to evacuate the island, as it could not be effectively defended from enemy invasion, but the islanders chose to stay. Days before the war ended against Germany, the Battle of Point Judith took place seven miles to the northeast of the island.
In 1963, the island was transferred from Newport County to Washington County.
On August 10, 2012, a tornadic waterspout formed to the south of the island. It went north and moved onshore Block Island at around 3:54 PM. It then tore through the island, before dissipating on the island's northern half. It was rated an EF0, and no deaths or injuries were reported.