Signer of the Declaration of Independence, born at Scituate, RI, on the 7th of March 1707; moved to Providence in 1731, elected member of the assembly of the colony in 1732; was annually re-elected until 1738; re-elected again in 1741 and became speaker; governor, with a year’s exception, from 1754–68; delegate to the Continental Congresses from 1774 to 1778. He wrote History of the Planting and Growth of Providence (1765). He died on the 13th of July 1785.
