Thirteenth State Wants to Change Its Name

[W. Gray]

The thirteenth state admitted to the Union is making preparations to change its name.

The current name is The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

The legislature is voting on changing the name to The State of Rhode Island.

A black legislator maintains the name honors slavery.

Once the legislators approve the change, the issue will be placed before the voters.

[larryJ]

I read about that.  I never knew that was the official name of the state.  My son went to school in R.I. his college freshman year.  I got to see parts of it when I went there with him to get him settled. 

I see the part about some of the people wanting the change because it invokes images of slavery.  The name "Providence Plantation" was what Roger Williams called it when he first went there and established a colony.  See pasted article below.  I never considered R.I. to have slaves, but I guess there were slaves in all the colonies.

This is copied from the internet search about Rhode Island name change.

The bill permitting a statewide referendum on the issue next year now heads to the state Senate.
"It's high time for us to recognize that slavery happened on plantations in Rhode Island and decide that we don't want that chapter of our history to be a proud part of our name," said Rep. Joseph Almeida, an African-American lawmaker who sponsored the bill.
Rhode Island's unwieldy name reflects its turbulent colonial history, a state that consisted of multiple and sometimes rival settlements populated by dissidents.
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his unorthodox religious views, minister Roger Williams set out in 1636 and settled at the northern tip of Narragansett Bay, which he called Providence Plantations. Williams founded the first Baptist church in America and became famous for embracing the separation of church and state, a legal principle enshrined in the Bill of Rights a century later.
Other settlers made their homes in modern-day Portsmouth and Newport on Aquidneck Island, then known as the Isle of Rhodes.
In 1663, English King Charles II granted a royal charter joining all the settlements into a single colony called "The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." The name stuck. Rhode Island used that royal charter as its governing document until 1843.
Opponents of the name charge argue that "plantations" was used at the time to describe any farming settlements, regardless of slavery.
Rhode Island merchants did, however, make their fortunes off the slave trade. Slaves helped construct Brown University in Providence, and a prominent slave trader paid half the cost of its first library.
Still, Stanley Lemons, a professor emeritus of history at Rhode Island College, said changing the state's name ignores the accomplishments of Williams, whose government passed laws trying to prevent the permanent servitude of whites, blacks and American Indians.
"There are different meanings for this word," Lemons said. "To try to impose their experience on everyone else wipes out Roger Williams."

Larryj

[W. Gray]

About one-third of Rhode Island's total area consists of ocean or fresh water.

In terms of land area, Howard County, Kansas, was considerably larger than than the state of Rhode Island.

[larryJ]

Seeing R.I. for the first time was a real culture shock to me.  The state is small, so small that you can drive across it in a hour up, down, and sideways.  Being used the largess of SoCal I was totally amazed at everything I saw.  I took a drive (after leaving my son to experience college and being away from home for the first time), into Massachusetts to do some family history research.  I had an experience that unsettled me for a while.  I was in the town where my 7th great grandfather lived and was in the little town plaza.  I was sitting on a bench drinking a coke and reading the inscription on the bench stating that it had been placed there in the late 1690's.  It suddenly occurred to me that this antecedent had probably sat on that same bench almost 300 years ago.  I jumped right up and left.  It was the strangest feeling.

Larryj

[W. Gray]

Diane,

Rhode Island also had the first county seat war in the U.S.

What is the story behind the incorporation of Rhode Island?

[W. Gray]

I am aware that Rhode Island has three named counties but no county seats nor functioning county governments.

The cities have taken over the counties' responsibilities.

In order for the cities to take over, the total incorporation of Rhode Island must mean that the cities have expanded their boundaries to meet each other and there is no unincorporated land left.

Connecticut has eight named counties and I believe that state may have accomplished the same feat.

The first county seat war in the US actually occurred in King County in Colonial America Rhode Island in 1752. King County (like Howard County) no longer exists.

Another interesting county fact is that in some states county seats are not called county seats but are called shire towns.