boundary dispute Archives - New England Historical Society

Rhode Island’s Governor Samuel Cranston won election as Rhode Island’s governor 30 times, once twice in one year. No other governor surpassed Cranston’s record.

During his eventful life, Cranston was captured at sea by pirates, won office at the same time his nemesis came into power and prevented Connecticut from swallowing Rhode Island. He also fathered 15 children with two wives.

This is his story.

Samuel Cranston

Samuel Cranston was born in Newport in August 1659, and he was well educated and well connected. His father, John Cranston, served as governor of Rhode Island for two terms. His mother was the daughter of Rhode Island’s colonial president Jeremy Clarke .

Cranston went to work as a merchant and goldsmith to support himself. He married the granddaughter of Roger Williams, Mary Hart. After doing so, he decided to go to sea.

Pirates, however, captured Samuel Cranston and held him for seven years. His wife gave him up for dead and planned to marry another man in an evening wedding ceremony. As fate would have it, Cranston got away from his pirate captors and made his way to Newport just in time to stop the wedding vows.

Samuel Cranston and his wife, Mary, had four children before her death in 1710. He then married his late brother’s wife, Judith Parrott, in 1711. They had 11 more children.

Governor of Rogues Island

Nearing 40, he won an appointment as governor when his brother-in-law, Walter Clark, resigned. Cranston would then win election as governor 29 times.

As governor, he handled problems with patience and diplomacy, saving the colony’s independence and endearing him to the residents of Rhode Island.

In colonial times, people called Rhode Island ‘Rogues Island,’ early and often. Cotton Mather called it the ‘sewer of New England’ because it welcomed heretics and Quakers banished in Massachusetts.

Cotton Mather

It was also called ‘the perverse sister,’ ‘the evil genius’ and ‘the receptacle of riff raff” all the way to the Constitutional Convention. Rhode Island wouldn’t send delegates convention–and then, when it came to ratification, Rhode Island held out until the other states threatened an economic embargo.

Almost all of these accusations against the state have proven true, according to Terry D’ Amato Spencer in Rhode Island’s Rogues and Rascals. Rhode Island, for example, was a haven for pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy.

Almost as soon as he became governor, Samuel Cranston faced his nemesis: the Royal Governor of New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Lord Bellomont.

Bellomont was bound and determined to end Rhode Island’s freedom and place it under Royal Authority specifically–his Royal Authority. Once again Cranston navigated through his traps (need little bit of explanation). An act of Providence made that problem go away in 1701 when Bellomont died.

Lord Bellomont

Pirates of the Narragansett

Piracy was an ongoing problem in Rhode Island waters. So much so that none other than James Fenimore Cooper wrote a book about the pirates in these waters called the The Red Rover. Among the pirates Governor Cranston had to deal with was Capt. William Kidd.

Kidd came to the colony and anchored off of the island of Jamestown in Narragansett Bay. Cranston sent his tax collector along with an armed escort to arrest him. Two warning shots fired by cannon thwarted their effort.

Willim Kidd

King William’s War (1688-1697) ended the year before Cranston became governor. Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) would break out in 1702 and finally end in 1713. In both wars, France and England vied for control of North America.

During these Anglo-French Wars, the warring nations would issue letters of marque, essentially licenses, to attack and capture enemy shipping. The letters were issued to private people, making them privateers, sometimes called corsairs. Herein lies the problem: When the wars ended, so did their licenses. Then the privateers and their crews had no work. But that didn’t stop them. They just carried on as usual. Rhode Island, and Narragansett Bay in particular, had hundreds of nooks and crannies they could hide in from local and royal authorities.

Privateers were popular in Rhode Island, because they had to share some of their plunder with the government. That eased the burden on taxpayers. So Samuel Cranston for many years turned a blind eye to piracy while assuring officials in London he went after them. But public sentiment turned against pirates, and in 1723 Rhode Island hanged 26 pirates under the command of the notoriously cruel Edward Low.

Threats From North and South

After Lord Bellomont died, new threats to Rhode Island’s independence arose. The tiny colony’s existence was tenuous at best. Governor Cranston kept Rhode Island in existence with a combination of political astuteness and luck.

Connecticut and Massachusetts both coveted the colony because of Narragansett Bay. Maritime trade was their lifeblood, and the Connecticut shoreline was blocked by Long Island. Ships from Boston had to navigate around Cape Cod and then face unfriendly currents.

Narragansett Bay, however, had clear access to the sea and, perhaps more importantly, a clear sail to the Caribbean.

Fending Off Threats

Cranston fended off Massachusetts’ governor, Joseph Dudley, who tried to take command of Rhode Island’s militia. He demonstrated to the colonial overseers in London that Rhode Island was capable of governing itself. And he settled the boundary line between Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Samuel Cranston was able to checkmate threats to Rhode Island’s sovereignty and bring it into an acceptable relationship within the imperial scheme. He also transformed a group of tiny villages into a stable colony on its way to eventual statehood.

Partly because of Samuel Cranston, no other land had been granted the freedom Rhode Island had, government by majority rule and freedom of conscience.

He died on April 26, 1727. According to Rhode Island historian George Washington Greene, he left ‘no public man so universally loved behind.’

Leo Caisse, the author of this story, passed away in 2020. We miss him greatly. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

Image of grave medallion: CC BY 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32582013. This story was updated in 2022.

Sixteen years before the Pilgrims stepped on Plymouth Rock, French adventurers settled St. Croix Island in a river that divides Canada from the United States.

They thought they found a paradise, with warm weather, good soil, plenty of fish and deer and easy access for shipping.

Then winter came, and most of the men were felled by a hideous, mysterious disease. Had the weather not been so severe, or if the men had Vitamin C, New England might be New France today.

The settlement only lasted a year. Historians, though, consider St. Croix Island the real beginning of the permanent European settlement of Canada.

St. Croix Island today

St. Croix Island

In 1604 Pierre Dugua, a French nobleman, organized a company of men that included young Royal Geographer Samuel de Champlain and Champlain’s uncle, Francois Grave Dupont. Dugua intended to colonize North America and trade with the Indians for furs.

The company was an odd mixture of artisans and sailors, thieves, ruffians, courtiers and merchants. Some were Catholic, some were Huguenot. As soon as the ship set sail from France, fights broke out over religion.

Champlain was entertained by the fighting. “I forget just now which was the hardest hitter, but leave you to imagine what a fine spectacle they made,” he wrote. They aimed and dodged blows as the sailors watched and backed them according to their sectarian prejudices. Some shouted, ‘Hang the Huguenot,’ and others ‘Down with the Papist.’

In June they arrived at the tree-covered island in the mouth of the St. Croix River. They chose it because it offered protection from Indians and the English, who were also seeking a foothold in North America. “Vessels could pass up the river only at the mercy of the cannon of the island,” wrote Champlain. They determined the soil was good and they could trade with the Indians.

“Here seemed to be a Paradise,” wrote Champlain.

Dupont returned to France. The men who remained built a barricade and positioned their cannon inside it. Years later, cannonballs were found on the island.

They immediately began building houses, an oven and a hand mill for grinding wheat. They also planted rye, which grew as good as the rye grown in France.

Inside the fort they built a house for Duqua of sawn wood from France. Dugua flew the French flag over it.

The Indians came to look at the ways of the French, and even asked Duqua to judge their disputes.

Death and Disease

Winter came sooner than expected. It began to snow on October 6, and the cold was sharper and longer than winter in France. Many of the men were struck by a strange disease. Great pieces of superfluous flesh were produced in their mouths so they could take nothing but liquid. Their teeth got so loose they could be pulled out without pain. They couldn’t walk and had no strength. The majority could neither walk nor move.

They called the dreaded disease ‘mal de la terre.’

Thirty-five of the party of 79 died and more than 20 were on the point of death. They were buried in the cemetery shown on Champlain’s map. Years later their bones were exposed by erosion and taken to be analyzed. They showed signs of scurvy, which they probably contracted because they ate nothing but salted food.

There were no springs or brooks on St. Croix Island, so they drank melted snow. They couldn’t get to the mainland because of the ice in the river.

Samuel de Champlain (imagined)

Finally spring arrived in May, and the sick men began to heal. On June 15, they heard the splashing of oars in the water. It was Dupont, with two ships filled with fresh supplies.

Exit from St. Croix Island

Dugua decided to find a more hospitable site for a colony. Champlain and Dupont spent six weeks exploring the coast, venturing as far as Cape Cod. They decided to move to a spot they called Port Royal, which is now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. Under Champlain’s supervision, the men dismantled their houses, loaded them on two barques and floated them across the bay to Port Royal.

For nearly 200 years St. Croix Island slipped out of written history. Then in 1794, Great Britain and the United States settled a boundary dispute and determined St. Croix Island belonged to the United States.

It became known as Bone Island in the 18th century after many of the graves were exposed. Then in the War of 1812 it earned the nickname Neutral Island because it didn’t take sides. It has also been called Demont’s Island, Doucett Island and Dochet Island.

Today, St. Croix Island is near the Maine town of Robbinston. In 1984, the U.S Congress designated it as Saint Croix Island International Historic Site. No one lives there.

Photos: St. Croix Island, By Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37100192. St. Croix Island from New Brunswick By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18864900. This story last updated in 2022.

boundary dispute

Samuel Cranston, Rhode Island’s 30-Term Governor