Bronner / Patterson Ancestors - Person Sheet
Bronner / Patterson Ancestors - Person Sheet
NameCODDINGTON, Governor William
Birth Date1601
Birth PlaceBoston, Lincolnshire, England
Death Date1 Nov 1678
Death PlaceRhode Island
Misc. Notes
William was a colonial governor and religious dissident. He founded Newport, Rhode Island, in 1639.

He migrated to New England in 1630 as an officer of the Massachusetts Bay Company. He settled in Boston. He served as the company treasurer and was a deputy in the colony legislature. In 1637 he supported the controversial antinomian religious beliefs of Anne Marbury Hutchinson, and he was forced to to leave Massachusetts for the island of Aquidneck in Narragansett Bay. There he established a government based on Old Testament precepts in a settlement at Pocasset (later Portsmouth, RI) on the northern part of Aquidneck. Anne Hutchinson had also settled in Portsmouth after she was banished from Massachusetts, but they had a dispute and Coddington moved his settlement to Newport in 1639.

Although Portsmouth and Newport were united the next year, with Coddington elected governor, but his hopes to maintain the island of Aquidneck as a separate colony failed when a patent was issued uniting the Providence plantations with Aquidneck.

In 1651 he obtained a patent from Parliament establishing Aquidneck as a separate colony, but opposition caused Parliament to annul the grant the next year. He then went to Boston. He later acknowledged the unity of Rhode Island and a decade later he became a Quaker. He was later Governor of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in the 1670s.

William was married two or three times and probably had another daughter by a previous marriage also named Mary who died at age 14 ca. 1648. She was born in Boston, Suffolk, MA, and should not be confused with the Mary born in 1654 in Newport, Newport, RI.
Spouses
ChildrenMary (1654-1693)
Last Modified 19 Nov 2002Created 29 Dec 2021 using Reunion for Macintosh
© 2013, Geoffrey & Kristen Bronner