John Coggeshall

Who was John Coggeshall?

John Coggeshall was one of the founders of Rhode Island and the first President of all four towns in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Coming from Essex, England as a successful merchant in the silk trade, Coggeshall arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632 and quickly assumed a number of roles in the colonial government. In the mid-1630s he became a supporter of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson. When Hutchinson was tried as a heretic in 1637, Coggeshall was one of three deputies who voted for her acquittal. Hutchinson was banished from the colony in 1638, and the three deputies who voted for her acquittal were also compelled to depart.

Before leaving Boston, Coggeshall and many other Hutchinson supporters signed a compact in March 1638 agreeing to form a government based on the individual consent of the inhabitants. They then established the new colony of Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island, also called Rhode Island, in the Narragansett Bay, later one of four towns comprising the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.