More Than Roger's Wife: Mary Williams and the Founding of Providence

Roger Williams is arguably the most written-about seventeenth-century New Englander. However, as one of his early twentieth-century biographers noted, nobody has paid any attention to his wife: “Who was this lady is not known; and, save that her name was Mary, and that she proved to him a true and loyal wife, the record is meager.”³ Sadly, the record is indeed paltry, with minimal scholarly acknowledgement of her life.⁴ In contrast, countless books and articles cover every aspect of Roger's life, ideas, and legacy.⁵ Public recognition of him, especially in Rhode Island is everywhere—with a university, hospital, streets, parks, and a zoo named after him, and a dedicated Roger Williams National Memorial administered by the National Park Service. Although Roger, like Mary, never sat for a portrait, sculptors and artists have drawn on all kinds of inspiration, from the baseball player Ted Williams to surviving descendants through the Roger Williams Family Association, to imagine what he looked like.⁶ There are statues based entirely on chimerical depictions of Roger all over Rhode Island, in the U.S. Capitol, on the Reformation Wall in Geneva, and even on a U.S. postage stamp. Whilst Mary has not received scholarly attention or public recognition like her husband, deeper engagement with the few available sources reveals that Mary was there, unheralded as she faced numerous challenges solo in colonial New England.⁷ For months and even years at a time, Mary was the head of the Williams family—not only in the immediate aftermath of Roger's banishment, but also once they settled in Providence. Throughout almost half a century of marriage, Mary alone made many of the decisions for her family and the wider community as her husband travelled far and wide, from the depths of Indian country to traversing the Atlantic.⁸

Mary's life was full of contradictions. She lived in a medieval priory gatehouse, a lavish manor house, a crowded one-room house, and ultimately ended up homeless. Mary moved to five different places on two sides of the Atlantic during her first twenty-seven years, but she lived the rest of her life in one place: Providence. Mary's life in Providence was far removed from anything she could have imagined as a child. Her childhood in England was defined by religious persecution, but she spent her adult years in arguably the freest place in the western world. As a young woman in England, Mary was trained to run a lavish manor house, a far cry from her one-room house in Providence, where she entertained Indigenous leaders. Her busy household in Providence included six of her own children, at least one unfree Indigenous child, and an indentured Dutch run-away. Mary's love life was also complicated, as she went from being Roger's rebound partner to his “dearest love.”⁹ She saved a soldier's life but also nearly died from an unknown illness herself. Mary played a central role in key matters in the colony, from providing medical knowledge to confirming a crucial land evidence. She faced significant financial hardship and relied on charity from friends, but also profited as her family sold Indigenous people into slavery. She spent large swaths of time away from Roger but refused to rejoin him on a three-year trip to England, even though he begged her. She saw her father reluctantly conform to the established church and her husband banished for his refusal to do so. Mary was someone who lived with and understood the implications of religious controversy, first with her father and then with her husband. The religious leanings of the men in her life certainly impacted the course of Mary's life, but she lived by her own religious beliefs and built her own life in Rhode Island. Roger Williams did have a wife, and this is her story.¹⁰

Before she was Goody Williams, she was Mary Bernard, and was baptized on September 24, 1609 in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.¹¹ Nestled in the east midlands of England, the area was a center of political and religious non-conformity in the early seventeenth century.¹² For the first few years of her life, Mary lived in the gatehouse of the old Worksop Priory, where her father, Richard Bernard, was the vicar. The Augustinian Priory at Worksop was established in the twelfth century and whilst parts of it had been dismantled with the dissolution of the monasteries, some pieces remained, including the early fourteenth-century gatehouse.¹³ Mary's early childhood there was modest, and her father was allotted a basic portion of the Priory funds.¹⁴ Though Mary never sat for a portrait, her father did and included it in several of his published works, which allows us to at least speculate whether Mary looked like him.¹⁵

Mary grew up in a radical Puritan household and doubtlessly took in many of her father's religious beliefs in her early life. Richard attended Christ's College, Cambridge University, where he made many important connections as a sizar to John Smyth, a future Separatist and Baptist. After graduation, Mary's father spent his life walking the line between conformity to the Church of England, Puritanism, and Separatism. Richard was deprived of his living for nonconformity in Worksop in 1605, and although he returned to the Church of England, he was brought before the church courts in 1608 and 1611 for his refusal to fully conform. Whilst almost nothing is known about Mary's mother, Mary's paternal grandparents were John Bernard and Anne Wright, who were based in Lincolnshire, close to where Mary grew up.¹⁶ Mary had at least five siblings, all of them older than her.¹⁷ Mary's five brothers, who were born between 1600 and 1607, all had names seemingly adapted from Hebrew: Bengallevel, Cannanuel, Besekiell, Hoseel, and Masakiell. Mary had the most “traditional” name, which may have been due to her gender or a reflection of her father's imminent return to the Church of England around the time she was born.¹⁸ The naming of Mary's younger brother, Beniemiene, (Benjemiene) who died the day after his baptism in 1613, was a traditional biblical reference to the youngest of Jacob's twelve sons.¹⁹

Mary grew up in a household that honored the personal godliness, wisdom, and virtue of women. She learned to read as a child, which was typical given her father's religious views and position, but her ability to write set her apart from many of her contemporaries.²⁰ Mary's childhood was defined by a deep grounding in religious texts and patriarchal society, as revealed by her father's publications. The year after Mary was born, her father published Contemplative Pictures, which included a rather uncomplimentary passage toward women, to whom he dedicated the work: “women are but weak, their strength is to be under government.” He explained that “excellent praise” should be given to women's “wise silence, but their principal glory stands in their awe, and cheerful obedience.” In the rest of the pamphlet, Richard offered a more positive description of women, exploring how “A Lady is honored in her Lord.”²¹ Richard's other published works provide broad context for the religious environment that Mary grew up in. When Mary was three, her father published Iosvahs Godly Resolution. The pamphlet evinces that Mary's childhood involved listening to and reading the scripture, catechisms, reflecting on short stories that reinforced God's word, singing psalms, and repeating public sermons at home.²² Mary grew up in a family that valued a loving marriage, and her father described how a husband and wife “must love each other” and stick together “if any smite either by the tongue, both must ioine in one against the smiter.”²³ Perhaps Mary heard her father's words when she stuck with her own husband when he was banished, repeatedly insulted, wished dead, and his books were burned.

Mary was not only exposed to disputes about religious conformity as child, but also grew up knowing many people she would eventually live with in New England. Her father was well-connected and widely published on everything from witchcraft to ministering to the imprisoned. Richard published more than thirty volumes, and his best-selling book, The Isle of Man (1626), was in print for two-hundred years, going through ten editions in his lifetime.²⁴ Richard spent much of his life caught up in controversy with the established church before uneasily conforming. Amidst his conformation crisis between 1605–1607, Richard understood that formally separating from the established church would put his growing family at risk. In April 1605 he was deprived of his living for nonconformity, and in 1606 he attended the Coventry Conference with leading Puritans from Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. The conference was a turning point for Richard, and he came into conflict with several former friends, including John Smyth. Smyth, who was later central to the Baptist movement in England, was a minister to Separatists in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. Smyth, along with John Robinson, was instrumental in guiding the Separatists who went to the Netherlands in 1608 prior to crossing the Atlantic in 1620. Smyth turned against Mary's father after the Coventry Conference, and he compared Bernard to Naaman the leper due to his reluctance to formally separate.²⁵

Richard's decision caused controversy and bitterness with former Separatist friends, and Robinson called him out: “But are you your self wholly conformable Mr B? . . . do you not hope to escape persecution your self by persecuting us?”²⁶ Richard's published works against the Separatists offered a way for him to publicly frame himself as a loyal member of the established Church.²⁷ Mary's father's connections to and conflict with the Separatists in England directly impacted Mary's life later when she wound up across the Atlantic living in the Separatist colony of Plymouth. When Mary arrived in Plymouth in 1631, she would have known several of the settler-colonists through her father. The move may have also caused conflict with her father, given his published attacks on Separatism following his return to the established church.

In practice, Mary's childhood home was never fully conformist, and her father continued to have conflict with the established church, especially over the form of baptism. Mary moved to Batcombe, Somerset when she was four, following her father's new position in the church, which provided the family with more financial stability.²⁸ At Batcombe, Richard advocated that ministers had to adapt their thinking on nonconformity to their larger duty as God's ministers to tend to their flock, which they could only do if they avoided silencing.²⁹ He believed that ministers should avoid controversy, but if drawn in, ministers should focus on doing their best in general rather than being stubbornly correct in minutiae.³⁰ These were alien concepts to Mary's husband. At Batcombe, Richard built connections to scholars, churchmen, landowners, and even King Charles I, when he was made Royal Chaplain in Extraordinary. His appointment to the King came in 1628—the same year that Mary left home.³¹

Mary bid farewell to Batcombe around the age of twenty to take up a position as a maid at Otes Manor, in High Laver, Essex. Mary's move into the household of Sir William Masham was facilitated through the patronage of the Whalley family, who had a long history of supporting Mary's father. Otes Manor, which no longer stands, was a hub of non-conformist activity in the seventeenth century.³² At the manor, Mary was employed as a “maid,” essentially a companion in waiting to Joanna Altham, Lady Masham's daughter by her first marriage.³³ This was a common position for daughters of the upper gentry or clergy, and it provided social connections and training in manners, household arts, and estate management.³⁴

Mary met her future husband, Roger Williams, at Otes, but as the saying goes, the course of true love never did run smooth. Roger arrived at Otes around the same time that she did, likely sometime before 1628. Roger, a twenty-something newly minted graduate of Cambridge University, was employed as private chaplain by the Masham family. Upon arrival, Roger fell immediately in love with another woman, Jane Whalley. Roger waxed lyrical about Jane and declared how there was “none in the world I more affect.”³⁵ Friends warned Roger that his love match was “passionate and hastie” with a “Spirit” that was “rash and unconstant.” Roger was undeterred, declaring that he wanted “marriage joys.”³⁶ These affirmations of love for Jane from April 1629 are among Roger's earliest surviving correspondence.

As Roger contemplated his love life, he also pondered his career options. By this point he had made a name for himself in Puritan circles, and he turned down two church livings due to a “tender conscience” and held off officially accepting “a New England call” until his betrothal to Jane was secured.³⁷ However, the union was doomed when Jane's aunt, Lady Joan Barrington, forbade it due to Roger's “low-ebb.” Even though Roger conceded that he was “altogeather unworthy & unmeete for such a proposition” and that it was “Indecorum for her [Jane] to condescend to my low-ebb,” he took rejection badly. He expressed his displeasure in no uncertain terms to Lady Barrington, warning her that “the Lord hath A quarrell against you.” Roger ungraciously reminded Lady Barrington of her age, noting “there is but the breadth of A few grey haires, between you and your everlasting home . . . your candle is twinckling and glass neere runn. The Lord only knows how few minutes are left behind.” Roger lamented he and Jane hoped to live “together in the heavens” although the “Lord have denied that union on Earth.”³⁸

Mary was surely aware of Roger's courtship of Jane, especially as she knew Jane through her father's connections in Nottinghamshire.³⁹ Roger described how “Many and often speeches” about the ill-fated courtship had “Long fluttered and flown” around Otes, gossip that Mary likely heard.⁴⁰ Mary was there to nurse Roger through his rejection, and she married him just seven months after he declared his undying love for Jane. Mary, unlike Jane, was deemed a suitable match for Roger. When Lady Barrington refused the union between Roger and Jane, she made it clear that Roger not well-heeled enough to marry Richard Whalley's daughter, but he was good enough to wed the daughter of one of Whalley's employees.⁴¹ Roger, the son of a London-based merchant tailor, had risen through the ranks on the patronage of Sir Edward Coke, but this was not enough for Lady Barrington. For Mary (and her father), Roger, a recent Cambridge graduate with growing reputation in Puritan circles, was a fitting choice.

Mary married Roger at All Saints Church, High Laver, Essex and the record reads: “Roger Williams clarke and Mary Barnard were married thee 15th day of December anno domini 1629.”⁴² Given her father's own wrestling with non-conformity, her job in a household of dissenting Puritans, and her husband's increasingly dissident views, it is likely that Mary's religious beliefs leaned towards nonconformity at this point. If this was the case, she would have preferred a non-religious civil contract wedding ceremony, but the Church of England mandated that marriage ceremonies were a religious union. All Saints High Laver still stands today, with minimal changes to its interior and exterior from what Mary would have seen as she walked down the aisle in 1629. For the Church of England, the interior is modest, with plain white walls and mostly plain stained-glass windows. As Mary said her vows, she could never have predicted how dramatically her life would change in just a few short years. Mary was no stranger to dissenting controversies, but nothing could have prepared her for the direction that her new husband's radical ideas would take. Mary may have played second fiddle to Jane at first, but her support of (and lifelong commitment to) Roger enabled many of his radical ideas to become a reality. Throughout almost fifty years of marriage, Mary emerged as a driving force not only managing family affairs but maintaining a ground-breaking settlement across the Atlantic.

Mary spent her first year as a newlywed in High Laver, but lingering tensions within the Masham household and Archbishop Laud's increasing persecution of Puritan sympathizers pushed the couple to consider a move.⁴³ As the couple weighed their options, Roger's recent job offer as the Teacher of the Boston Church and Mary's existing social connections made a move to Massachusetts Bay practical. Arriving in Boston in February 1631 on the Lyon, Roger quickly declined the proffered role. Consequently, Mary's first few years in New England were characterized by instability, which would follow her throughout adulthood. After leaving Boston and removing to Plymouth, the Williamses prepared to welcome their first child. At this same time, Roger was engaged in increasing conflict with the Plymouth authorities. Their daughter, Mary Jr., was born the “first weeke in August 1633,” just as the family readied themselves to return to Salem.⁴⁴ The new family of three relocated back to Salem at some point that autumn. The journey between Salem and Plymouth is just over sixty miles as the crow flies, and the Williams family most likely travelled on foot, by dug-out canoe, or on a small sailing craft, perhaps using a combination and staying with friends along the way—all with a newborn baby.⁴⁵

If Mary had been craving stability in Salem, she would have been sorely disappointed. Her two years there were marked by increasing discord with the authorities. Much has been made of Roger's “new and dangerous opinions” that eventually led to his banishment, but Mary's role in the contretemps has been overlooked.⁴⁶ According to a later report by Nathanial Morton, Mary continued to participate in services at the Salem Church after her husband stopped attending. As a result, Roger “withdraw all private religious communication” from her as she held “communion with the church there.” Morton elaborated that Roger refused to “pray nor give thanks at meals with his own wife nor any of his family” as they “went to the church assemblies.”⁴⁷ Morton's account is collaborated by another later account by Cotton Mather, who described how Roger would not “hold any Communion in any exercise of Religion with any Person, so much as his own wife, that went up unto their Assemblies.”⁴⁸ Morton also detailed how other church members, including diverse women who were “zealous in their ways” attended meetings at the Williams family home, not only on the sabbath but at many other times.

Mary's power to make her own religious choices that her husband (grudgingly) respected is clear. Mary's agency stands in contrast to Jane Verin, who lived in Salem with Mary and eventually became her next-door neighbor in Providence. Jane was one of Roger's followers in Salem, but her husband did not approve of her religious decisions. Jane's ability to go against her husband's wishes in religious worship was eventually at the nucleus of a ground-breaking legal case for women that centered on religious freedom, domestic abuse, and patriarchal rule in Providence in 1638.⁴⁹ Mary's religious views mattered. Mary presumably was willing to take the exclusion from the services her husband ran at home as she followed her own principles.

To add to the complexity of the situation, Mary was with child as the Salem dispute played out. She became pregnant at some point early in 1635, likely in late January or early February, just as her husband's conflict escalated. Mary's final months of pregnancy were spent watching her husband stand trial for his controversial ideas on religious freedom, separation of church and state, Indigenous rights, and New England's relationship with England—all while being excluded from religious services in her own home. Mary's second child, a daughter named Freeborn, was born in Salem in the “later end of October 1635,” just as Mary's husband was banished from the colony.⁵⁰ The Massachusetts Bay authorities showed mercy on Roger and his growing family and deferred his banishment because he had been ill, winter was approaching, and his second child had just been born. We can assume that Mary was relieved that her husband was not banished immediately, but any hopes of a quiet life with a toddler and newborn were quickly quashed as her husband continued to share his controversial ideas with meetings at the family home. The magistrates decided to seize Roger immediately and banish him to England, but the Williamses were tipped off about the arrest, and Roger escaped amid a blizzard. He later reflected: “That ever honrd Govr Mr. Wintrop privately wrote to me to steer my Course to the Nahigonset Bay and Indians.” Roger took Winthrop's “prudent Motion as a Hint and voice from God . . . I steered my Course from Salem.” Roger reflected many years later that he still remembered the snowy “bitter Winter Season” and how for fourteen weeks he did not know “what Bread or Bed did meane.” Roger may well have exaggerated the timing and his suffering, but writing thirty-five years after his banishment, he still believed he had been “unkindly and unchristianly (as I believe) driven from my howse and land, and wife and children (in the midst of N. Engl. winter.)”⁵¹ Mary, unlike her husband, was not formally banished and she remained in Salem.

Mary was left with two young children to care for, presumably wondering when (and if) she would see her husband again. Mary most likely did not know her husband's specific route and location when he fled, and if she did know, she worried about betraying this for fear of reprisals amongst a shrinking circle of confidants in Salem. After months of absence, Roger found a place of refuge along the Seekonk River, in what is present-day Rumford, Rhode Island, and in the spring of 1636, Mary travelled south to join him. The newly reunited Williams family and a small band of followers started to construct dwellings and plant crops in earnest as they mapped out their physical and ideological vision for the settlement. However, within weeks they were forced to abandon the settlement as Plymouth Colony pronounced that the land was within their jurisdiction, which meant that Roger could be arrested. Once again, the group packed up their wares and sought a place of refuge. Using a dugout canoe, they rounded the Seekonk River into Narragansett homelands, which lay beyond the grasp of Plymouth colony. As the Narragansett Sachems welcomed Mary and the rest of the outcasts, she must have wondered what the future held after years of upheaval. Providence was Mary's home for the rest of her life, and as her husband famously declared, it was God's Providence that had guided them there.

Mary's arrival in Providence marked a new chapter in her life. Up until this point, Mary had moved around following the religious leanings (and controversies) of her father and then husband. In contrast, for the second half of her life, she lived in one spot: a settlement that she fundamentally shaped. From the age of twenty-seven until her death, Mary lived in the center of Providence, directly across from the town spring, the key social gathering space. The Williams family home lot, like all the lots in Providence, was a long thin strip of land that ran from the top of the hill down to the river. Their lot was no bigger than any of their neighbors, and unlike other New England towns, Providence was not designed around a meetinghouse. Mary's house was simple, with one all-purpose room and a small loft. The story-and-a-half high dwelling had a large fireplace and a stone chimney at the end, turned towards the hill. Archeological excavations on the Williams family home in 1906 concluded that the fire room, lower room, or hall was fifteen or sixteen feet by seventeen and about 6.5 feet high, with a very steep roof. The foundations were shallow, and if there was a cellar under the house, it was likely a simple hole for Mary to keep potatoes and other food items from freezing.⁵²

The first few years in Providence were hard for Mary and the other settler-colonists as they negotiated with the Narragansett Sachems and worked out the reality of their lively experiment in religious freedom. The Williams family had practical concerns too; they needed to plant crops, erect a new family home, and provide for their growing family. At times they also faced financial hardship. When Plymouth's Governor Edward Winslow visited Providence in its early days, he “put a piece of Gold” into Mary's hands for the family's sustenance.⁵³ Mary's hardships were in part connected to debts from the family's time in Plymouth and Salem. The Williams family had hoped to make a profit on the sale of their house in Salem, which never materialized.⁵⁴ Whilst the family was in Plymouth, Roger had consigned goods to George Ludlow to sell in Virginia, which resulted in a legal dispute with Ludlow in 1637. Roger described how he was in “many ways indebted, so I have many debts Coming to me.”⁵⁵ Part of the goods listed in the dispute were Mary's, notably her “better apparel” which Roger had put off to Ludlow at Plymouth.⁵⁶ Roger listed Mary's apparel as: “Another new gowne of my wives new come forth of England and cost between 40 and 50 shillings.”⁵⁷ Clearly the Williams family were struggling, and Roger “used many means and Atturnies” to try to recover the debt. Roger wrote how he “humbly beg” for “what helpe” was available.⁵⁸ Throughout his life, Roger wrote several times about the family's financial woes. Perhaps some of his claims of poverty were simply in relation to how much money he could have made if he joined his neighbors in trading guns and alcohol to Native Peoples.⁵⁹ While Roger worked to reclaim debts for the family through legal recourse and traded with the Ninnimissinuok, Mary tended to her growing family and built networks with her new neighbors.⁶⁰

Just as Mary began to settle into her new life in Providence, her father, Richard, stirred up trouble from across the Atlantic. The conflict was momentous in and of itself, and it centered on threats to revoke the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter and send bishops and a governor to New England. For Mary, what made it worse was that it also directly pertained to her husband and one of his most vocal critics, John Cotton. Richard wrote directly to Cotton, the Teacher of the Boston Church, in 1637 to debate issues connected to church practice and sent two manuscript treatises to Massachusetts Bay directly attacking their churches.⁶¹ The timing was ripe as it coincided with the Bay Colony's banishment of another religious dissenter, Anne Hutchinson.⁶² In May 1637, Winthrop received an anonymous letter from England warning him that settler-colonists in Massachusetts Bay had sent over sundry letters to England containing “dangerous passages,” which could ruin the colony if they were intercepted by “any one of many thousands of . . . [their] aduersaries.” The letters from Massachusetts Bay not only renounced the Church of England but explosively claimed that war between England and New England was imminent. The anonymous author encouraged Winthrop to hold a public meeting to disclaim all such letters and to establish an order against anyone who indited such letters.⁶³ The anonymous author named two people at the heart of the perilous situation, Richard Bernard and Roger Williams—Mary's father and husband.

The author described how by “disclayming of Mr. William's opinions” and their “dealing with him” Massachusetts Bay had gained favor in England and taken “off much preiudice from you with vs, and hath stopt the mouths of some.” The author reminded Winthrop and his fellow settler-colonists to be cautious on how they answered letters from England, specifically the one from Mary's father. The author worried how Cotton's correspondence with Richard would “doe not a little hurt among vs by the strictest of the seperaction . . . perhaps prouocation of Mr. Bernard,” especially if the letter miscarried.⁶⁴ The fear that correspondence might be intercepted was a legitimate one, and the author entreated Winthrop to “to conceale it, that any of vs hath thus written vnto you. . . . If you please to write anything back to me, the bearer hereof can tell you how it may be sent and deliuered to me.”⁶⁵ Given the content of the letter, it is unsurprising that the author wanted to remain anonymous.⁶⁶ The Massachusetts Bay authorities eventually replied to Richard in 1639, and they later published this anonymously (likely attributed to Richard Mather), as An Apologie of the Churches in New England for Church Covenant (1643). The title page explained how the text had been “Sent over in Answer to Master Bernard, in the Year 1639,” due to the delay with controversies in 1637.⁶⁷

Mary's kinship connection to networks of Puritan dissent reframes the wider fallout from Roger's banishment. By the time that An Apologie came out in 1643, Mary's father had passed away and her husband was away in England and on the cusp of publishing his most controversial work, The Bloudy Tenent. No letters survive between Mary and her father, nor between Mary's father and husband. Richard was well into his seventies when he died in 1641/2, and he was alive for Mary's marriage, her decision to leave England in 1631, the birth of his first three grandchildren from Mary, and Roger's banishment in 1635. Given Richard's own decision to return to the established church, we can only imagine his disapproval at his son-in-law's increasingly radical ideas. Perhaps the lack of surviving correspondence between the Williamses and Bernard is no accident, and Mary's family possibly disowned her when her husband's ideas radicalized. Beyond the personal impact of potentially being cut off, Mary's father not only corresponded with Roger's main adversary, but stirred up trouble weighing in on the religious and political debates that rocked New England. If Mary's father had indeed cut ties with her, the idea that her husband's banishment was something that appeased naysayers in England must have stung even more.

As the disputes with her father played out, Mary's modest house in Providence must have seemed like it was bursting at the seams. In addition to Mary Jr. and Freeborn, Mary had four additional children who were born in Providence. She gave birth to her first son at the end of September 1638, and aptly named him Providence. Mary then bore a daughter, Mercy, around July 15, 1640. At this point, the records about Mary's next child, a son named Daniel, are somewhat confusing. The record states that Daniel, the “Son of Roger Williams and Mary his wife was borne at Providence the 15 of February 1641 so calld.” This had led to scholars incorrectly citing his year of birth as 1641, which would have been impossible as Mercy had only been born seven months prior. The manuscript records clarify Daniel's birth with the following proviso: “counting yeare to begin about ye 25 of March” so that “he was born above a yeare & half after Mercy.” Thus, Daniel's correct date of birth was February 15, 1642. Mary was left alone tending to her five children in 1643 when her husband left for England on charter business, and as she bid him farewell, she was pregnant again. Mary's sixth and final child, Joseph, was born “about ye beginning of ye 10^th month Decemb 1643 (so calld).”⁶⁸ Roger was still in England when Mary gave birth to Joseph, and he did not return until September 1644 to meet his nine-month-old son.

Mary and Roger did not choose one of the more radical names for their offspring that some of their peers picked, such as Praise-God, Damned, Humiliation, Fly-from-Fornication, and If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned (thankfully also known as Nicholas.) However, given Mary's brother's eclectic names—Bengallevel, Cannanuel, Besekiell, Hoseel, and Masakiell, Mary and Roger's choice of names for their children is intriguing. The Williams children's names were more subtly symbolic, and influenced by biblical characters, family relations, time/place, moral virtues, and hortatory qualities. They followed the practice of naming their first-born daughter after her mother, and then picked prominent biblical names for Daniel and Joseph, and a moral quality for Mercy.⁶⁹ For their daughter Freeborn and son Providence, Mary and Roger opted for names directly based on timing, place, and symbolism. Freeborn was born in Salem at the end of October 1635, just as Roger was banished. Presumably her name was a nod towards being born free, but it is ambiguous as to whether this was freedom from religious or political oppression, the Church of England, or even the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Providence was Mary and Roger's first-born in the town of Providence, a place named after “God's merciful providence” in providing a shelter for “persons distressed for conscience.”⁷⁰

Mary's life in Providence caring for her six children, often alone, was hectic. She may well have had some basic proficiency in the Narragansett language as she played a role in diplomacy with the Ninnimissinuok, regularly entertaining key Indigenous leaders at her home.⁷¹ Roger noted repeatedly how “Mintunnomu is come to my howse” and “Miantunnomu kept his barbarous court lately at my house. . . He takes pleasure to visit me.”⁷² Mary's household fundamentally changed in June 1637 with the addition of an unfree Indigenous boy.⁷³ In the wake of the Pequot War, Mary's husband (presumably after discussing it with her) wrote to John Winthrop to request one of the many Pequot children who had been taken captive. Roger described how he had “fixed his eye” on a “little one” with “red about his neck” but was not “preemptory” in his choice and was open to “him, or any.”⁷⁴ Winthrop agreed and a few weeks later Roger wrote to thank him:

It is ambiguous whether the child was enslaved or indentured, but nonetheless, just one year after the founding of Providence, the Williams family had an unfree Indigenous child living in their house with their two young daughters. The child was a “stolen relation,” whom they were happy to split up from his mother and siblings, remove from his homelands, and to erase his identity by renaming him.⁷⁶ Given Roger's frequent absences, Mary likely played a central role in the unfree child's life, especially given her husband's promise to “keeping and bringing up” the child and “endeavor his good.”⁷⁷

Over the years, Mary's household continued to expand.⁷⁸ By 1639, Mary had another servant, Joshua Winsor, in her home.⁷⁹ Later, the Williams family had a Dutch servant, John Clauson, living with them after he sought freedom from his indentureship in the New Netherlands in 1647. Roger described how Clauson had been “lost Naked and Starving” and Roger had “sought him out (by Natives)” due to his fluency in Dutch.⁸⁰ According to Roger, Mary and the family gave Clauson “all possible Helpe and Favour” and “cherished him.” Given Roger's absences, Mary was left running the household, raising her growing family, and supervising various unfree people who lived with her.

Mary had other family members in proximity, and her brother-in-law, Robert Williams, lived on the same street in Providence before he eventually moved to Newport. Mary's elder brother, Masakiell, a clothier (under the patronage of the Whalley family) emigrated from Weymouth, Dorset with his wife, Mary, and their two children in 1635.⁸¹ Masakiell traveled to New England under the leadership of the minister Joseph Hull, and settled in Weymouth, Massachusetts. William Harris of Providence described having business with “Mr Barnard the brother of Mr. Williams his wife” in a letter from 1666.⁸² Masakiell arrived just as Mary's husband was banished and would have been aware of the controversy.⁸³ Weymouth is approximately forty-five miles from Providence, and Mary may have seen her brother, sister-in-law, and nephews when she returned to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to seek medical assistance for her children. Mary's connection with the rest of her family in England after she migrated is murky as there is no extant correspondence. As time progressed, Mary's kinship network in Providence expanded to include sons and daughters-in-law, and eventually grandchildren. In total, Mary had thirty-two grandchildren, and she lived to watch many of them grow up nearby.⁸⁴

Over the years, Mary gained a reputation for her medical knowledge. Mary not only nursed her family, but she also cared for those who were sick in the community. During the Pequot War she even saved a soldier's life. Thomas Roberts was “neere death” but “Through the Lords mercy” Mary “got him upon his legs, though very weake” and saved him.⁸⁵ When Roger wrote to John Winthrop Jr. in November 1649, he asked “My wife pray a little of your powder for Mrs. Weekes daughter of Warrick, who is every Winter greatly afflicted by occasion.”⁸⁶ Mary, unlike her husband, was never formally banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and she made several return visits for medical purposes. In 1649 Mary took her teenaged daughter, Mary Jr., to get “Councell and help” from Dr. John Clark in Newberry, Massachusetts. Mary Jr. sufferd with “a fluxe of Reume” that had “much affected her head and right eye.”⁸⁷ Clarke “made an Issue in Maries arme for her Eye” and Mary Jr. had “taken much physic and been let blood.”⁸⁸ These scattered lines from her husband's correspondence confirm that Mary played several important roles within the Providence community, including caring for the sick.

Understanding Mary's personal connections in the Providence community and beyond reframes what Roger's banishment meant in practice. Roger's correspondence shows that Mary remained connected to women outside of Rhode Island after her husband's banishment. Roger kept a close correspondence with Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay, and in a letter from April 1638, Roger sent his “wives due respect to Mrs Winthrop.”⁸⁹ He reaffirmed in May 1638 that “my wife and selfe respectively Salute your honoured selfe and Mrs Wintrop” and again the following month that “mine own and wife's respective salutes to your deare companion and all yours . . . and other loving friends.”⁹⁰ Mary also sent goods to Mrs. Winthrop and in October 1638 Roger ended a letter to John Winthrop with: “Sir my wife (together with her best respects) to Mrs Wintrop request her acceptance of an handful of Chesnuts.” Mary promised “if Mrs Winthrop love” the chestnuts that she would send “a bigger basket” in the future.⁹¹ On other occasions, Mary sent her “best salutes” and “loving respects” to the Winthrop family via her husband.⁹² These scattered references to Mary in the midst of her husband's extensive correspondence might not seem significant at first glance, but they reveal that Mary remained connected to former friends in Massachusetts.⁹³

After so much upheaval during her early years in New England, Mary made the decision to stay in Providence while her husband travelled to England to secure a charter. Surviving letters penned by Roger provide a glimpse of the different roles that she played during this time. In October 1652 Roger sent a letter from England to Gregory Dexter in Providence, describing his “Dutie and Affection” for his “poore Companion,” Mary. Mary was clearly well connected with Dexter, who published Roger's A Key into the Language in 1643. Roger asked Dexter to give Mary “faithful care in anything she hath occasions to use your help Concerning our children and Affairs.” Roger missed Mary and his children, but he was aware of how dangerous it was to cross the Atlantic, especially during wartime. Nonetheless, he acquainted Mary with “our Affaires” but left it to her to “freely . . . wait upon the Lord for Direction, and according as she finds her Sprit free and Chearful, so to come or stay.” Roger clearly wanted Mary to join him, and he told Mary “how joyfull I should be of her being here with me untill our Affaries were ended.”⁹⁴ Roger asked his wife to cross the Atlantic, despite knowing the dangers, which were compounded with conflict with the Dutch and the real and present danger of pirate attacks.

Mary remained steadfast in her decision to stay in Providence, even as Roger became increasingly impatient for reunification. He reminded his fellow Rhode Islanders of the sacrifice he was making, describing how he “longed earnestly to return with the last ship” but understood that it was necessary for him to stay to secure the charter. He stated plainly: “remember, I am a father and . . . husband.” As Mary remained set in her decision to stay in Providence, Roger resorted to increasingly desperate tactics to encourage her to join him, even writing to friends in Rhode Island to “consider if it not be convenient that my poor wife be incouraged to come over to me.” Roger reminded his friends in Providence that “no man can stay here as I do [in England] . . . without much self-denial.” Roger appealed directly to Mary too, and he described how: “I write to my dear wife, my great desire of her coming.” Despite Roger's pleas, Mary chose to stay in Providence. Roger fundamentally disagreed with the decision, but he respected it, and it was her decision.⁹⁵ Fragmented clues in Roger's letters suggest that Mary wrote him while he was away, presumably reiterating her love for him, updating him on family and colony affairs, and explaining her decision to stay.⁹⁶ It was likely practical reasons that kept Mary in Providence—someone needed to care for their children, manage their house, tend to their affairs, and most importantly keep the lively experiment alive. War in Europe added to the already dangerous passage across the Atlantic, and the tense religious climate in England may have also put Mary off. As land disputes rocked Providence in the mid-seventeenth century, Mary's continued presence in Providence provided a constant reminder of who had founded the colony and the radical principles they were protecting by seeking a charter. By the time that Roger returned to Providence in June 1654, Mary had been managing the Williams family affairs alone in Providence for almost three years.

Mary's support networks were particularly important given Roger's absences, and she navigated many defining moments in her life without her husband. Perhaps the most terrifying was when she suffered “a sudden sickness threatening death” in the early 1650s whilst Roger was away tending to Indian affairs.⁹⁷ Mary survived, and Roger described how “it pleased the Lord most graciously to cast and raise . . . [his] poor Companion and Yoak-fellow . . . [and] Dearest Love and Companion in this Vale of Tears” from the “dangerous sickness.” Roger then chose to publish the personal letter he sent to Mary in the wake of her illness as part a pamphlet entitled Experiments of Spiritual Health and Life. The irony of Roger being away when she nearly died, and then away again (this time in England on charter business) when he published the pamphlet in 1652, would not have been lost on Mary. Roger acknowledged in the pamphlet how absence defined their marriage: “the Lord was pleased . . . (more than ordinarily) to dispose of my abode and travel” amongst the Indians when Mary was sick.⁹⁸

By all accounts, Mary was lucky to survive, and her sickness was “sudden and dangerous,” and she was close to the “jawes of Death,” but thankfully the Lord was “gracious and speedy” with her recovery. Roger worried about his separation from Mary and living the “rest of our short uncertain span, more as strangers, longing and breathing after another.” Roger compared the devotional pamphlet to “a handful of flowers made upon in a little Posey” which were for “thy dear selfe, and our dear children, to look and smell on” in winter. He hoped that it would provide comfort for Mary even “when as the grass of the field shall be gone and withered.” He waxed lyrical about the publication, hoping his gift was “sweeter to thee than the Honey and the Honey-combe, and stronger refreshment th[a]n the strongest wines . . . and of more value th[a]n if every line and letter were thousands of gold and silver.”⁹⁹ The publication of Roger's letter to Mary as part of a devotional pamphlet reinforces not only Mary's literacy, but it also hints at her own religious leanings. If her husband knew she would (presumably) appreciate the publication, it suggests that he valued her spiritual knowledge.

In Experiments of Spiritual Health and Life, Roger considered Mary's sickness in the context of how “the true use of sicknesse” was “a warning from Heaven to make ready for a sudden call to be gone.”¹⁰⁰ In the pamphlet, Roger used Mary's illness as a lens to explore how “the weakest Child of God may get Assurance of his Spirtuall Life and Blessednesse” and “the Strongest may finde proportionable Discoveries of his Christian Growth, and the means of it.”¹⁰¹ It is unclear what illness Mary suffered with, but with her husband absent, presumably her children and neighbors in Providence helped to nurse her back to health. Mary's thoughts on the key issues that kept her husband away, namely securing a charter and Indigenous affairs, are unknown. However, it is evident that Roger's absences enabled Mary to play a significant role in colony business herself.

The 1661 document that Mary signed acknowledged how Providence was “a shelter for persons distress of conscience” and how they sought “loving and peaceable neighbourhood” with the “natives round and about us.” Roger was the “procurer of the purchase, not by monies nor payment . . . but by that language, acquaintance, and favor with the natives and other advantages which it pleased God to give me.” Roger (and presumably Mary) “bore the charges and ventures of all the gratuetyes” that were given to the “great sachems, and other sachems and natives round about us.” The document that Mary signed confirmed her husband's version of the founding and set it out in a more “formal way.” It reads: “I Mary Williams, wife unto Roger Williams, doe Assent unto the premises. Witness my hand this twentyeth day of December in the present yeare one Thousand six hundred and sixty one. The marke of MW Mary Williams.”¹⁰² Mary signing with her “mark” is not a sign of her illiteracy, and other evidence reinforces that she could read and write. Mark Hailwood's recent work on literacy in early modern England argues that marks on signed legal testimonies “have conventionally been treated as indictors of illiteracy” but in practice they reveal the existence of a “hierarchy of writing skills” across social class and gender.¹⁰³

The final years of Mary's life were marked by continued separation from her husband, hardship, and perhaps mostly importantly, war. Described by some scholars as the deadliest war in American history, King Philip's War had profound implications for the whole of New England, and Mary and her family were no exception.¹⁰⁴ As the fighting escalated throughout 1675 and moved closer to Providence, Mary, at the age of sixty-seven, abandoned her home of forty years in Providence and took refuge on Aquidneck Island. Shortly after Mary left, Native forces burned Providence, and her house was razed. When Mary got the news, she was once again separated from her husband, who had stayed in Providence. On April 1, 1676, Roger wrote to his brother, Robert, explaining how “By my Wife I wrote to You . . . to acquaint your dear Self, and my Dear Wife, and Children, and Friends, with the goings of . . . at Providence.”¹⁰⁵ This suggests that Roger wrote directly to Mary, but any letter he may have sent has not survived, nor has any reply from Mary; we can only imagine Mary's devastation. Mary returned to Providence on August 30, 1676, and the record notes that “By Gods Providence it seasonably came to pass yt Providence Williams [Mary's son] brought up his mother from Newport in his sloop.” Mary's son used the same vessel to clear the town of all the “Indians” to the “great peace & Content” of all the inhabitants, meaning that Mary and her family profited from trading enslaved captives to the West Indies and elsewhere in the Atlantic World.¹⁰⁶

This letter is the last known recorded item concerning her life. It is likely that Mary spent her last days with one of her sons, probably Joseph or Daniel. In a letter written a few years later, Daniel stated, “I do not desire to say what I have done for both father and mother. I judge they wanted nothing that was convenient for ancient people.”¹⁰⁷ The cause and date of Mary's death is unknown, but it was some time in or after 1676. Roger died in 1683, aged approximately eighty and he has been laid to rest in three different places. Originally, he was buried directly behind the Williams family house, up the hill from what is now Roger Williams National Memorial.¹⁰⁸ When descendants dug up Roger's first grave in the 1860s to move him to the family lot, they found several interesting things, including an apple tree vaguely in the shape of a body.¹⁰⁹ They also found a woman's remains next to him—it was a separate grave, but close to him. In the grave there was a piece of braided hair, teeth, coffin nails, and bone fragments, which led them to believe it was Mary. The graves were side-by-side and right next to the Williams home lot and house foundations on the hill.¹¹⁰ When Roger's remains were moved, they moved the woman's too, and both were interred in a family crypt at the North Burial Ground. The remains of Roger and the woman (presumably Mary) were removed from the crypt and buried for the third (and hopefully final) time in 1939 at Prospect Terrace in Providence. The inscription at Prospect Terrace states: “HERE REPOSES DUST FROM THE GRAVE OF ROGER WILLIAMS.” The lack of acknowledgement of Mary's legacy at her presumed burial site is symbolic of how her husband's story has dominated the historical narrative. But Roger Williams did have a wife. One who kept Rhode Island's lively experiment alive even while apart from her husband, cared for her family and community, was literate, well-connected in dissenting circles in her own right, and made her own religious and life choices.

Part of the challenge of telling Mary's story in her own words is that she left behind so few of them, especially compared to her husband. Even so, Mary was a well-connected literate white woman, and the details of her life are abundant compared to many other women of the time, especially enslaved black and Indigenous women. As Laurel Thatcher Ulrich observes, “History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible.”¹¹¹ Roger's story has been heard loud and clear, but Mary's story, although quieter, is there for those who look. She will likely never have a park named after her or statues bearing her (imagined) face. However, acknowledging Mary's role and her agency paves the way for new narratives beyond the well-trod ground of scholarship on her husband. Mary's story allows us to reshape the historical narrative firmly away from the “great man” historiography that depicts Roger as a lone hero in the grand founding of Providence.