The area which is now Providence was first settled in June 1636 by Roger Williams, and was the tribal domain of the Narragansett Indians.
During its first forty years the town was exclusively a fishing and farming village, but in the years following the devastation of King Philip's War, some industrial and commercial activity began. Settlers moved outward to the town's remote lands bordering upon Connecticut to the west and Massachusetts to the north. Despite this growth, however, the population of the entire municipality was only 1,446 when the first colony-wide census was taken in 1708.
The economy grew during the second and third decades of the eighteenth century, and by the next census, in 1730, the population had nearly tripled (to 3,916). So many farmers had moved into the "outlands" of Providence that three large towns were set off from the parent community in 1731 (Scituate, Glocester, and Smithfield).
By the middle of the 1760s, Providence had a flourishing maritime trade, a merchant aristocracy, a few important industries, a body of skilled artisans, a newspaper and printing press, a stagecoach line, and several impressive public buildings |