South Kingstown’s Partial Census for 1730: Whites, Indians and Blacks

I was going through the colonial records of South Kingstown at the South Kingstown Town Hall last year when I stumbled across a census document with decent detail that wound up to be a part of the Rhode Island colony’s 1730 census for South Kingstown. It is rare that this kind of detail is available for any town from the 1730 census.

Unfortunately, the documents do not reflect the entire results for South Kingstown, which then included the current town of Narragansett. The totals for South Kingstown in the 1730 census were: 965 Whites, 225 Indians, and 333 Blacks, for a total of 1,523 people.[1] The document I stumbled across has only a portion of the totals: 422 Whites, 43 Indians, and 77 Blacks, for a total of 542 people. Thus, the rest of the South Kingstown 1730 census would reflect higher percentages of people of color.

South Kingstown’s Black population increased from 333 in 1730, to 380 in 1748 to 440 in 1774.[2] Thus, it appears that most of this growth would be natural growth from births (and not from slave trading).

I thought I had made a discovery that would be of interest to genealogists of White families and historians of colonial Blacks and Indians. In particular, with the White heads of households identified, I figured it would be of particular interest to genealogists. (Consistent with the times, the names of people of color were not provided). But, not surprisingly, I discovered recently that someone from the Rhode Island Genealogical Society (Jane Fletcher Fiske) had already found it and published the below in the society’s magazine in 1984.[3] The Rhode Island Genealogical Society does a great job covering Rhode Island’s history. Fletcher said a photocopy of the partial census was found in the South Kingstown town hall records. I did not find the photocopy but I did find the original of the partial census. Fletcher added that the only other partial census for a town that was found from the 1730 census was from Portsmouth, which was published by the Rhode Island Genealogical Society in 1981.[4]

Still, I am glad to have the results below to study the level of slaveholding and the use of Indian labor at this early colonial date. During colonial times, South Kingstown was Rhode Island’s (and New England’s) greatest slaveholding rural town. The heyday of the White “South Kingstown Planters” or “Narragansett Planters,” as they were called, was from about 1730 to 1775. Thus, the census reflects when the wealthiest farmers in South Kingstown began to find success in commercial farming. After gaining control of cheap land after the end of King’s Philip’s War from the Narragansett tribe and the termination of a boundary dispute with Connecticut and Massachusetts, the farmers began producing excess farm products to trade to Newport merchants. The products included cheese, wool and stock animals—cows, sheep and especially fine horses called Narragansett Pacers. The Newport merchants, in turn, hired ships to carry the products to the British-controlled Caribbean islands, such as Barbados and Jamaica.[5]

To succeed in the commercial agricultural enterprise, the South Kingstown farmers needed cheap labor. They found it with Africans purchased from White slave traders and local Narragansett Indians. The Whites enslaved the Africans. While the 1730 document I came across does not say so, it is likely that all of the Black people counted in the 1730 census below were enslaved.

At this time, enslaving Indians was illegal, but nonetheless some were enslaved or practically so. Other Indians hired themselves out as servants for a term of years (called indentured servants) or were children who were “bound out” to White families by town officials until they became adults. (By 1775, I have found no examples of Indians being enslaved in Rhode Island.)

A few Whites in the households were likely not family members but instead were indentured servants. Most of the Whites were likely family members, including from multiple generations.

Here are some highlights from the 67 households counted below. All 67 households were headed by Whites. It would not be until after the American Revolutionary War started that Blacks in South Kingstown would begin to head their own households.

More than half of the households below had Blacks and/or Indians residing in them. The percentages are fairly even in regards to households headed by Whites with Blacks only residing there, households headed by Whites with Indians only residing there, and White households with both Blacks and Indians residing there. In many instances, the Blacks or Indians would have lived in the same household as the Whites—in attics, basements, crawl spaces and cellars. Some may have been relegated to a barn or other outbuilding.[6]

The average size of a household headed by Whites with Whites only residing there was six people. By comparison, the average size of the household headed by Whites with Whites, Blacks, and/or Indians residing there was 12.6.

Colonel George Hazard had the most Blacks at his household, with thirteen. Henry Knowles had the second most, with ten. These numbers are not nearly as high as the wealthy planters in colonial Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina, where some planters had more than one hundred enslaved people. Still, they were high for New England. The Widow Hazard had the most Indians at a household, with six.

Only ten of the 67 households had both Blacks and Indians living there. Eventually, the Narragansetts and Blacks would intermarry and have mixed race children, but that would accelerate after the American Revolutionary War.

Some of the South Kingstown households were very large. Henry Knowles had fourteen Whites, ten Blacks, and one Indian, for a total of twenty-five people, living at his household. Abiel Sherman had the second-most, with nineteen people residing at his household—thirteen Whites and six people of color.

Many old South Kingstown names are listed below, including Babcock, Barber, Carpenter, Clarke, Cottrell, Gardner, Hazard, Helme, Kenyon, Knowles, Potter, Sheldon, and Teft. Some names did not survive long, such as Hannah, Hull, and Lee.

Top of first page of the partial census for South Kingstown for 1730 in South Kingstown Town Hall (Christian McBurney)

The Solomon Carpenter house, circa 1705. Solomon Carpenter appears in the 1730 census below and his family lived in this house, which still stands off South Road in between Kingston village and the former South Road Elementary School (Old Houses in the South County of Rhode Island, 36)

Here is the raw data. Our website program does not allow us to use columns or tabs. Thus, the information below is presented in the following format (the original has the first four columns but not the fifth):

Name Head of Household (first column)

Number of Whites in Household (second column)

Number of Indians in Household (third column)

Number of Blacks in Household (fourth column)

Total People in Household (fifth or last column)

A List of part of ye Inhabitances of South Kingstown Both White & Blacks

Peleg Mumford, 5, 1, 2, 8

Stephan Cottrell, 9, 0, 0, 9

Peleg Mumford Jr, 6, 0, 1, 7

Mary Fordice, 3, 0, 0, 3

William Sunderlin, 4, 0, 0, 4

Cap. Jon. Babcock, 6, 0, 1, 7

Samuel Hopkins, 8, 0, 0, 8

John Earles, 7, 0, 0, 7

Isaac Fowler, 7, 0, 0, 7

John Hull, 10, 0, 0, 10

Nathaniel Potter, 4, 0, 0, 4

Moses Barber Jr, 8, 0, 0, 8

Bny. Barber, 3, 0, 0, 3

Moses Barber, 8, 0, 0, 8

Joseph Cass [Case?] Jr, 8, 0, 2, 10

George Gardner, 7, 3, 4, 14

William Lee, 6, 0, 0, 6

Col. Geo. Hazard, 5, 0, 13, 18

Thomas Hazard, 2, 1, 2, 5

Christopher Helme, 8, 3, 3, 14

Rowse Helme, 11, 3, 2, 16

Michael Harris, 2, 0, 0, 2

William Watson, 5, 0, 0, 5

John Cass, 2, 0, 1, 3

John Teft, 8, 1, 0, 9

Samuel Teft, 9, 2, 0, 11

Elizabeth Teft, 7, 1, 0, 8

Henry Knowles, 14, 1, 10, 25

John Nichols, 9, 0, 0, 9

Widow Hazard, 2, 6, 0, 8

William Gardner (Son to Henry), 7, 0, 3, 10

Abial Shearman, 13, 0, 6, 19

Robert Hannah, 8, 2, 3, 13

Elisha Reynolds, 5, 0, 0, 5

William Cass [Case?], 3, 0, 0, 3

Abraham Perkins, 8, 0, 4, 12

Thomas Fowler, 2, 0, 0, 2

George Webb, 2, 0, 4, 6

Nathan Niles, 3, 4, 1, 8

Cap. Jeremiah Fisk, 10, 3, 4, 17

Robert Potter, 7, 3, 0, 10

Jehabod Potter (Son of Robert), 4, 1, 0, 5

Joseph Cass [Case], 2, 0, 3, 5

Immanuel Cass [Case], 6, 0, 2, 8

Charles Higinbotham, 5, 1, 0, 6

Solomon Carpenter, 6, 0, 0, 6

Lydia Potter, 7, 0, 3, 10

William Clarke, 4, 1, 1, 6

John Sheldon, 9, 0, 2, 11

Robert Wilcox, 5, 3, 0, 8

Jehabod Potter, 5, 1, 0, 6

John Sheldon Jr, 4, 0, 0, 4

Peter Wells, 12, 0, 0, 12

Job Babcock, 12, 1, 0, 13

Samuel Babcock, 7, 0, 0, 7

Isaac Sheldon, 11, 0, 0, 11

John Willard, 2, 0, 0, 2

Thomas Kinyon [Kenyon], 6, 0, 0, 6

Benjamin Tanner, 11, 0, 0, 11

William Tanner, 9, 0, 0, 9

William Barber, 10, 0, 0, 10

John Dennison , 2, 0, 0, 2

Joseph Phillips, 4, 0, 0, 4

William Murray, 3, 0, 0, 3

Ephraim Bull, 7, 1, 0, 8

Joseph Majore, 3, 0, 0, 3

George Kalley [Kelly?], 5, 0, 0, 5

Totals, 422, 43, 77, 542

Totals, Percentages and Averages Derived from Above Census Information:

Total Households Headed by Whites, 67

Total Households Headed by Blacks, 0

Total Households Headed by Indians, 0

Total Households Headed by Whites with Whites Only Residing There, 33

Total Households Headed by Whites with Blacks and/or Indians Also Residing There, 24

Total Households Headed by Whites with Only Blacks Also Residing There, 13

Total Households Headed by Whites with Only Indians Also Residing There, 11

Total Households Headed by Whites with Both Blacks and Indians Also Residing There, 10

Percentage of Households Headed by Whites, 100%

Percentage of Households Headed by Blacks, 0%

Percentage of Households Headed by Indians, 0%

Percentage of Households Headed by Whites with Whites Only Residing There, 49.25%

Percentage of Households Headed by Whites with Blacks and/or Indians Residing There, 50.75%

Percentage of Households Headed by Whites with Only Blacks Residing There, 19.40%

Percentage of Households Headed by Whites with only Indians Residing There, 16.42%

Percentage of Households Headed by Whites with Both Blacks and Indians Residing There, 14.93%

Average Size of all Households, 8.1

Average Size of Households Headed by Whites with Whites Only Residing There, 5.9

Average Size of All Households Headed by Whites (with Whites, Blacks and/or Indians Residing There), 8.5

Average Size of Households Headed by Whites with Whites and Blacks Residing There, 10.4

Average Size of Households Headed by Whites with Whites and Indians Residing There, 9.4

Average Size of Households Headed by Whites with Whites, Blacks and Indians All Residing There, 12.6

Average Number of Whites at Households Headed by Whites, 6.6

Average number of Blacks at Households Headed by Whites with Blacks Residing There, 3.3

Average number of Indians at Households Headed by Whites with Indians Residing There, 2.0

Average Number of Blacks and Indians at Households headed by Whites with Blacks and/or Indians Residing There, 5.4

Highest Number of Whites in a Household: Henry Knowles, 14

Second Highest Number of Whites in a Household: Abial Sherman, 13

Highest Number of Blacks in a Household: Col. George Hazard, 13

Second Highest Number of Blacks in a Household: Henry Knowles, 10

Highest Number of Indians in a Household: Widow Hazard, 6

Largest Household, all residents: Henry Knowles, 25

Second Largest Household, all residents: Abial Shearman,19

Notes: