HamdenPro:
Did you know?
On this day in History
Roger Williams. the founder of Rhode Island, arrives in
Boston from England on February 5, 1631.
An interesting historical fact
about the Rhode Island founder is that he was eaten by an apple tree.
Apple Tree Root
In 1860, a group of men
attempted to exhume what was left of Roger Williams’s corpse. When they dug
into the back portion of Roger Williams’s home lot near the corner of Benefit
and Bowen Streets in Providence, they were surprised to find not a skeleton but
the root of an apple tree that vaguely resembled a torso and legs. They
believed that the apple tree had been nourished by Williams’s decaying body,
and donated it to the Rhode Island Historical Society to keep it safe. From
then on, it has been known as “the root that ate Roger Williams.” The Root is
currently on view at the John Brown House Museum.
