Providence-based Quaker historian Elizabeth Cazden spoke about the role of Quakers in the history of King Philip’s War at the Rogers Public Library in Bristol, RI, on April 23, 2025. Cazden is a direct descendant of John Borden, one of the participants in the meeting that was held between Rhode Island Deputy Governor John Easton and Metacomet (King Philip) in June of 1675, just before the outbreak of King Philip’s War. Click here for a one-hour video of her talk. Click here for a six-minute recitation of Metacmon’s grievances that led to the War by Historian Stan Svec. Click here for John Easton’s A Relation of the Indian War.

(Above) Longtime friend and Bristol Historical and Preservation Society Executive Director, Cathering Zipf, introduced Ms. Cazden to an audience of over seventy people.

Cazden began by referring her family’s old family genealogy book of hers that has an account of the 1675 meeting. She went on to talk about how land in New England was appropriated by the English settlers with little regard for the Indigenous people who had been there for millennea.

She then spoke about the arrival of the first Quakers in New England in 1656-1658 and their commitment to pacificism, later reflected in portrayals of William Penn‘s peaceful relations with the Lenape in Pennsylvania.

She then described the meeting between Easton and King Philip at Tripp’s Ferry at the southern tip of Bristol where the Mount Hope Bridge stands today. Citing the deed that Roger Williams struck with Narragansett chiefs Canonicus and Miantinomi for that land, she pointed to Metacomet’s unhappiness with English methods of land acquisition. The subsequent war that broke out only a few weeks later resulted in the burning of both Native and English settlements across New England.