Cultural Historian and retired Providence College professor Keith Morton led a group to Margaret’s Rock, the location where it is said that Roger Williams was nursed back to health by a Native Woman in the winter of 1636 following his banishment from Salem, MA. Click here for more about Williams and here for a 40-minute video of the event on July 20, 2024. Click here, here, here and here for other web pages with video links.

(Above) The group crosses a field in North Warren, RI, and walks through the woods in which the rock is located on private property. On the way, Morton talks about a possible Native burial ground in the area and some of the geology of the area in which the rock is situated.

(Above) The group arrives and gets their first look at what is sometimes describec as a “cave” in that an indentation in the rock could have been used to build a shelter that the Pokanoket Massasoit Ousamequin may have offered to Williams whom he had befriended four years earlier when Williams lived in Plymouth.

(Above) Morton notes some of the assumptions in the description before Sowams Heritage Area Project Coordinator David Weed describes Sachem’s Knoll and King’s Rock, other known Pokanoket locations nearby. The visit ends as Morton points out the area to the right of the Rock that could have been the location for a Pokanoket settlement at the time that Williams was there.