Weird Island

7. ROGER WILLIAMS: and the Man-Eating Tree

Episode Summary

When Providence community leaders went to move Roger Williams’s remains, 177 years after his death, to a more suitable location, they found no body or bones in his grave--only a man-shaped apple tree root. To Visit: John Brown House: 52 Power Street, Providence, RI 02906 Roger Williams Statue and Tomb: Prospect Terrace Park, 60 Congdon Street, Providence, RI 02906

Episode Notes

Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

Hi! You’re listening to Weird Island, and I’m your host, Sara. Each week I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up, from my tiny little state of Rhode Island. This week, I’m going to tell you about Rhode Island’s founder, Roger Williams, and the man-eating apple tree.

Roger Williams founded Rhode Island in 1636. But in 1860, 177 after his death, he’d leave another kind of legacy. When community leaders went to move his remains to a more suitable burial spot, they found nothing but a man-shaped root of an apple tree where his body had once been. Eight years after this incident, it would appear in an early chemistry book, in which the author writes, “the flesh, the bones of Roger Williams had passed into an apple tree… had been converted into luscious fruit, which from year to year had been gathered and eaten. How pertinent, then, is the question, ‘Who ate Roger Williams?’” But before we talk about that, let me tell you a little bit about who Roger Williams was.
Williams was born around 1603 in London. While we don’t know much about his earliest days, it’s clear that from a young age he was incredibly bright. As a teen, he came to the attention of a famous lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, who recognized his potential and sponsored his early education. Williams excelled with languages, and was one of 8 students granted a scholarship to Pembroke College at Cambridge University. While there, he was ordained as a minister in the Church of England, but he became increasingly critical of the church and later converted to Puritanism. This was a dangerous time to be a Puritan in England, though, so Roger Williams and his wife Mary packed up and left for America.
Williams was only 28 years old when he arrived off the coast of Massachusetts in early 1631, but already his reputation preceded him, and he arrived to a job offer. The minister of the church in Boston was returning to England, and the leaders of the church had unanimously voted to hire Williams. But while he had no other job offer, and little money, he declined, stating that he didn’t believe the church was separate enough from the Church of England.
He and Mary set out for Salem instead, a town that took a much stricter approach to worship. There he was also offered a job in the church, but when the scorned leadership in Boston found out, they put an end to that, and Williams picked up yet again and moved to Plimoth.
He was pretty well accepted in Plimoth for a while. He didn’t try to become minister, but he did preach as a member of the church at times, and Governor William Bradford wrote that, “his teachings were well approved.” He also began forming some other relationships that would play a huge role in his life. He became good friends with Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoag, and Cononicus, chief sachem of the Narragansett, and spent time learning the Algonquin-based language of these Native American tribes.
It wasn’t long, though, before Roger Williams upset the apple cart again. In 1632, he wrote a critique of the King’s charters based on an idea that was super radical at the time. He argued that the King had no right to grant charters, like the one establishing Plimoth, without first buying the land from the Native Americans. Of course, Plymouth wasn’t happy about this, with their legitimacy being called into question--really nobody was happy about this--and Williams headed back to Salem in 1633. Massachusetts Bay authorities asked him to appear before the General Court in Boston, and Williams probably realized he had pushed it a little too far this time, and he may have even voluntarily burned the writing to smooth things over.
But, of course, there was really nothing that could stop Williams from voicing his radical ideas, and in 1635 he was again ordered before the General Court, and this time it was too much. Williams was banished, though he was given a little bit of leeway when it came to leaving. It was winter, after all. But Williams couldn’t even keep the peace during the weeks he was allotted before leaving, and in January of 1636 sheriffs were sent for him, only to find his house empty. He had fled into the snow. He traveled 55 miles through a blizzard before being found by the Wampanoags, who sheltered him through the end of winter.
That spring, he set out to create his own settlement. After a warning from Governor Winslow of Plymouth that Williams needed to establish himself outside the bounds of Plymouth Colony, he crossed the Seekonk river by canoe--first setting foot on Rhode Island’s equivalent of Plymouth Rock, called Slate Rock, where he was greeted by the Narragansett in a mix of English and Narragansett languages with the words: “What cheer, Netop!” which meant something like, “What’s up, friend!”
Side note: this rock, like Plymouth rock, was apparently around until 1877 when RI reportedly went to build a structure around it, but decided to clear the area using dynamite…
That year, 1636, Roger Williams and a group of his followers established what is now Providence, on land purchased from the Narragansett tribe, and in the fall of that year, he drafted a Civil Compact that established separation of church and state in the new colony.
Of course, Roger Williams wasn’t the only founder of this little state. He helped others, including John Clarke, Anne and William Hutchinson and William Coddington, purchase what was then called Rhode Island (and is now called Aquidneck Island) from the Narragansetts in 1637, and there they established Portsmouth and Newport. There was also Samuel Gorton’s settlement in Shawomet, which would become Warwick. Later, in 1643, Roger Williams obtained a patent or charter for the colony from England, and in 1647 all four settlements united as the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
Williams would continue to serve Rhode Island in a number of ways throughout his life, but he only served as governor for four years. In his later years, he witnessed what some have called the “bitterest event of his life” - King Philip's War, between the colonists and the Native Americans. He watched as Providence, and his own home, burned to the ground, and then lived to see it rebuilt.
Roger Williams died between January and March 1683, and because of the separation of religious and government institutions, there were no state churches with public burial grounds at the time, so he was buried on his own property, alongside an orchard behind what is now Benefit Street. There was a small ceremony at the gravesite, attended by his neighbors, but that was about it. If a stone marked his grave, it disappeared over the years. And 50 years after his death, his house collapsed into the cellar, and the location of his grave was all but forgotten. It was a quiet close to the life of this figure of legendary qualities.
His memory may have been neglected for some time, but it wasn’t entirely forgotten. In 1860, 177 years later, Providence’s community leaders sought out the remains of Roger Williams in the hopes of creating a suitable memorial to the founder of the state. But first, they had to do a little sleuthing to pinpoint the exact burial site.
Community leader Zachariah Allen uncovered a newspaper story in which Providence resident Captain Nathanial Packard described a burial he had attended, of a descendent of Williams’, on the family plot behind the house. Those who dug the grave, accidentally dug directly above the foot of what turned out to be Roger William’s coffin. And Packard, who was 10 years old at the time, was lowered down into the grave where he saw William’s decaying bones covered by a long, mossy substance. He would go on to tell his children this story, and he often brought his daughter to the site--and she was able to help confirm its location, which matched the location pointed to by Williams’ descendents.
Community leaders were now ready to start digging. First they uncovered that newer grave that adjoined Williams’ and Zachariah Allen writes that they knew it was the most recent because, “the exact shape of the coffin was visible by a carbonaceous black streak of the thickness of the edge of the sides of the coffin, with the ends distinctly defined. The rusted remains of the hinges and nails were found in their places, with some rotten fragments of wood, and a single round knot.”
Then, Williams’ grave was excavated, and though Allen writes that “the utmost care was taken in scraping away the earth from the bottom of the grave of Roger Williams. Not a vestige of any bone was discoverable…” And finally, there was his wife Mary’s grave beside his. Here, too, they found almost nothing, just one wonderfully preserved “lock of braided hair, being the sole remaining human relic.”
But that wasn’t all they found. As I mentioned before, all along Benefit street were orchards planted on the hillside, and family burial lots were interspersed amongst the trees and garden lots. And in Roger William’s grave, there was no human body, but they did find a man-shaped apple tree root that had grown down into the grave, consuming what remained of Roger Williams and evidently taking on his form.
Allen writes, “This tree had pushed downwards one of its main roots in a sloping direction and nearly straight course towards the precise spot that had been occupied by the skull of Roger Williams. There making a turn conforming with its circumference, the root followed the direction of the back bone to the hips, and thence divided into two branches, each one following a leg bone to the heel, where they both turned upwards to the extremities of the toes of the skeleton. One of the roots formed a slight crook at the part occupied by the knee joint, thus producing an increased resemblance to the outlines of the skeleton of Roger Williams, as if, indeed, moulded thereto by the powers of vegetable life.”
He continues to say that as a result of their disappointment, “which ensued from finding only a parcel of roots nestled into the place of the remains of the founder of the State of RI, all present turned to the innocent looking apple tree, as the thief that had stolen them away.”
The tree, they supposed, had helped itself to a delicious meal, feeding off the body and thus Roger Williams became part of the earth and part of the apple tree. Those present then went on to accuse the proprietor of the orchard of having eaten Roger Williams in the shape of apples, to which he responded that, perhaps now he should be considered part of the family.
After the exhumation, some dirt was taken from the hole that was dug, and placed in an urn that was kept in the Randall family mausoleum in the North Burial Ground until it could later be reburied in a bronze casket and placed beneath his statue in Prospect Terrace Park in 1939. But the dust wasn’t all that was taken from the grave. Zachariah Allen felt compelled to remove the root, too, and it’s taken on its own life in a way. I went to see it, at the John Brown house on Benefit Street, where it’s displayed standing upright in a coffin-shaped frame.
When I saw it, I, being a skeptic, thought, “Well, that’s a fun story, but of course they must have dug in the wrong spot.” I assumed the body should have still been there, so they must have just gotten it wrong, and dug up a tree root instead. Maybe I’m the only one who thought that, but in case I’m not alone, I’ll tell you why I’m now convinced they may have actually dug up his remains. There were a few questions I wanted to understand: How did they land on that spot? Should the body or bones still have been there 177 years later? And just exactly what would the relationship be between a plant and a dead body?
Well, I already gave you a little detail regarding the first question. Until I found Zachariah Allen’s account of the exhumation, I wasn’t convinced they had the location right. Many years had passed, and good records weren’t kept. But one thing is clear if you read the whole account--Zachariah Allen cared about getting it right, and it seems likely that given the insight provided by his descendents, knowledge of where his house was, and the story from Packard about the adjoining grave, which they did actually find, they most likely got the location right.
So, then there’s the question of the body. I assumed Williams’ bones would still have been there. I mean, I’ve seen fossilized skeletons in museums and on the internet. But, as it happens those fossilized bones are really outliers. In the book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” Bill Bryson writes that an estimated one bone in every billion gets fossilized. So, what happens to everyone else? Well, decomposition depends on a variety of factors--like whether or not someone was buried in a coffin, the type of coffin or casket, how it was buried, if they were embalmed, and the ground they were buried in. But, generally speaking, after you die, decomposition starts really quickly. A lot happens in the first year after death, and then things slow way down. But after 80 or so years, even bones start to decompose. And 100 years in, little more than dust is likely to remain. So, it’s actually very unlikely any of Roger Williams’ remains would have been found 177 years after his death.
And as his body decomposed, it would have released carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients into the underlying soil, eventually creating something called a decomposition island--which is a highly concentrated area of organically rich soil. This enriched soil would have provided great nutrients for a thriving apple tree. And while apple trees aren’t decomposers, so the root wouldn’t have actually participated in breaking down Roger William’s decaying body, it might have absorbed something of him through the soil.
I mean, I’m still a skeptic. And this doesn't mean that the tree root is Roger Williams. But it probably means something about us that we want to believe it is. Legends and myths give life meaning, and they make it a little bit more magical. And Roger Williams’ story lends itself to becoming mythologized, because there are anecdotes that don’t even require exaggeration to be on the scale of other larger-than-life, full-color American myths like Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyon. Like, for instance, the story of Roger Williams’ banishment and escape into the snow, and the 55 miles he walked through a blizzard. Or another story, about how Roger Williams got into a boat and rowed 25 miles from Providence to Newport at the age of 70, just to engage in a debate with a group of Quakers. He started a colony of misfits, and today many Rhode Islanders still identify with the state’s origin. So why shouldn’t our founder have surpassed the grave, as half man, half apple tree?
And is there any fruit more fitting? There was something special and unique about Roger Williams, and there’s something inherently unique about the apple. All cultivated varieties of apples are grafted from--or essentially cloned from--another tree. This has to be done because each seed in a single apple results in not just a new tree, but a new variety of apple. Something completely distinct from what came before it. To borrow an idea from Michael Pollan, in his book, “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World,” that means the history of the varieties of apple we know today are the histories of heroic individuals, ones with something different and notable to say--like, “hey, I’m a super sweet apple,” or “I’m an extra crisp apple.”
Throughout his life, Roger Williams had a lot to say that was pretty radical. He believed in religious liberty. He was an advocate for Native American rights. He organized the first attempt to prohibit slavery in any of the British American colonies. Some of these were lasting legacies--like the separation of church and state. But many of these ideas were so ahead of their time that they wouldn’t really take off for hundreds of years.
The truth is, Roger Williams likely wasn’t the only half-man, half plant dug up from that plot. Zachariah Allen writes that the roots were “not sated with banqueting on the remains found in one grave,” and extended into others. And he also writes that another man, “pulled up the fragments of a human skull, attached to the roots of a cabbage.” But no one remembers the story of the half-man half-cabbage! Roger Williams is the one we mythologize and it probably has more to do with the man-half than the plant-half.
But I love the whimsy of imagining that a part of him did exist in the form of a wise-old apple tree, flowering and bearing fruit and looking down from Benefit Street over Providence. Maybe the point isn’t that you believe it… just that you believe in it.
You can go check out the root at the John Brown house, also on Benefit Street. Or you can visit Roger Williams final resting place and statue at Prospect Terrace Park.
Thanks for listening! If you liked this episode, please leave a rating or review, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, let me know! See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!