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Mount Hope | |
---|---|
Montaup | |
Highest point | |
Elevation | 63.7 m (209 ft) |
Coordinates | 41°40′26″N71°14′24″W / 41.67389°N 71.24000°W |
Geography | |
Location | Bristol, Rhode Island, United States |
Mount Hope (originally Montaup in Pokanoket language) is a small hill in Bristol, Rhode Island overlooking the part of Narragansett Bay known as Mount Hope Bay. It is the highest point in Bristol County, RI. The 7000 acres that now make up the Town of Bristol in Rhode Island were called the Mt. Hope Lands. [1] The elevation of Mt. Hope summit is 209 feet, and drops sharply to the bay on its eastern side. [2] Mount Hope was the site of a Wampanoag (Pokanoket) village. It is remembered for its role in King Philip's War. [3]
Prior to 2024, Brown University owned 376 acres (1.52 km2) of woodland on Mt. Hope off Tower Street in Bristol. In 2024, Brown University announced they are giving 255 acres to a preservation trust established by members of the Pokanoket Tribe. [4] The university's grounds on Mount Hope included King Philip's Seat (or "chair"), a large quartz rock formation where Wampanoag sachem King Philip held meetings. The site of King Philip's death in Misery Swamp is nearby. Mount Hope Farm is also nearby.
The first battle of King Philip's War took place near here in 1675. By the second half of the seventeenth century, encroachment by European settlers had reduced the land of the Pokanoket to the Mt. Hope Lands. After his father Massasoit died, and then his older brother died, Metacomet, now King Philip, began making alliances with other tribes and war soon began. King Philip made nearby Mount Hope his base of operations. "King Philip's Chair," a rocky ledge on the mountain, was a lookout site for enemy ships on Mount Hope Bay. Philip was eventually defeated and killed. The site where Captain Benjamin Church's men killed King Philip in 1676 is located in nearby Misery Swamp. [5] Metacom Avenue, State route 136, one of the two principal north–south roads in Bristol, was named after him, derived from his Wampanoag name Metacomet .
After the conclusion of King Philip's War, the town surrounding Mt. Hope was settled in 1680 as part of the Plymouth Colony. In 1680 all 7000 acres of the Mt. Hope Lands were bought by four Boston investors. It became the Town of Bristol, a part of Plymouth Colony. One of the investors, Nathaniel Byfield, claimed the 550 acres of Mt. Hope for his own farm. [6] He sold the farm in 1702 to his son-in-law and, in 1744, Byfield's granddaughter, Elizabeth Royall, inherited it. Elizabeth and her husband Isaac built a 2+1⁄2-story gambrel roof home, (this house is still part of the farm today). Bristol remained a part of Massachusetts until the Crown transferred Bristol and other lands to the Rhode Island Colony in 1747. Because they were Loyalists, Elizabeth and Isaac fled Bristol during the Revolutionary War and their home and farm were confiscated by the State of Rhode Island.
After the Revolution, William Bradford, great-great-grandson of Puritan Governor William Bradford, bought Mt. Hope Farm as it was now called. Bradford had been Lt. Governor of Rhode Island, a Senator from Rhode Island and had worked for many years as a public servant. The 1745 house on Mt. Hope Farm is still called The Governor Bradford House. The 127 acre parcel known as Mount Hope Farm is run by the Mount Hope Trust, a nonprofit, which offers 12 inn rooms to the public. The buildings and grounds are rented for events and a number of community and children's programs are offered. [7]
It can be seen as part of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology grounds. Church eventually became an owner of Mount Hope.
Bristol is a town in Bristol County, Rhode Island, United States, as well as the county seat. The population of Bristol was 22,493 at the 2020 census. It is a deep water seaport named after Bristol, England. Major industries include boat building and related marine industries, manufacturing, and tourism. The Bristol Warren Regional School District manages the unified school system for Bristol and the neighboring town of Warren. Prominent communities include Portuguese-Americans, mostly Azoreans, and Italian-Americans.
Metacomet, also known as Pometacom, Metacom, and by his adopted English name King Philip, was sachem to the Wampanoag people and the second son of the sachem Massasoit. His older brother Wamsutta briefly became sachem after their father's death in 1661. However, Wamsutta also died shortly thereafter and Metacom became sachem in 1662.
King Philip's War was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands against the English New England Colonies and their indigenous allies. The war is named for Metacom, the Pokanoket chief and sachem of the Wampanoag who adopted the English name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Plymouth Colony. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.
The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Massasoit Sachem or Ousamequin was the sachem or leader of the Wampanoag confederacy. Massasoit means Great Sachem. Although Massasoit was only his title, English colonists mistook it as his name and it stuck.
The Pokanoket are a group of Wampanoag people and the village governed by Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoag people.
Colonel Benjamin Church was a New England military officer and politician who is best known for his role in innovative military tactics notably developing Unconventional warfare. He is also known for commanding the first ranger units in North America. Born in the Plymouth Colony, Church was commissioned by Governor Josiah Winslow to establish a company of Rangers called after the outbreak of King Philip's War. Church participated in numerous conflicts which involved the New England Colonies. A force of New Englanders led by him was responsible for tracking down and killing Wampanoag sachem Metacomet, which played a major role in ending the conflict.
John Alderman, also known as Isaac and Antoquan, was a Wampanoag praying Indian who shot and killed the Native American leader Metacomet in 1676, during King Philip's War, while taking part in a punitive expedition led by Captain Benjamin Church. Alderman was a subsachem in the Westport/Dartmouth area of what is now Bristol County, Massachusetts. He was called Alderman because he was considered a close associate and counselor for King Philip. When Philip summarily murdered Alderman's brother in front of him because of his dissension, Alderman changed sides and joined Benjamin Church, an English colonist who had settled in nearby Little Compton.
Wamsutta, also known as Alexander Pokanoket, as he was called by New England colonists, was the eldest son of Massasoit Ousa Mequin of the Pokanoket Tribe and Wampanoag nation, and brother of Metacomet.
The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is Brown University's teaching and research museum. The museum has a 2,000-square-foot (190 m2) gallery in Manning Hall on Brown's campus in Providence, Rhode Island. Its Collections Research Center is located in nearby Bristol, Rhode Island.
Mount Hope Bay is a tidal estuary located at the mouth of the Taunton River on the Massachusetts and Rhode Island border. It is an arm of Narragansett Bay. The bay is named after Mount Hope, a small hill located on its western shore in what is now Bristol, Rhode Island. It flows into the East Passage of Narragansett Bay and also the Sakonnet River. Mount Hope Bay has played an important role to the history of the area, from pre-colonial times to the present. While many years of sewage and industrial pollution have severely degraded the quality of the shallow waters of the bay, there are currently major efforts underway to clean up and restore it.
The Great Swamp Massacre or the Great Swamp Fight was a crucial battle fought during King Philip's War between the colonial militia of New England and the Narragansett people in December 1675. It was fought near the villages of Kingston and West Kingston in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The combined force of the New England militia included 150 Pequots, and they inflicted a huge number of Narragansett casualties, including many hundreds of women and children. The battle has been described by historians as "one of the most brutal and lopsided military encounters in all of New England's history."
Winnecunnet Pond or Winneconnet Pond or Winnecunnett Pond, very often called Lake Winnecunnet or Lake Winneconnet or Lake Winnecunnett although it is a pond rather than a lake, is a body of water in Norton, Massachusetts, United States.
Mount Hope Farm is a historic estate on Metacom Avenue in Bristol, Rhode Island, United States.
Poppasquash Farms Historic District is a historic district in Bristol, Rhode Island. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Capt. Josiah Standish, son of Capt. Myles Standish, and Barbara Standish (1588-1659). He was born about 1633 in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. He died on 19 March 1690 in Preston, New London County, Connecticut. A captain in the Plymouth Colony militia who participated in King Philip's War, Standish, along with Captain Benjamin Church, led a raiding party that tracked the Wampanoag chief, Metacomet to Mt. Hope, Rhode Island. Finding the chief hiding in a swamp, one of his men, an Indian named John Alderman shot Metacomet.
Wheeler's Surprise, and the ensuing Siege of Brookfield, was a battle between Nipmuc Indians under Muttawmp, and the English colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the command of Thomas Wheeler and Captain Edward Hutchinson, in August 1675 during King Philip's War. The battle consisted of an initial ambush by the Nipmucs on Wheeler's unsuspecting party, followed by an attack on Brookfield, Massachusetts, and the consequent besieging of the remains of the colonial force. While the place where the siege part of the battle took place has always been known, the location of the initial ambush was a subject of extensive controversy among historians in the late nineteenth century.
Old Dartmouth was the first area of Southeastern Massachusetts settled by Europeans. It was purchased on behalf of the Plymouth Colony in 1652 from the indigenous Wampanoag people. The lands included all of modern-day Dartmouth, New Bedford, Westport, Fairhaven, and Acushnet in current day Massachusetts, as well as parts of modern Tiverton and Little Compton In Rhode Island, an area of around 145,000 individuals in the modern area.
The Pokanoket Nation, also known as the Pokanoket Tribe, is one of several cultural heritage organizations of individuals who identify as descendants of the Wampanoag people in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. They formed a nonprofit organization called the Council of Seven & Royal House of Pokanoket & Pokanoket Tribe & Wampanoag Corporation in 1994.
Montaup Mount Hope.