Greene Farm Archaeology Project

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surname/tag: Greene

Below is the work of Brown University and was published in a larger document created for the Greene Farm Archaeology Project. It describes the early Greene family in Rhode Island, including links to WikiTree profile for the family members.

Greene Farm Archaeology Project

Early Colonial Period (1640-1708)

The first European occupant of Greene Farm, John Greene (1590-1659), was born on his father’s estate at Bowridge Hill, parish of Gillingham, county of Dorset, England. He was educated as a surgeon, and he married Joanne Tattershall in Salisbury at St. Thomas’s Church on November 4, 1619. Together they had seven children: John, Peter, Richard, James, Thomas, Joanne, and Mary; all were baptized in St. Thomas’s Church. In 1635, Greene, his wife, and six children sailed a fifty-eight day voyage on the ship James to Boston, Massachusetts. They settled in Salem and became associated with Roger Williams, who baptized Greene and ten other adults. When Williams was banished from Salem a year later for resisting the local Puritan authority structure, the Greenes traveled with him to establish Providence. John Greene was the fifth signatory on Williams’ first deed for the settlement, indicating his closeness to Williams. Yet, he returned to Boston a year later, where he encountered further difficulties with the magistrates and was banished with a fine of £20. Greene “submitted,” recovered his fine, and immediately upon return to Providence retracted his submission, charging the Boston oligarchy with usurping the power of Christ and of persecuting Williams.

But John Greene was not satisfied with this level of dissidence, and in 1642 he and his family followed the radical Samuel Gorton 8 miles down the west shore of the bay to found a new settlement. Samuel Gorton had been banished from Massachusetts, but his religious radicalism and resistance to civil authority went further even than either Ann Hutchinson in Portsmouth or Roger Williams in Providence could tolerate. Although local histories have treated Samuel Gorton as a “dangerous and immoral troublemaker,” his behavior was totally in line with antinomian radicals in England, reflecting some of the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan ideas within Europe at this time. This is important to understanding the Greenes, his followers and first settlers of Greene Farm. Samuel Gorton and eleven Providence followers negotiated a purchase of a 90 square miles of land called Shawomet (later Warwick) from Miantonomi, the acting Narragansett sachem and former overlord of the local Pawtuxets and Shawomets. Greene, who had by now lost his first wife Joanne and remarried Providence widow Alice Daniels, acquired a 660-acre tract of meadows surrounding Occuppesuatuxet Cove. By the deed dated Oct. 4th, 1642, his purchase extended north to Patience Cove and explicitly included the “little island.” The deed was witnessed by Randall Holden, another Samuel Gorton follower, Greene’s son and wife, and five Narragansett. The Greenes called the property “Occuppesautuxet,” meaning meadows cut through by a river in the Narragansett dialect; they also called it “Greene’s Hold.”

The local Pawtuxet and Shawomet chiefs resented this purchase, and after Miantonomi was murdered (with the connivance of Massachusetts) in 1643, they traveled north for support. Massachusetts officials were only too happy to send a militia against the renegade Gortonist settlement and to lay claim to land with such easy access to Dutch settlements in New York. Several of the Warwick colonists were carried back to Boston in chains, while others, including Greene and his wife, fled down the bay to Conanicut Island, where Alice Greene died. Massachusetts eventually released its claims on the prisoners and their lands, leaving the colonists free to seek legitimacy elsewhere. In 1644 Samuel Gorton traveled to England to obtain a patent for his purchase. He was accompanied by John Greene and Randall Holden, a testament of their support to this religious radical. Roger Williams was also in London on the same mission. With the aid of Sir Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, Rhode Island, was given charter and the town of Shawomet was renamed in his honor.

While in London, John Greene remarried Phillippa. She returned with him to Warwick in 1646. In 1647 Greene was appointed to a committee of ten Rhode Islanders to establish a government under the new charter. He was named “General Assistant” to the new government several times before his death in 1659. Greene’s will leaves a house and orchards to his wife, probably located in Providence, and the “neck of land called Occupashatuxet” to his eldest son John.

John Greene Jr, (aka Major John Greene) had been active in the settlement from its inception. In 1651 he built the first mill in Shawomet. He entered the General Assembly in 1652 and remained a representative from Warwick for 17 years. He served on the Governor’s board for 25 years, was secretary of state (“general recorder”) from 1652 to 1654 and attorney general in 1655 and 1657-1660. He refused to recognize Richard Smith in Wickford as Smith sided with Connecticut colonies in Warwick’s disputes with Massachusetts. Major John Greene traveled to London as the colony’s representative in 1670 and 1676, and settled the dispute with Connecticut in 1671. He served many years in the militia, and as a major 1683 to 1696. He was part of Governor Edmund Andros governing council, and from 1690 to 1700 he was Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island. Meanwhile, Major John practiced as a defense attorney in Newport, representing many people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

A glance at the outcomes of early court trials in Warwick clearly indicates that the brothers John, James, and Thomas Greene as well a Randall Holden were the settlement’s ruling elite. The Greenes filed a number of trespassing suits against people with English names, which may indicate they were insecure about their ownership of the property or its boundaries. A number of Warwick court cases were filed against Indians, sometimes cited as residents or servants and some having English names but noted to be “Indian.” These cases are usually for debt and damages, and imply that at least some of the resident Native Americans had become quickly subservient to the English colonists. In fact, the Warwick colonists came to depend heavily on Indian labor.

Court cases indicate they worked as servants, guides, builders, mail carriers, and hunters. As builders of fences for the colonists these labors worked toward their own demise, as Native life had depended on crop rotation, access to coastal areas, and space to hunt. John Greene Jr. and other Warwick settlers had begun a lucrative trade in furs as middleman between the Indians and Dutch traders stopping on their shoreline. But along with a trade in fur went trade in alcohol and guns, which ultimately put the colonists at risk. A number of three-sided disputes arose within the Gortonist community—traders, farmers, and Indians—over the Dutch trade. Many feared a Dutch incursion on their settlement, which was only alleviated in 1664 when the English assumed control of New York. Meanwhile, Greene, who had close ties some of the more notorious Dutch traders must have incurred local resentment.

In 1658 Massachusetts finally renounced any claim to the Shawomet tract, and with the advantages of a new charter in 1663, the colony’s standing vis-à-vis its neighbors and other Atlantic ports was enhanced promoting commercial expansion. Greene was one of twenty-four men named in the new Rhode Island charter. At about this time the value of wampum as a medium of exchange began to decline—further disadvantaging the Native Americans—and the colonists resorted to livestock and agricultural produce in their exchanges around the Atlantic. Livestock is a significant item in all three extant estate inventories from the Greene period on the farm (1708, 1711, and 1762). Captain James Brown (father of future proprietor John Brown) records stopping in Warwick to pick up horses to trade with the West Indies in a Memorandum Book of the 1720s, but this trade in livestock probably began much earlier.

In addition to livestock, there is some evidence that iron was either produced or transhipped through Warwick as early as the 1660s. In a June 20, 1666, letter to merchant Elisha Hutchinson in Boston, Newporter Peleg Sanford writes that he has “layden on board of Anthony Low his sloop Seaventy Foure Ends of Iron” to exchange for Dutch and Asian textiles. Anthony Low was a neighbor of the Greenes in Warwick. John Green Jr. was regularly practicing law in Newport at this time. It has been alleged that the Arnold family, always cited in deeds as the property owners immediately to the north of Greene Hold, hired English ironmongers in the 17th century by the name of Doukes (Doakes) to develop the iron bog deposits occurring all over the region. An experienced monger would take the ore excavated from ponds and wetlands and cast iron using a small bloomery. A generation of Doukes were buried by 1740 on Arnold’s property, where some 31 gravestones were recorded before removed for real estate development.

In 1693 and 1694, Major John Greene issued a series of controversial privateering commissions as lieutenant governor, which indicate both the extent of his worldly ambition and his defiance of established authority. Quaker governor John Easton turned down the captains seeking licenses, but Greene did not have the same religious compunctions. While Gura has described the Gortonist religious philosophy as very close to Quakerism, it was not pacifist in letter; and it is also unclear that Major John was religious at all as he had often feuded with the strict Gortonist clan over questions of trading with the Dutch. Easton stated that Greene “did give forth a Commission to John Bankes…without my order and privity.” Noted Indian Ocean pirate, Thomas Tew, had approached Easton telling him “he should go where perhaps the Commission might never be seen or heard of.” Both Tew and Bankes sailed to the Indian Ocean and returned with large sums of money and East India goods. Arabian coins are a common item in Newport estate inventories beginning about 1700. William Mayes, the proprietor of a tavern in Newport (later the White Horse Tavern) also received a privateering commission from Greene and sailed to the Indian Ocean. William Mayes had married Sarah Gorton, the daughter of the founder of Warwick, and had been living adjacent to the Greenes prior to sailing. An estate inventory for a William Maiz shows up in about the year 1703 in Newport, indicating that William Mayes made a successful voyage and raising speculation as to what he brought Greene on his return. Repaying the officials who issued a privateer’s license with exotic goods was common practice at this time. In investigating Greene’s privateering commissions in 1699, Lord Bellomont, London-appointed governor of the expanded Dominion of New England, reported on Rhode Island:

“John Greene, a brutish man, of very corrupt or no principles in religion, and generally known to be so by the people, is notwithstanding from year to year anew elected and continued in the place of Deputy Governor, and second Magaistrate in the Collony; whillst severall gentlemen most sufficient for estate, best capacitated and disposed for his Majesty’s service, are neglected...”

Bellomont had nothing good to report on any colonial, so while his report should be read with a grain of salt, it still summarizes the transatlantic cultural place of colonial religious radicals, a role Greene may have been assigned anywhere outside of Rhode Island, and perhaps even outside of Warwick. It is significant that Bellomont states he had “no principles in religion,” which indicates he had fallen away from the more religious community in Warwick.

Major John Greene died in November 1708 at age 89 and is buried on the property, marked by an extant gravestone. His wife, Anne Almy, daughter of English Quaker immigrants living in Portsmouth, RI, and who he had married in 1648, died six months later at age 82. Her headstone is next to her husband’s. Ten out of thirty itemized lines in Greene’s personal estate inventory are devoted to iron implements and utensils. A little over a third of the value of the estate is in livestock (£60/ £167), and about 13 percent of its value is in money and silver. In his will, Greene noted that his wife was paralyzed on her left side, completely dependent [on] their children, and living in a part of his son Richard’s house where “we now by agreement dwell.” Greene then divides his “neck of land” in Warwick between his two sons, Richard (m. Eleanor Sayles) and Samuel (m. Mary Gorton). Richard received Greene’s Hold and Samuel the land north of Greene’s Hold to Arnold’s property and to “the Great Rock,” the landmark that had been cited in the original deed from Minatonomi. These were his fifth and sixth sons after John (d. unmarried), William (m. Mary Sayles), Peter (m. Elizabeth Arnold), Job (m. Phebe Sayles); as neither John nor William is mentioned in the will, they were probably dead. He also leaves £16 in New England money to all five married daughters, Deborah (m. William Torrey), Phillipa (m. Charles Dickenson), Anne (m. Thomas Greene), Catherine (m. Charles Holden), and Audrey (m. John Spencer). It is likely that children other than Richard and Samuel were already settled on property away from Greene’s Hold, perhaps belonging to their spouses’ families. As most of the spouses had local names (the Sayles were descended from Roger Williams), it is apparent that Major John and his wife Anne, with ten married children in the area, had many grandchildren and an extensive in-law network.

Third and Fourth-Generation Greenes and the Later Colonial Period

Richard Greene died in 1711, not long after his parents, at the age of 51. Like his father, Richard was involved in local politics and held a number posts, including deputy (1699-1704), assistant (1704-1711). When he died, his brother Job succeeded him in the post of assistant. His wife, Eleanor Sayles, died in 1714, leaving behind five surviving daughters and one five-year-old son, John. Aware of the precarious male line within his immediate family, having only one infant son at the time of his death, Richard stated in his will that if his son should have no male issue, he was to sell the farm to one of Richard’s brothers or their sons for £200 less its appraised value; or if young John was to die without issue, the daughters would share the property equally before selling it within the family as stated. He also bequeaths to his daughters “all my land in the New Purchase westward of East Greenwich,” as well as all his lands at the old and new sawmills in Cowesett and all his lands in Providence. As his son John lived on the property exclusively for fifty more years, the family dispersed to these other places meantime. Richard’s personal estate inventory is four times the value of his father’s, and it includes two important items not named in Major John’s: slaves (“two Negros and one Indian boy”) valued at £82 and bonds and debt of £313. This book debt represents the changing complexity of the economy, in which wealth, previously represented by tangible metals and prized objects, was now tied up in abstract commercial exchanges represented on paper. It is easy to see how the Native Americans, illiterate, depleted in numbers, and holding depreciated wampum, lost a foothold in this world–to say nothing of the fact that they, along with Africans, could be held in inheritable bondage.

There are three volumes of Rhode Island’s general assembly records pertaining to the life span of John Greene, but he is only mentioned in two of them. Here his name occurs three, possibly four, times in the Colony Records. He is admitted as freeman in 1731, and he is listed as a deputy of Warwick in 1747 and 1749. The title “deputy” meant representative of the town, and Warwick had four. In 1752, there is a fourth mention of his name, also as deputy of Warwick; however, this may not be the same man because the John Greene in the previous accounts was designated by “mister,” where in the latter the designation is “captain.” During the two positively identified times that John was deputy of Warwick, he voted and resolved three issues. The first two were during his term as deputy in 1747 where the proceedings approved military issues. The colony’s sloop Tartar was to be put in commission and manned by ninety men with set wages to cruise in consort Connecticut colony’s sloop. Secondly, Fort George was directed to enlist thirty men for soldiers with sets wages. Two years later in the colonial assembly, Deputy John approved the one and lonely issue for that month; giving the sheriff of Newport £50 to provide liquor to entertain attending gentlemen who proclaimed peace. John Greene can then be viewed as being pro-military and not a religious pacifist through these three accounts, which reflect representations of him during the mid-seventeenth century. In 1737 at the age of 28, he married sixteen-year-old Mary Almy. In his will, she is described as “serving and loving.” The surname “Almy” was also that of John’s grandmother Anne, so there is probably a family connection behind this marriage. Together they had thirteen children, by far the largest amount of Greene children to live at Occupasuetuxet. The names of his children appear to be derived from previous generations of family members, and the name “Almy” appears. The education and occupation of John’s children is unknown; however Clarke’s genealogy provides the following information:

1. Richard, born April 4, 1739; married a woman named Ruth with no recorded surname or date of marriage.
2. Anstis, born July 15, 1740; married her third cousin Nathaniel Greene of Boston on December 21, 1763. Together they raised twelve children in Boston. Nathaniel was a merchant and was in a partnership with his cousin Benjamin Greene. There are records of a Benjamin Greene in Boston during the 1730s to ‘60s.
3. Almy, born on June 15, 1742, no additional information.
4. Mary, born January 14, 1743; married Augustus Brown on the first of February in 1767 and they had one child.
5. Abigail, born on May 10, 1745; no additional information.
6. Benjamin Ellery, born December 29, 1746. He lived in Boston as a merchant and married Lucy Huntington on March 3, 1775. They had seven children. He died May 27, 1806 in Boston where he was placed in the burial ground at the foot of the Common.
7. John, born September 26, 1748, died 1762, aged fourteen. He was buried in the Greene family plot.
8. Lewis Sayre, born on August 8, 1750. He moved to New Haven, CT in 1783 where he married Sybil Ball. Together they had eleven children. Lewis was principally engaged in agriculture and gardening. He died on July 28, 1842 and the New Haven Herald noted his strange hallucination that he was heir to the throne of England and his long line of descent proved his title.
9. Job, born March 2, 1752. He died at sea in 1776, possibly fighting for Patriots in the Revolution, and was laid to rest in Occupasuetuxet.
10. Eleanor, born May 19, 1754; no additional information.
11. William, born on March 13, 1757; died young in 1764.
12. Elizabeth, born 1760; also died in 1764.
13. Ann, born March 3 1762. She was married to a Gordon or Gorton with no recorded first name sometime after 1782. She had one child.

It is important to underscore the Boston mercantile connection evident in two of the above marriages. Accounts of Benjamin Greene and his son, cousins of Anstis’s husband and both active Boston merchants, span the period 1734 to 1805; they were often holding Rhode Island currency and trading frequently with people in Warwick. They bought a large boatload of pork from John Greene in 1757, for example, indicating that Greene was a supplier for ship’s provisions. The Dutch New York trade ties so evident in Major John’s lifetime have shifted to Boston by this time, probably due to kinship.

From the dates provided in Clarke’s genealogy, it does not appear that John would have seen any of his children get married, with the possible exception of Richard, but these marriages were guided by family economic interests. John only experienced the death of one of his children, indicating a relatively healthy household for this time. John’s wife Mary, who died fifteen years after him on August 6, 1777, would be alone in all the family situations. Whether joyous or sorrowful, Mary would have experienced the majority of the family’s episodes. She was alive for Richard, Anstis, Mary, and Benjamin’s dates of marriage, and she would have also witnessed the death of children John, William, Elizabeth, and Job, along with the grief of losing a husband. Other cause for sorrow for Mary would have come from three of her daughters remained single women. Almy, Abigail, and Eleanor not being married at the time of her death may have cause for financial worry for the family.

John died October 11, 1762, and his will dated September 6, 1762 was proved November 19, 1762. John bequeathed the property to his wife Mary until his son William came of age at twenty-one, and then the property was to be equally divided in thirds to sons Richard, Job, and William. These sons were ordered to pay sums of money to John’s remaining sons and daughters. An inventory of John Greene’s personal estate was taken on November 21, 1762. This probate inventory recorded items by rooms: North West bedroom, Great Room, Great Chamber bedroom, North East bedroom, East chamber, cellar, cheese, room kitchen, North East Server room, Back chamber, Dining room, and all outside items that pertained to the farm. The inventory lists seventy-seven items at a total sum of 28,372 pounds, 6 pence, and 6 shillings. As part of the last section before the listing of the outside items, the recorder lists seven servants at the sum of 4,000 pounds. The living quarters of these servants are indicated by the naming of the rooms (North East Server room) and by the rooms’ contents (Back chamber) in which there is one bed and servants beddings along with seven chairs listed for the back chamber while two beds are listed in the server room. Additionally, farm goods are also itemized, giving some insight on the production of the plantation. The highest amounts in regards to animals were sheep at a count of 240. The highest amounts in produce were 16 tons of hay and 350 bushels of corn.

Of his thirteen children, only seven survived and were the last family members of Greene’s Hold. John, a potential heir given his name, died the same year as his father. William, at the age of five, was named in his father’s will as heir with guardianship given to his mother Mary until he turned twenty-one; however, he died two years after his father. John’s wife Mary would then be the owner of the property but she dies in 1777. The remaining male children as John’s heirs were Richard, Benjamin, and Lewis. For some unknown reason, the three remaining sons along with four of the daughters decided to sell the property. The transaction took place in 1782, five years after their mother’s death and twenty years after John Greene’s death. They sold Greene’s Hold to John Brown of Providence in 1782. The reason for selling the property out of family hands is unknown and is out of character of family tradition, but some speculations can be drawn. Designated male inheritors died in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. With both the mother and father no longer living, the remaining children could have thought it no longer necessary to keep the family farmstead, maybe due to upkeep costs or lack of interest in farming. Selling the land for money instead of parceling it out to themselves may have been the better method for equal division amongst the lot of them. Signatures on the deed to Brown were:

Eleanor Greene Richard Green

Ann Marcy Greene Benjamin Greene

Nathaniel Greene Lewis Sayer Greene

Anstis Greene Mary Greene

Almy Greene Abigail Greene

Early Republic and Nineteenth Century and the Brown/ Francis Family

When Brown purchased Greene’s Hold in 1782, he already owned a number of farms in Rhode Island. A 1785 account of his properties lists properties in Providence, Portsmouth, Massachusetts, North Providence, Glocester, Woodstock, Asford, Bristol, Prudence Island, North Kingston, South Kingston, Newport, Grait Point, New Claverack, and even in Virginia. Brown was clearly a real estate speculator. There is evidence, however, in his letters that he made Spring Green, as he renamed the estate, his principal country retreat. In a letter to his son James after the purchase he described the property as follows:

I have purchased the Pass Tuxet Farm of 670 Acres at 20 Dolers Cash per Acre The near part of the Farm 7 miles from this Town….its agreed by all to be a Good Farm Naturally but now much out of Repair it wants about Fifteen Thousand of Railes to make the Necessaary Fencing on it to be Improved to Advantage….The Farm is exceedingly well watered has a Sufficiency of wood…it has about 500 Acres of Good Grain Land.

After these repairs, the farm was ready for refined guests and elegant country parties. One such visitor, Susan Lear from Philadelphia, wrote in her diary on May 29, 1788:

Twelve o’clock went to Spring Green (the country seat of Mr. John Brown) to dine and to spend the day. Our party was very large, six and twenty in number. Governor Bowen and lady, Mr. and Mrs. Nightengale, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold, Mr. Smith and his wife, Col. Tillinghast, Mr. Francis and the family of Mr. Brown, and myself, composed our party. Spring Green is elegantly situated, about 7 miles from Providence. Commands a most charming prospect of the River and the country round. The house is very large and very neat and convenient. A delightful stream of water running at the bottom of the garden and in front of the house adds much to the beauty of the place. Our entertainment was elegant….Our amusements were singing, playing, walking, fishing, etc.

The farm was leased to Colonel Benjamin Arnold in 1789 continuously on a yearly basis until 1804. This lease may have been in affect prior to Brown’s possession of the farm; however there is no substantial evidence for this claim other than Benjamin Arnold’s appearance in the 1777 and 1782 census for the town of Warwick. During the period of the Rhode Island 1777 Military Census, Green Farm was owned by the surviving children of John Greene. Dividing the land among them would not hold to the Greene Family rule of keeping the property whole and in descending male succession, while leasing the land would maintain family tradition. With this in mind, Benjamin Arnold could have leased the farm anywhere from the time of John Greene’s death in 1762 until the expiration of his lease with John Brown in 1804.

If Arnold was actually a tenant on Greene’s Hold, examination of the census records reveals some evidence of servants. The Rhode Island 1777 Military Census was conducted by town in order to calculate the number of men able and unable to bear arms within three age categories: 16-50, 50-60, and 60+. For the town of Warwick, Benjamin Arnold and three of his sons are listed, along with three negroes who bear the surname Arnold. The record lists Benjamin as part of the 50-60 age range and able to bear arms; his three sons Philip, Stephen, and Thomas in the 16-50 age range, marking two able to bear arms (not Stephen); and lists Africa Arnold in the 60+ category with no designation to bear arms, Wall Arnold in the 50-60 age range marked unable to bear arms, and Cuff Arnold in the age range of 16-50 and able to bear arms. It is more than likely that the three men listed after Benjamin’s sons were slaves or servants of Arnold’s.

Benjamin Arnold’s ownership of slaves/servants is further verified in the 1782 Census. This census, transcribed by Jay Holbrook, lists a “Benja Arnold of Warwick”. There were eleven people in his household: no male or females under the age of 16, one male aged 16-21, two females aged 16-21, three males aged 22-49 (most likely Benjamin’s sons), one male and one female aged 50+, no Indians or Mulattos, and finally three blacks.With the populations drawn out in such a statistical fashion, Jay Holbrook was able to calculate and construct tables of population totals. In 1782, Rhode Island’s total population numbered 51,923 with 3,349 counted as minorities. The town of Warwick placed seventh in state with a total population of 2,122 people. Whites counted for the majority with 1,948, while the minorities Indian (39), Mulatto (36), and Black (99) totaled 174. From the original census records, Holbrook created an “Age and Sex Structure” table by town of Rhode Island’s minority population in 1782. In Warwick, the male and female minority totals were both 87. The first age range 0-15 consisted of 41 males and 36 females. The second age range 16-21 consisted of 11 males and 12 females. The third age range 22-49 consisted of 25 males and 27 females. The fourth age range 50 & Up consisted of 10 males and 12 females. From this table the 0-15 age range counts for the largest amount of minorities, while the 22-49 age range comes in second. This data adds to our understanding of the “Indian,” “Mulatto,” and “Black” presence and possible use as servants in the area.

Later on in the Federal Census of 1790, Benjamin Arnold appeared again. He is listed under Kent County of Warwick Town, as the name of the family head. There are 3 white males over 16, 1 free white male under 16, 1 free white female, 1 other free person, and zero slaves. This is a change in the Arnold household from the 1782 census. Examination of the 1792 lease between John Brown and tenant Benjamin Arnold gives details on some of the activities done on the farm. As part of the lease, the farm was rented by the year for $600 to be paid in Indian cornmeal, rye or rye meal, oats, new milk cheese, butter, potatoes, common barrel of beef, sheeps wool, eggs, flax, and pork. Brown also stated in the lease that Arnold must pay the taxes and is responsible for the upkeep of buildings and fencing. Arnold is allowed to farm no more than 55 acres and must fill the icehouse. Brown reserved two southwest rooms, the little rooms next to them, the east chamber, and the “dancing room” on the third floor for his family use In 1788 Brown’s daughter Abigail married John Francis, the son of Philadelphia business partner Tench Francis and close friend of James Brown. Brown formed a merchant partnership with his son-in-law, and sent the first Rhode Island vessel to China in 1789. Spring Greene farm was a provisioning source for these long ocean-going voyages. John Francis wrote to Brown shortly before the vessel General Washington departed from a wharf in Newport to alert his tenants in Warwick that they needed to be ready with provisions.

In his 1804 will, Brown leaves his wife the large house on Power Street and Spring Green, "on which Col. Arnold now lives...with all the cattle and other stock on the Spring Green Farm.” In 1812 his daughter Abigail Brown leased the property to William Davis Cole, whose family owned the property on the south side of Occuppaustuxet Cove. The lease agreement states that Spring Green comprised 664 acres and included dwelling houses, barns, and other buildings, as well as livestock, farm utensils, and fishing privileges. This agreement, like all the previous leases, required Cole to gather the seaweed along the shore to use as fertilizer. He also had to cut firewood, cut ice for the ice house, and maintain the fencing.

When Sarah Brown died in 1813, the eldest daughter Abigail, inherited the property. From family letters one has the impression that she spent a lot of time there before and after the death of her mother. Abby’s husband, John Francis had died in 1794, and they had a son, John Brown Francis (1791-1864), who was at the College of Rhode Island (later Brown University) at the time of John Brown’s death. He resided at Spring Green permanently from about 1820-1840, and during these years farmed as a country gentleman, even attempting at one point to cultivate silk on Spring Green. He was elected governor annually 1833-1838, and to the US Senate in 1840. At this time Francis enlarged the farm, buying 26 acres of uplands and meadows called the “Cove Lot” from Ruth Arnold.

In 1887, Governor Francis’s two unmarried daughters, Elizabeth and Sally Francis, inherited Spring Green from their mother. These women took in a Philadelphia cousin who subsequently married a Brown, and their descendants have resided on the property until today.

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