Cranston, Rhode Island: The Town That Couldn't Pick a Name

Cranston, Rhode Island, honors Samuel Cranston, governor 30 times in a row. An 1891 history says his name ended a long fight over which Native name to use. People in the western part of Providence had wanted a town of their own for decades, and they finally got it in 1754.

Mashapaug, Pawtuxet, Meshanticut or Pocasset

Back then, the town of Providence covered a lot more ground than the city does now. Samuel Greene Arnold, in the second volume of his state history, says it “contained over six hundred freemen” by 1754. Freeholders’ meetings were always held in the “compact portion” at the head of the bay, and people on the far side had a long trip to take part in town business.

The History of Providence County, edited by Richard M. Bayles in 1891, tells what happened next. Some people “wanted the new town called Mashapaug.” Others wanted to take in part of Warwick “and name the new town Pawtuxet.” Another group pushed for Meshanticut. In 1732, Bayles says, the plan “came very near to success,” but “the names of Meshanticut, Pocasset, Mashapaug and Pawtuxet were too much for them.” Then, in 1753 and 1754, “the idea of adopting an Indian name was abandoned, and that of Cranston substituted.”

A historian’s fair warning

J. Earl Clauson, who wrote a short history for the town’s 150th anniversary in 1904, tells the same story but hedges it. “It is said,” he writes, that the westerners would have split off much earlier if they’d agreed on a name. He also points out that if there were earlier attempts to divide the town, “there is nothing in the state or town records bearing thereon.” So you should take the name fight as the story the town told about itself. The records Clauson did find tell a simpler tale.

Three days in June 1754

On June 11, 1754, a petition with 92 signatures reached the General Assembly, sitting at Newport. It complained that some people had to go “eight, some nine and some ten miles” to town business. Clauson adds: “No mention was made in the petition of the name it was proposed to give the new town.” The lower house agreed the next day, and on June 14 the Assembly passed the act creating a township “to be distinguished and known by the name of Cranston.” The new town held its first meeting on June 25.

None of these sources names the person who suggested Cranston. That part of the story is missing.

Thirty times governor

The man behind the name had been dead for 27 years by then. Arnold’s list of governors shows Samuel Cranston in office from March 1698 until he died on April 26, 1727. “Thirty times successively chosen to the highest office,” Arnold writes, “he preserved his popularity amidst political convulsions that had swept away every other official.” Bayles called that run “a fact unparalleled in the history of any other of the New England colonies,” and Henry Gannett’s 1905 federal bulletin agrees on the honoree: Cranston was “named for Samuel Cranston, governor of the State for nearly thirty years.”

So after all those years of arguing over Native names, the town went with a governor’s. You can still find the losing names around Cranston, though. Mashapaug Pond and the Pocasset River are right there on the 1887 map.

Sources & further reading

• Richard M. Bayles, ed., History of Providence County, Rhode Island, vol. 1 (1891), p. 746. The rival names Mashapaug, Pawtuxet, Meshanticut and Pocasset, the near miss of 1732, and the choice of Cranston “in honor of Samuel Cranston, who held the office of governor from 1698 to 1727.”
• J. Earl Clauson, Cranston: A Historical Sketch (1904), pp. 10–15. The “compact portion” at the head of the bay where meetings were held, the name story told as “It is said,” the missing records, the June 1754 petition and act, and the first town meeting.
• Samuel Greene Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, vol. 2 (1860), pp. 83, 188, 566. Cranston’s 30 straight elections, the 1754 division of Providence, and his term from March 1698 to his death on April 26, 1727.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 95. Cranston “named for Samuel Cranston.”