William Mann

William Mann (c. 1610 – 1650), alternatively spelled Man, along with his wife Frances (née Hopkins) Mann, was among the original settlers in 1636 who founded Providence in the future Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Life

William and Frances Mann came to New England from Somerset County, England and became founding settlers of Providence with Roger Williams in 1636. William Mann received a six-acre Towne Street home lot on what is now South Main Street, situated at the intersection of today's Planet Street and extending to Hope Street. Between 1636 and 1645, he acquired more than 100 acres of meadow land in present-day Cranston and Providence.

William Mann signed the 1640 Providence Agreement which established the first secular, representative government in America. In 1641, he and twelve others signed a letter asking Massachusetts Bay Colony to intervene after the followers of Samuel Gorton caused a riot. His widow, Frances, bought more land in 1657 and two years later she sold 64 acres of land near Mashapaug Pond to William Carpenter while keeping other meadow land. In 1660, the town looked into why she failed to pay the tax to support the infirmed William Borrows.

The home on Towne Street in Providence was destroyed in 1676 during King Philip's War. After the war, Frances Mann joined her daughter, Mary, and son-in-law, John Lapham, in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Frances died in 1700 but the original Towne Street home lot remained in the family until 1706.