Pequot Path
United States 
Migration Trails and Roads Rhode Island Pequot Path
Did an ancestor travel the Pequot Path of Rhode Island? Learn about this settler migration route, its transportation history, and find related genealogy sources.
History[edit | edit source]
The Pequot Path ran about 51 miles (83 kilometers) near the ocean shore from Providence to Westerly, Rhode Island. At least authority asserts the route also included Newport.[1] All seem to agree it was certainly extended into central Connecticut, but the earliest name of the trail (before it was called the Boston Post Road) in Connecticut is unclear. This route was part of an American Indian trail that was widened by European colonists into a wagon road from Providence to Westerly in far southwest Rhode Island.[2] This path became part of a chain of shorter roads that formed the lower fork of the Boston Post Road (Boston-New York) with connecting legs from Boston to Providence (Old Roebuck Road) to Westerly (Pequot Path) to New Haven, Connecticut to New York City. The long route from Boston to New York to Charleston, South Carolina was also known as the King's Highway from the 1750s to about 1780.
Route[edit | edit source]
The Pequot Path connected Providence to Westerly in Rhode Island passing through the following places:
Providence County, Rhode Island
Washington County, Rhode Island
External links[edit | edit source]
- On the Trail of Benjamin Franklin: The Lower Boston Post Road (accessed 17 October 2014).
- Boston Post Road in Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia (accessed 17 October 2014).
- William Davis Miller, Ancient Paths to Pequot (Providence: E.L. Freeman, 1936). Hathi Trust Digital Library edition.
Sources[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 333
- ↑ Frederic J. Wood, The Turnpikes of New England and the Evolution of the Same Through England, Virginia, and Maryland (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1919), 25. Internet Archive version online.