Roger Williams National Memorial: A Visit with Elizabeth Brown
In this program, Jessa Piaia will portray Mrs. Elizabeth Brown in first-person narrative, speaking about her husband, The Reverend Chad Brown, and their children including Nicholas, the future founder of Brown University; other notables persons involved in the early settlement include Roger & Mary Williams; Alice Daniels and John (surgeon) Greene; Richard & Catherine Scott; William Arnold; Richard Smith; John Clarke; William Coddington; John & Mary Coggeshall; Samuel Gorton and the founding of Warwick; and Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer.
The portrayal will run about 45 minutes in length, followed by an informal Q&A while Jessa Piaia stays in-character as Elizabeth Brown throughout.
About Roger Williams National Memorial: Roger Williams National Memorial commemorates the life of the founder of Rhode Island and a champion of the ideals of religious freedom and liberty of conscience. Williams, banished from Massachusetts for his beliefs, established the first civil society in the new world in 1636 on the site of the present-day Memorial. There is free parking located on the Canal Street side of the park,just down the hill from the Statehouse. There is also metered parking on North Main St., adjacent to the park.
Roger Williams National Memorial was established by Congress in 1965 to commemorate Williams’s “outstanding contributions to the development of the principles of freedom in this country.” The memorial, a 4.5 acre urban greenspace located at the foot of College Hill in downtown Providence, includes a freshwater spring which was the center of the settlement of Providence Plantations founded by Williams in 1636. It is on this site that Williams, through word and action, fought for the ideal that religion must not be subject to regulation by the state but, instead, that it should be a matter of individual conscience. It was a remarkable journey that brought Williams to what is now the capital of Rhode Island and to where he put his beliefs into practice, giving “shelter for persons distressed of conscience.”
Featured image from: Mapquest
