Spring 2026 Book Author Spotlight

This issue’s interview is with Charlotte Carrington-Farmer, Professor of History at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI, and author of Roger Williams and His World: A History in Documents. She specializes in Early American History and teaches a course centered on Mary Williams, Roger’s wife.

Erin Redihan (ER): What drew you to study Roger Williams and his role in Early American history?

Charlotte Carrington Farmer (CCF): When I was an undergraduate in England, I took a class on Puritans and the Atlantic World. We studied Roger Williams and I was really curious about him. I wrote my undergrad thesis, part of my Master’s thesis and Ph.D on him. …Williams has been a big part of my teaching in my thirteen years here. Most years, I teach a first year seminar on Williams and I tell my undergrads how your thesis can become a big part of your path. The summer before undergrad, I came to the US for the first time, mostly in Maine, but I spent several days in Rhode Island and got to see his memorial and the Park [in Providence], so I spent time on the ground with him, which is so important.

ER: Is this the book you planned to write? Why or why not?

CCF: It’s not what I planned to write, which was a more traditional biography. But he’s one of the most written about figures of the seventeenth century, there’s so much scholarship there already, yet not a lot of readable primary sources. I want my first year seminar to read the sources, but in an accessible and authentic way. That’s why the project became an accessible reader to show how we know what we know about Williams, and to tell the more controversial stories about him too. …The title speaks directly not just to his story, but what others thought of him too.

ER: What makes this relevant now, 390 years after Roger Williams came to Rhode Island?

CCF: He was not a man who was ahead of his time. I’m cautious to use the word “relevant” now, but he really does stand up for what he believes, whatever the consequences. For instance, he was an outspoken critic in Salem in 1635, even when that meant being banished when his wife was about to have a baby. His belief was that even if it’s hard, you have to choose truth. …He was not afraid to speak up against the most established authorities. He had his book [The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution] burned and he was banished. His house was burned down, but he still spoke up.

ER: What do you wish the average American understood about Roger Williams?

CCF: Two things: his ideas on religious freedom and the separation of church and state and his interactions with Native Americans. Roger Williams was not the first to say these things about the separation of church and state, but Rhode Island was the first place in the western world where this was the lived reality on the ground. The world should know that Rhode Island was a lively experiment in this, very different from the eighteenth century revolutions that brought this about. And second, he was one of the first not to just theorize about indigenous land rights, but to put this in practice. When he founded Providence, he negotiated the land rights with two Narragansett sachems. This leads to conflict later, but it was very different from what was being done in other colonies. It was very radical, but that’s what he did. It’s one of the reasons why he was kicked out of Salem. He threatened the legal existence of the colony. He had these really radical ideas that demonstrated that you could have success in proclaiming religious freedom and in negotiating with indigenous leaders.

ER: You mention the baseball player Ted Williams in your introduction. Where does he fit into Roger Williams’ story?

CCF: We don’t know what Roger Williams looked like. There’s no surviving portrait of Roger Williams because he probably thought that sitting for one was the height of vanity. Ted Williams was used as the inspiration for the Roger Williams statue at Roger Williams University. They used his height and facial features because they figured that “one Williams is as good as another.”

ER: What surprised you the most when writing this book? Is there a particular document or category that you find particularly fascinating?

CCF: It’s Mary Williams, who didn’t feature in the early versions of this book. In March 2020, I gave a talk on Mary Williams and I was surprised how she managed the show. Roger Williams was off fighting the Pequot War, then he’s at the trading post spending months away from the family. He goes to London for the colony’s charter. You can’t tell his story without telling her story. That was not my intention when I set out to write this.

The other surprise involved Roger Williams and slavery. Sources show him claiming an unfree Pequot boy away from his family who lived in his home, he sold Native Americans into slavery. This is not a hagiography. He had his darker moments too, which is surprising to people.

ER: Is there anything you wish you could have included?

CCF: Late in 2024, the Rhode Island Historical Society [where Carrington-Farmer is a trustee] acquired a 1679 petition from William Harris to King Charles II from a bookseller as part of an estate sale.  Harris was one of Roger Williams’ enemies, and famously rhetorically asked “What is Roger Williams?” Harris was one of the original proprietors of the settlement, and his conflict with Williams is included in a chapter in the book. In the petition to the King, Harris not only argued for his own land petitions but also described how Williams was decomposed in his mind and had forgotten the documents he’d signed. RIHS acquired the document, but it just came too late to include in the book. However,  I’m going to write a journal article about it with John McNiff, a public historian and retired National Park Ranger from Roger Williams National Memorial.

ER: What are you working on now?

CCF: The William Harris piece with John McNiff, but I also have a book under contract with the University of Kentucky Press titled Equine Empire: Horses and the Making of the Atlantic World. It’s about the New England horse trade down to the West Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book shows how important horses were to empire building and sugar making.