William Blaxton

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This article is about the early New England settler. For the English jurist, see William Blackstone.

Reverend William Blaxton (also spelled William Blackstone) (1595-1675) was an early British settler in New England, and the first European settler of modern day Boston and Rhode Island.

Blaxton was born in County Durham, England and attended Cambridge University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1617 and a master's in 1621. He then became an Anglican priest, although he had several disagreements with the church. This led to his decision to join the failed Gorges expedition to America in 1623.

He arrived in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1623 as a chaplain in the Robert Gorges expedition. Following the departure back to England of most of his fellow travellers, in 1625, he became the first European to settle in Boston, living alone on what would become Boston Common and Beacon Hill. The Puritans landed in nearby Charlestown in 1629, and then in 1630, Blackstone invited them to settle on his land in Boston after they had problems finding potable water. The Puritans then granted Blackstone 50 acres of his own land, which he promptly sold back to them. He then resettled in what is now Cumberland, Rhode Island on the Blackstone River which bears his name. Blackstone was the first European settler in Rhode Island in 1635 before Roger Williams founded the colony the next year. Blaxton briefly returned to Boston in 1659 riding on a bull, and he married Sarah Fisher Stevenson, a widow. Blackstone was said to have the largest library in the colonies at the time.