Rehoboth Real Estate
Rehoboth was established in 1643, originally by Walter Palmer (born 1585) and William Sabin, it was incorporated in 1645, one of the earliest Massachusetts towns to incorporate. The town is named for the Hebrew word for “enlargement,” (Broad Places) signifying the space settlers enjoyed (God has given us room).
Early Rehoboth, known as “Old Rehoboth,” included all of what is now Seekonk, Massachusetts, and East Providence, Rhode Island, as well as parts of the nearby communities of Attleboro, North Attleborough, Swansea, and Somerset in Massachusetts, and Barrington, Bristol, Warren, Pawtucket, Cumberland, and Woonsocket in Rhode Island. The town was and still is a site of a crossroads which help to serve Taunton, Providence, Fall River and points to the north.
One of the founding fathers of Rehoboth was Samuel Newman, a clergyman from Weymouth, Massachusetts who moved to the Seconet area near to Little Compton in the Plymouth Colony. Samuel Newman and his followers migrated north and established a huge town common in what is now Rumford, Rhode Island. They gave the roundabout a distinctive name: “The Ring of the Green.” Newman Congregational Church (founded 1643, current building dates to 1810) still stands at the intersections of Pawtucket Ave, Newman Ave and Ferris Ave. The area was known as Rehoboth village. Somewhat of a celebrity, Newman’s famous bible concordance (the third ever printed in English) had just been published in London. He spent the next few years revising the concordance with a second edition published in 1650 that includes on the title page, “By Samuel Newman, now teacher of the Church at Rehoboth in New England.” According to legend, he worked on the revisions by burning pine knots instead of candles. The concordance, later called the Cambridge Concordance, was reprinted as late as 1889, almost 250 years after it was first published by the founder of Rehoboth.
Headstone of Capt. Samuel Peck, son of Joseph Peck, one of the original settlers of Rehoboth. Peck Burial Yard, Historic Cemetery #13
The Rehoboth Carpenter family was one of the founding families. Among the earliest purchasers of the land that is now Rehoboth and nearby communities was the Peck family, who came from nearby Hingham, Massachusetts, initially. Joseph Peck, the brother of the Rev. Robert Peck, the disaffected Puritan who had fled his Hingham church in England, after the crackdown by Archbishop Laud, had purchased sizable tracts of lands from the Native Americans. Peck’s son was fined fifty shillings for making continuous sexual advances toward the maid. Peck died in Rehoboth in 1697. These tracts of land Peck willed to his son Samuel, who served as Deputy to the General Court at Plymouth, as well as the first representative from the town of Rehoboth after the Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts were united. The family continued to live in the area through the twentieth century. Today’s Pecks Corner in Rehoboth is named for this early Puritan family.