No animals were harmed in the settling of this island—well, not much.

Cow Cove, Corn Neck Road, Block Island

Block Island, only six miles long by three miles wide, sits by itself twelve miles from the mainland. Over the centuries it has gone by many names. The Narragansett called it Manisses, meaning "Island of the Little God" or "Manitou's Little Island," depending upon whose translation you like. In 1524 Giovanni da Verrazzano named it Claudia after the Duchess of Brittany, and in 1614 Dutch trader Adriaen Block humbly called it "Adriaen Blocx Eylant" after himself. It's even been known by the name of its only town, New Shoreham. But somewhere along the way folks just settled on Block Island.

In the 1500s, when Verrazzano sailed past, he estimated the island's native population at around 4,000 people, based on the number of signal fires he saw along the coast. By 1660 that number had shrunk to around 1,350, possibly due to diseases spread by European sailors (or Verrazano's poor estimating skills). The last Block Island Indian died in 1886. At the last Ground Hog Day Census (an annual tradition in which all on-island persons are counted) in 2015, the island's population was estimated at only 930.

Block Island received its first European settlers in the spring of 1662, when sixteen families arrived seeking to establish a democratic settlement free from religious persecution. They chose Block Island because of its isolation and lack of good harbors, and despite its harsh environment, hostile natives, and poor soil. Wanting a place where they would not easily be followed, they purchased the island from the colony of Massachusetts in 1660 and started from Boston in April 1661. They probably spent the winter in Taunton, Massachusetts, however, while surveyors worked to apportion the island's acreage fairly among the subscribers.

According to Nathan Tufts, in his afterword to Livermore's History of Block Island, when the settlers finally arrived at a cove on the north end of the island, they had to push their cattle overboard because the ship could not be brought close enough to shore. The poor animals waded ashore and the people, probably still chuckling over the sight, followed in a shallop. The cove was subsequently named for the first of the unlucky bovines to reach shore, remembered locally as the "cow settler." Settlers' Rock, erected in 1911 by descendants of the original settlers, bears the names of the families and marks the spot where they hit the beach. (The cows, however, receive no mention.)

Settlers' Rock Inscriptions

Top marker

SETTLERS' ROCK
RE-DEDICATED FOR THE TRICENTENNIAL
JUNE 17th A.D. 1961

Bottom marker

1661 - 1911
THIS STONE WAS PLACED HERE
SEPTEMBER 2D A.D. 1911, BY THE
CITIZENS OF NEW SHOREHAM, TO
COMMEMORATE THE TWO HUNDRED
AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE
PURCHASE AND SETTLEMENT OF
BLOCK ISLAND, BY THE FOLLOWING
NAMED PERSONS, WHO LANDED AT
THIS POINT:

This article last edited May 16, 2015