Original Proprietors
Update IV

     At the time Redwood Library received its charter in 1747, the Original Proprietors comprised less than one per cent of Newport's population of about 6,500. Most of them were connected in one way or another to other founders, and these ties were perhaps paramount among the factors which brought the group together. 

     There were two sets of father and son: James Honyman and James Honeyman, Jr. (the son used an "e," his father didn't), and Clarke Rodman and Walter; and five sets of brothers: Clarke and Samuel Rodman, Edward and Joseph Scott, Samuel and William Vernon, Samuel and Thomas Ward, and the four Wickham brothers, Benjamin, Charles, Samuel and Thomas. 
     Jahleel Brenton was the father-in-law of Daniel Ayrault, Jr. (and Brenton's second wife was a sister of Ayrault's first wife); John Bennett was Joseph Scott's father-in-law; and John Gardner was the father-in-law of Benjamin Wickham. John Easton, Benjamin Hazard, and Walter Rodman married sisters of Abraham Redwood, and Joseph Sylvester was married to one of Redwood's nieces. 

   Abraham Redwood and Thomas Ward were married to sisters. William Paul and William Vernon were also married to sisters, and their wives were nieces of Simon Pease. Samuel Vernon was married to a sister of Samuel and Thomas Ward, and the Wards were niece and nephews of Henry Collins, whose sister was married to Samuel Wickham. The mother of the Wards was a first cousin of John Tillinghast, one of at least four of the founders who never married (the others were Collins, Thomas Moffatt, and Edward Scott). John Gardner's wife was a niece of John Brown's wife; James Honeyman's wife was a niece of Edward and Joseph Scott (her sister was married to a son of Samuel Wickham); and Jahleel Brenton's first wife was a niece of James Honyman's second wife. 

     Twelve of these men had been members at one time or another of the philosophical society founded in 1730 under the influence of the Anglican clergyman and philosopher George Berkeley, an organization which has long been mentioned as the precursor of Redwood Library: John Brett, John Callender, Honeyman, Josias Lyndon, James Searing, Sylvester, Daniel Updike, Thomas Ward, Peter Bours, Joseph Jacob, Edward Scott, and Samuel Wickham. 

     An earlier group to which seven of our founders belonged was a mutual fire protection club begun in 1726. Those seven were Ayrault, Bennett, Bours, Collins, Jacob, Pease, and Clarke Rodman. Nine of the founders were charter members of the Newport Artillery Company, founded in 1741: Brenton, Brown, David Chesebrough, Collins, Honeyman, Pease, William Vernon, Samuel Wickham, and his brother Thomas Wickham. 

Original 46 Founders 
Descendants of the Redwood 
Update III 
Update IV 
Update V 
Update VI 
Update VII