Kingston used to be known as 'Little Rest.' These are the stories behind the original name

In South Kingstown, there is a small, charming 1½-square-mile village called Kingston.

But that’s not its only name. Way back in Colonial times, the area was known as “Little Rest,” a tidbit that often gets brought up to this day. And this sparked the curiosity of one What and Why RI reader who wanted to know how Little Rest got its name.

What and Why RI set out to answer the question, but there is one caveat that needs to be disclosed: There is no way to say with 100% certainty how Little Rest got its name.

“Alas, there are a number of stories that have been passed down about the name ‘Little Rest,’” Erica Luke, executive director of the South County History Center wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to the question, although the folklore is certainly fun.”

That being said, there is one answer that’s been placed on more formal documents than the others. Take that as you will.

First, let’s go over some of the other stories that are circulating.

Folklore around the name Little Rest

In one telling of the tale, it was named Little Rest because it lacked a place for travelers to stay. No rest for them.

In another telling of the story, noise from all the stagecoach traffic was keeping the residents up at night.

There’s a version where the name comes from Little Rest as the seat of Washington County, which once held one of Rhode Island’s five State Houses, causing so much motion — which might be connected to the stagecoach theory — that no one got any rest.

In another version, the problem was the abundance of taverns. Why rest when you can party? That’s also been spun in the other direction, that there were so many inns and taverns in town that it provided travelers from Providence, Newport and Boston a place to take a little rest.

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And then, there’s even a version of the story that there was a group of townspeople who were, in Luke’s words, practical jokers, giving the town little rest. She wrote that there’s also a theory that the town was cursed.

Truly, Little Rest is just a great name to inspire stories about its origin, and storytellers have taken it in so many directions over the years.

How Little Rest got its name, according to the National Parks Service application

But, as stated earlier, there is one explanation that seems to be a little more official. It’s the one used by Encyclopedia Britannica and it’s also the one submitted on the 1974 application to the National Parks Service to create the Kingston Village Historic District.

This story goes back to a bloodier time in Colonial history.

The earliest settlement dates for the area were marked by the so-called Pettaquamscutt Purchase, a tract of fertile land from the Narragansett Tribe in 1658, according to the NPS application. The purchase included the lands that now makeup Narragansett, South Kingstown and part of North Kingstown, according to the book “Rhode Island: A History,” and was so contentious, creating conflict between Rhode Island, Connecticut, a Massachusetts business and the Narragansett Tribe, that a royal commission from England had to be sent over to sort out. It was decided in favor of Rhode Island.

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It was more than a decade after that, as tensions continued to rise over who owned what land and as tribes bristled at the unfairness of issues being decided in Colonists’ courts, that King Philip’s War broke out.

The first major fight of the war was the Great Swamp Massacre on Dec. 19, 1675, which was described by “Rhode Island: A History” as “essentially a slaughter of the Narragansetts and the Wampanoag refugees among them. The Indians were betrayed by one of their own people who led 1,100 soldiers from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Plymouth through a secret path to an unfortified section of the Indian encampment.”

The name Little Rest is “derived from the supposed sojourn of soldiers just prior to the Great Swamp Fight,” according to the NPS application. The soldiers rested there, and the community was named after that rest.

Is this story true, or just the version that made it into more formal writings? It’s impossible to say.

Regardless, over time the village became known as Kingston. The origins of the name faded, but the name itself was never forgotten.

What and Why RI is a weekly feature by The Providence Journal to explore our readers' curiosity. If you have a question about Rhode Island, big or small, email it to klandeck@gannett.com. She loves a good question.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Kingston RI used to be called Little Rest. We looked into the folklore