Roger Williams, both minister and citizen, probably led the Providence planters in their religious activities. He was neither identified with the Established Church of England, nor in sympathy with the intolerance of the new established order at Boston and Salem, or even the one at Plymouth. He was a Separatist of the most pronounced type, and that was exactly the accredited Baptist position. He was one with the Baptists in his ideas concerning a complete separation from the State Church of England, one with them in the absolute separation of Church and State, one with them in insisting upon a regenerate church-membership. So according to the logic of the situation he turned to the Baptist movement. He may have been instructed as to their position by Mrs. Scott (the sister of the Antinomian, Mrs. Ann Hutchinson), who came to Providence shortly before the baptism of Williams. Roger Williams had been accused of tendencies toward the Anabaptists while in Plymouth, Salem, and Boston. Before he met Mrs. Scott, however, he held the Baptist positions of the time. It is not unlikely that she, being an intelligent Baptist, showed Williams the remarkable similarity between his position and that of the Baptists. Some time before March, 1639, Williams was baptized. In the absence of a Baptist minister, Ezekiel Holliman, an exile from Salem, baptized Roger Williams, who in turn baptized Mr. Holliman and some ten others. Like the disciple band of old the Baptist movement in Providence and America commenced with a band of twelve disciples. Their names are as follows: Roger Williams, Ezekiel Holliman, William Arnold (?),[1] William Harris, Stukely Westcott, John Green, Richard Waterman, Thomas James, Robert Cole, William Carpenter (?), Francis Weston, and Thomas Olney. Thus was organized the First Baptist Church in America. [1] The “?” is after Arnold’s name in First Baptist Church Register. Great was the consternation in Salem when news reached there of the baptism of Williams and others who had been members of their church. The Puritan church took action at once. The letter announcing to the church at Dorchester the exclusion of the offenders is interesting: REVEREND AND DEARLY BELOVED IN THE LORD: We thought it our bounden duty to acquaint you with the names of such persons, as have had the great censure passed upon them, in this our church, with the reasons thereof, beseeching you in the Lord, not only to read their names in public to yours, but also to give us the like notice of any dealt with in like manner by you, so that we may walk toward them accordingly, for some of us here have had communion ignorantly with some of other churches. 2 Thess. 3:14. We can do no less than have such noted as disobey the truth. Roger Williams and his wife, John Throckmorton and his wife, Thomas Olney and his wife, Stukely Westcott and his wife, Mary Holliman, Widow Reeves.