Dr. MacSparran’s reference to Rhode Island is of particular interest. He writes of it as follows: “... the little colony of Rhode Island, etc., where Providence has fixed me, and where I have resided in quality of missionary thirty-one years last April.... This little district extends itself no more than forty miles in length, and thirty in breadth, or it may be forty [for I write to you, sir, from memory]. It contains 1,024,000 acres, and is peopled with about 30,000 inhabitants, young and old, white and black.... In 1700, after Quakerism and other heresies had, in their turn, ruled and tinged all the inhabitants for the space of forty-six years, the Church of England, that had been lost here through the neglect of the crown, entered, as it were, unobserved and unseen, and yet not without some success. “A little church was built in Newport, the metropolis of the colony, in 1702, and that in which I officiate in Narragansett, in 1707.... I entered on this mission in 1721, and found the people not a ... clean sheet of paper, upon which I might make any impressions I pleased; but a field full of briars and thorns, and noxious weeds, that were all to be eradicated, before I could implant in them the simplicity of truth. By my excursions and out labours, a church is built 25 miles to the westward of me, but not now under my care; another 16 miles to the northward of me, where I officiate once a month; and at a place six miles further off, on the Saturday before that monthly Sunday. I gathered a congregation at a place called New Bristol, where now officiates a missionary from the Society, and I was the first Episcopal minister that ever preached at Providence, where, for a long time, I used to go four times a year, but that church has now a fixed missionary of its own.” In another place he tells us: “There are above three hundred vessels, such as sloops, schooners, brigantines, and ships, from sixty tons and upwards, that belong to this colony, and they are carriers for other colonies.” The church of St. Paul was built in 1707. When Kingstown was divided, in 1722, into the towns of North and South Kingstown, the church became located about a mile over the line in the former place. In 1791 it was incorporated as St. Paul’s church in North Kingstown. In 1800 the building was removed to Wickford and the parish divided. Dr. MacSparran was for nearly four decades closely identified with the highest social and intellectual life of the colony. His scholarly attainments made him the centre of a group[10] of cultivated minds. As pastor of St. Paul’s church, he ministered to many of the leading families in Rhode Island. He officiated at their weddings, administered baptism, preached the gospel according to his convictions, and when loved ones died uttered sweet words of condolence, sympathy and hope. The church records contain such leading names as Updike, Arnold, Lippitt, Gardiner, Helme, Wilkinson, Potter, Robinson and a large number of others.