ORDERED that a certain tract of land in some convenient place in the Narragansett country, shall be laid forth into one hundred acre shares, with the house lots, for the accommodation of so many of the inhabitants of this Colony as stand in need of land, and the General Assembly shall judge fit to be supplied. It was likewise enacted that the said tract be laid forth to contain 5,000 acres. Of this, 500 were to be laid in some place near the sea, as convenient as may be for a town, which said 500 acres “shall be divided into 50 house lots and the remainder of the 5,000, being 4,500, shall be divided into 50 equal shares or great divisions.” It was further decreed that the persons to whom the grant was made have the rights, liberties, and privileges of a town; also “that they, or so many of them as shall be then present, not being fewer than twelve, on the said land, [are] required and empowered to meet together upon the second Wednesday in April next and constitute a town meeting, by electing a Moderator and a Town Clerk, with such constables as to them shall seem requisite; and also to choose two persons their Deputies to sit in General Assembly, and two persons, one to serve on the Grand Jury, and one on the Jury of Trials in the General Court of Trials.” Thus was launched the town of East Greenwich. The founders, no doubt, included “men from all parts,” and if names may be taken as a criterion several of them, in addition to Charles MacCarthy, were from Ireland. The date of the incorporation of the town was October 31, 1677, the year following the close of King Philip’s War and the overthrow of the Narragansetts. Later, the boundaries of the town were enlarged by the addition of 35,000 acres on the western border. Facing a great bay, it was hoped by the founders that the town might in time equal or surpass Newport or Providence. In 1741, the town was divided and the western part incorporated as West Greenwich. Both towns exist to-day, East Greenwich with a population of about 3,000, and West Greenwich with a population of between 600 and 700.