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203 Main Street
Rhode Island RI 02879
Phone : 401-789-3100
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Foster
http://townoffoster.com/
Foster
is a town
in Providence County
, Rhode Island
, in the United States
. The population was 4,274 at the 2000 census
History
Foster was originally settled in the 1600s by British colonists as a farming community. In the year 1662, William Vaughan, Zachariah Rhodes, and Robert Wescott, purchased of the Indians a large tract of land called West Quanaug, bordering on Providence. The 'West Quanaug purchase', consisted of nearly the whole southern half of the town of Foster. The first settler was allegedly Chris Shippee. Many settlers from Newport were active in the town in the 1700s.
Foster was incorporated with Scituate
, Rhode Island
in 1730, forming the western section of that township, and remained part of Scituate until 1781, when it was split off as a distinct and separate township. Foster derived its name, from U.S. Senator Theodore Foster
. Mr. Foster presented the town with a library. Some of the library's original books and town records are still preserved. U.S. Senator
Nelson Aldrich
was born in Foster in 1841. Senator Aldrich was instrumental in starting the U.S. Federal Reserve
Board. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan
was active in the area, and one of the largest Klan rallies in the state was held in Foster on the Old Home Day grounds in 1924 with 8,000 in attendance and U.S. Senator J. Thomas Heflin
of Alabama speaking.[1]
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Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau
, the town has a total area of 51.9 square miles (134.3 km?), of which, 51.1 square miles (132.5 km?) of it is land and 0.7 square miles (1.9 km?) of it (1.41%) is water. Foster contains Rhode Island's highest point, Jerimoth Hill
, with an elevation of 248 m (812 ft).
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