Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations people. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the 13th state and the last of the former colonies to ratify the Constitution. Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was one of the original Thirteen Colonies established on the east coast of North America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. It was an English colony from 1636 until the American Revolution in 1776, when it became the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (commonly known simply as Rhode Island). The land that became the English colony was first home to the Narragansett Indians,
Mettray Penal Colony was noted as being officially opened on 22 January 1840. The layout of the Colony was characterised by a sense of order and community. From the entrance to the Colony a large central square, dominated symbolically by a chapel on one side, lies at the end of a long tree-lined avenue. The entrance to the square has the director's house on one side and the preparatory school, where the instructors were trained, on the other. Ten identical, three-storey pavilions are arranged on the two sides of the square. These were referred to as "houses" and were the places where the