[2] This partnership of merchants and investors included Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Denison, Elisha Hutchinson, Richard Smith and Boston traders; John Tinker, Amos Richardson and William Hudson.
The Commissioners of the New England Confederation were opposed to the dissenters in Rhode Island, and colluded with the Atherton Trading Company by imposing a heavy fine on the Niantic for an infraction by certain members of their tribe.
[9] “Atherton played a key role in fighting and removing Indians from land he later owned”[10] The company acquired title after the Native American inhabitants defaulted on the loan.
In 1660, commissioners of the New England Confederation, of whom John Winthrop, Jr.[11] was one, transferred ownership of the mortgage of Pessicus's land to the Atherton Trading Company for 735 fathoms of Wampum.
[19] The company, which by then had changed its name to "Proprietors of the Narragansett Country," eventually did sell 5,000 acres (20 km2) of the land to Huguenot immigrants who began a colony there called Frenchtown.