Portsmouth began with 23 signatures in March 1638, and some of its farms on Aquidneck Island go back nearly as far. This map of Portsmouth prints Borden Farm, Greenvale Farm and the Lawton-Almy-Hall Farm, the Newport Car Museum, and Prudence Island with the Prudence Island Lighthouse, Farnham Farm and the Prudence Island Historical Society. Teddy Beach, Island Park and Common Fence Point are on it too, with Middle Road among the roads.
Portsmouth is in Newport County, on the northern end of Aquidneck Island, with Prudence Island and smaller islands out in Narragansett Bay.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 from public survey records and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief around Prudence Island and Teddy Beach comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data. The streets come from Census Bureau files, down to Middle Road, and the Census Bureau puts the town at 59.3 square miles, only 23.2 of them land. Borden Farm and Greenvale Farm are on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked them against National Park Service records. Portsmouth had 17,871 people at the 2020 census.
The Portsmouth Compact
Portsmouth was settled in 1638 by religious dissenters from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, among them Dr. John Clarke, William Coddington and Anne Hutchinson, who had been banished from Massachusetts. They had first planned to go to New Jersey, and Roger Williams persuaded them to come here instead. On March 7, 1638, they signed the Portsmouth Compact, setting up a colony that was Christian in character but not tied to any one church in its government, and its page notes that it has been called “the first instrument for governing as a true democracy.” The settlement was first called Pocasset and was named Portsmouth, after Portsmouth in Hampshire, England, on May 12, 1639. It’s the second-oldest municipality in Rhode Island after Providence, one of the four colonies that joined to form Rhode Island. Within a year some of its founders moved to the south end of the island and started Newport, its city page says.
The farms
The Lawton-Almy-Hall Farm, at 559 Union Street, keeps 40 acres and a farm complex with parts from the 18th century. George Lawton was granted the land in 1648, and six generations of his family owned it before Peleg Almy bought it in 1832; the Halls bought it in 1938. The northern section of its farmhouse is estimated to date from about 1700, making it one of the oldest in the area. It joined the National Register in 1978. Borden Farm, at 2951 and 2967 East Main Road, has been owned by Borden descendants since the early 1700s. Its Second Empire farmhouse was built by William Borden around 1865, with an English barn from about 1890 and a workshop, granary and wellhouse from about 1900, and it joined the National Register in 2007.
Greenvale Farm, at the end of a narrow dirt lane off Wapping Road, looks out over the Sakonnet River. In the 1860s the Boston merchant John Barstow turned part of its 53 acres into a country estate, and the main house, designed by John Hubbard Sturgis and built in 1864 and 1865, is an exuberant Stick style house with Gothic touches. Barstow’s descendants still own it, and it joined the National Register in 1980. The Newport Car Museum, next to the Raytheon plant, opened in 2017 and gets about 50,000 visitors a year.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Places: Bristol Ferry, Island Park, Prudence Park, Homestead, Common Fence Point, Melville, South Portsmouth, The Hummocks, Prudence Island and Sandy Point.
Streets and roads: Pier Rd, Bay Ave, Governor Paine Rd, Anthony Rd, Power St, Bristol Ferry Rd, Pleasant Ave, Cliff Rd, E Main, Glen Rd, Linden Ln, Bramans Ln.
More street names, A to Z
Briarwood Ln, Farmlands Rd, Greenvale Rd, Mitchell St.
The Battle of Rhode Island
In August 1778 American troops crossed onto the island from Tiverton to drive the British out of Newport, in the first attempt at a joint campaign of American and French forces. The Battle of Rhode Island was fought on the north end of the island, and the Battle of Rhode Island Site is a National Historic Landmark today. The battle is remembered for the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, whose soldiers were mostly Black. Under Major Samuel Ward Jr., they held a redoubt on West Main Road against three charges by Hessian troops, and their stand helped the army withdraw safely the next night. General John Sullivan said the regiment bore “a proper share of the day’s honors.”
Prudence Island
Prudence Island, near the center of Narragansett Bay, is the third-largest island in the bay and the largest one without a road to the mainland; a ferry runs to it from Bristol all year. Roger Williams and John Winthrop bought it from the Narragansett in 1637, and Williams named it Prudence, then named Patience Island and Hope Island nearby. The Prudence Island Lighthouse, called the Sandy Point Lighthouse by islanders, is the oldest lighthouse tower in the state. It was built in 1823 off Goat Island in Newport and moved here in 1851, and it’s one of the few lighthouses in the country with its original bird-cage lantern; it joined the National Register in 1988. Farnham Farm, at 113 Mount Pleasant Avenue, was started by the Dennis family after the island’s first farms were burned during the Revolution, and keeps a house from about 1805, a barn from about 1850, a milk house, an orchard and stone walls. The Prudence Conservancy owns it, and it joined the National Register in 2006. The island also has Rhode Island’s last one-room schoolhouse, open since 1896, and parts of Moonrise Kingdom were filmed there.
Portsmouth is home to US Sailing, the national governing body of the sport, and to the Newport International Polo Series at Glen Farm. Among its people the town counts Julia Ward Howe, who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the liturgical artist Ade Bethune and the artist and suffragist Sarah J. Eddy. This map of Portsmouth is a good choice for an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of an old island town. KNOWOL made it in 2026 for people who call Portsmouth home, from Island Park and Common Fence Point to Prudence Island, and it shows the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Portsmouth map.
Sources
- Portsmouth, Rhode Island, Wikipedia
- Portsmouth Compact, Wikipedia
- Newport, Rhode Island, Wikipedia
- Lawton-Almy-Hall Farm, Wikipedia
- Borden Farm (Portsmouth, Rhode Island), Wikipedia
- Greenvale Farm, Wikipedia
- Battle of Rhode Island, Wikipedia
- 1st Rhode Island Regiment, Wikipedia
- Prudence Island, Wikipedia
- Prudence Island Light, Wikipedia
- Farnham Farm, Wikipedia
