The Atherton Trading Company was formed in 1659 ; with Humphrey Atherton and John Winthrop the Younger, Governor of Connecticut at the helm. This partnership of merchants and investors included Elisha Hutchinson, Richard Smith and Boston traders; John Tinker, Amos Richardson and William Hudson. Their land speculation in the Narraganset area of Rhode Island was at the expense of the Native American inhabitants. Critics from the Colony of Rhode Island alleged that Humphrey Atherton had kept one signatory, the Narragansett sachem Pessacus’s younger brother drunk for several days and took him to Boston in order to secure perceived “rights” to the land at little expense. John Hull, a Boston goldsmith had been responsible for opening the first mint in Boston 4 years earlier, along with other Boston Merchants acquired a land grant, south of Wickford known as the Pettaquamscutt Purchase. Humphrey Atherton’s company obtained a large track of land north of Kingston, 5000 acres of land on Boston Neck, above Wickford. The Commissioners of the New England Confederation were opposed to the dissenters in Rhode Island, appear to have colluded with the Atherton Trading Company by imposing a heavy fine on the Niantic for an infraction by certain members of the tribe.
Atherton played a key role in fighting and removing Indians from land he later owned.
The group circumvented Rhode Island's law by acquiring the land when the Native American inhabitants defaulted on the loan. In 1660, commissioners of the Four Colonies, of whom John Winthrop, Jr. was one, transferred ownership of the mortgage of Pessicus's land to the Atherton Trading Company for 735 fathoms of wampum. The company then foreclosed on the mortgage. The land included the Narragansett property within the bounds of the Colony of Rhode Island found this transference of land to be illegal and prevented the resale for several years. The list of proprietors dated Oct 13, 1660 also included Thomas Willett, later to be the first Mayor of New York. The conflicting purchase claims were settled after Humphrey Atherton’s death in 1679. The company, which by then had changed its name to "Proprietors of the Narragansett Country," eventually did sell of the land to Huguenot immigrants who began a colony there called Frenchtown. The Huguenots lost the land when, in 1688, a Royal Commission determined the Atherton claim to be illegal.
