(VI) Joel Metcalf, son of Nathaniel (2) and Ruth (Whiting) Metcalf, was born November 4, 1755, in Attleboro, Mass. According to Providence records he removed his family from Attleboro to Providence on February 4, 1780. He resided at what is now Nos. 64-66 Benefit street. Joel Metcalf was a leather dresser and currier, and carried on an extensive business, at first in company with his brother, Michael, and later independently, on Mill street, Providence, in a wooden building. He was a stern Democrat of the Jeffersonian school, and his name may be found among the fifty-six freemen who voted the Democratic ticket when Thomas Jefferson came into power. Although his education was limited and his politics unpopular in Providence, such was the general confidence in the uprightness of his intentions and his strong common sense that his fellow-citizens elected him for many years a member of the Town Council. He was also elected a member of the school committee for twenty-two years in succession, during which time he was present at every examination of the public schools. He was among the first and foremost in favor of the public schools, and that his interest in them was real is evidenced in the fact that he gave his personal attendance at upward of eighty successive examinations. When the Democratic party came into power in Rhode Island, he was elected a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the County of Providence.
