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is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States, incorporated in 1746. The population was 31,840 at the 2000 census.
Cumberland was originally settled as part of Rehoboth, which was purchased from the local Native Americans by the Plymouth Colony. It was later transferred to Rhode Island as part of a long-running boundary dispute.
William Blackstone (also spelled William Blaxton in colonial times) was the first European to have settled and lived in Cumberland. (He was also the first European to have settled in Boston, but left there when he and the newly arrived Puritans disagreed about religion.) He preached his brand of tolerant Christianity under an oak tree that became an inspiration to Christians worldwide. He lived on a farm in the Lonsdale area of Cumberland, where he cultivated the first variety of American apples, the Yellow Sweeting. The site of his home is now occupied by the Ann & Hope mill.
The popular tourist destination "Nine Men's Misery" is a tomb found on the grounds of a former Trappist monastery (Abbey of Our Lady of the Valley), part of which was destroyed in a fire in 1950. The Trappists donated the monastery to the town and part of the building was converted into the Edward J. Hayden Library in 1976.
Cumberland was the site of iron works that made cannons and cannon balls for the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.
A machine shop in Cumberland made the first power looms for woolens in America. These were reportedly used at the Capron Mill in Uxbridge, around 1820, that burned in a recent spectacular Bernat Mill fire.
Cumberland is in the lower Blackstone Valley of Rhode Island and in the John H. Chafee, Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, New England's historic National Park area.