USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Rehoboth > Early Rehoboth, documented historical studies of families and events in this Plymouth colony township, Volume IV > Part 10
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A Rhode Island Map, drawn by F. Lewis, engraved by A. Lawson, printed by F. Brown, and published by Conrad & Co., Philadelphia, 1804. This map shows the line due north from the east abutment of the Pawtucket bridge and the river to the west of it as copied from the 1795 Harris map.
A Map of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations "corrected and enlarged with many additions by Benoni Lockwood, 1819", was published in that year by William S. Marsh, Hartford, for a Gazetteer of Rhode Island. On this map the due north line is started south and east of the east abutment of the bridge at Pawtucket Falls, consequently the whole width of the river including the bridge is west of the line and further into Rhode Island. Five cotton mills are shown on the west bank of the river, one below the bridge and four above the bridge to the confluence of the rivers. On the east side of the river, three cotton mills are shown between the falls and the fork of the rivers, and one mill on Abbot's Run.
A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Map of Rhode Island, published in Philadelphia in 1822, copies the line north from the Pawtucket bridge and the location of the river from the Harris Map of 1795. The same is true of a map published in 1828.
t Cady, Rhode Island Boundaries (1636-1936), p. 21.
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Early Rehoboth
Falls and considerably east of the falls.
This survey established a new corner east of a north line through the falls and added to Rhode Island a long narrow strip of land including the whole width of the Blackstone River between the falls and the Attleborough line east of the boundary line not speci- fied in the 1663 Rhode Island charter.
The long standing boundary dispute between Rhode Island and Massachusetts was finally amicably adjusted and settled in 1861. A part of what is now Fall River * was ceded to Massachusetts which in return ceded to Rhode Island the westerly part of See- konk t, incorporated 1 Mar. 1862 as East Providence, and the town of Pawtucket. The bounds between these towns and Massachu- setts followed the general line of the Ten Mile and Runnins Rivers Į. In this exchange of territory Rhode Island gave Massachusetts 11 square miles of land with 3 miles of tidewater valued at $1,300,- 000 and in return received from Massachusetts 1812 square miles of land with 2312 miles of tidewater valued at $2,998,000§.
In closing this chapter, it is interesting to note that when the boundary line adjustment was made with Massachusetts in 1847, Rhode Island gained title to the long narrow strip of land and sec- tion of the river above the Pawtucket Falls, the water-power of which was so important to the numerous cotton and other mills along its banks. Fourteen years later, in 1861, in the last and final boundary line adjustment between the two states, it would appear that Massachusetts paid a high price for the land it added to its cotton manufacturing City of Fall River. Nine years after the Civil War the picture had completely changed, however, for in those few years twenty-three new corporations were organized in Fall River, thirty new cotton mills were built, and at least seven full sized additions were made to old mills with an increase in cap- italization of nearly twelve million dollars ||.
To-day, eighty-eight years after Rhode Island ceded to Massa- chusetts the eleven square miles to be added to the city of Fall River in exchange for the eighteen and a half square miles repre- sented by the town of East Providence and half of the present city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island seems to have had the better of the bargain, for in the meantime Fall River had lost all of its cotton mills to the South and not many years ago the City itself was finan- cially bankrupt.
* FALL RIVER-Incorporated 26 Feb. 1803; part of Freetown. Name changed to Troy, 18 June 1804; name changed from Troy, 12 Feb. 1834. Fall River incorporated as a city, 12 Apr. 1854; act of incorporation accepted by the town, 22 Apr. 1854. Certain lands on the east side of Mount Hope Bay annexed by the change of the bounds of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 10 Apr. 1861. The bounds between Fall River and Westport located and defined 14 June 1894 [Historical Data, County, City and Towns, Mass. (1920), p. 14].
+ SEEKONK-Incorporated 26 Feb. 1812; part of Rehoboth. Part of Pawtucket, R. I., and certain lands over which Seekonk may have claimed jurisdiction lying east of a conventional line to be determined by the U. S. Supreme Court, after the entry of the decree of said court, to be part of Seekonk, 10 Apr. 1861. [Historical Data, County, City and Towns, Mass. (1920), p. 15]. # See map, Cady, Rhode Island Boundaries (1636-1936), p. 23.
§ Map showing proposed exchange of land between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Bristol County Registry of Deeds, Plan Book No. 2, p. 64.
|| Henry M. Fenner, History of Fall River (New York, 1906), pp. 76, 79, 82,
BROMIDEZCE
PROVIDENCE
1790.
Courtesy of the R. I. Historical Society
The earliest known paper map of the town of Providence, drawn in 1790 by John Fitch (1770-1827) a Brown student who graduated that year. On the back is a drawing of the First Baptist Meeting House. For a key to this map, see the Providence Sunday Journal, 18 Jan. 1948. The earliest known map of Providence is the 1777 view scratched on Stephen Avery's Revolutionary powder horn.
CHAPTER IV
PAWTUCKET
The word Pawtucket is an Indian place-name meaning "land at the mouth of the river" * and covered considerable territory north of Pawtucket Falls on both sides of the Pawtucket River now called the Blackstone. The earliest record of the name is found in the 24 Mar. 1637 Indian deed of Providence lands where one of the bounds is "from the river and fields of Pawtucket".
The next record of the place is on 1 Aug. 1638 when Roger Wil- liams wrote from Providence to Gov. John Winthrop at Boston telling about the murder of an Indian "four days since by Arthur Peach and three others from Plymouth" and of their stopping with "the old man at Pawtucket" t. This could be no other than Wil- liam Blackstone who in the spring of 1635 had settled on the Paw- tucket River about three miles north of the Pawtucket Falls near where the Lonsdale station now stands in the town of Cumber- land į. In King Philip's War, Captain Denison captured the In- dian Chieftain Canonchet at the foot of a high hill in Pawtucket §. This was probably William Blackstone's "Study Hill".
Originally the whole length of the river from the southern bound- ary line of Massachusetts over the Pawtucket Falls into the salt water and about four and one-half miles south, to its confluence with the Providence River, was called Pawtucket River. On the Caleb Harris 1795 map this river has three names. The salt river to Pawtucket Falls is called the Seekonk; from the falls north and well into the town of Cumberland, the Pawtucket; and from that point north, the Blackstone. To-day the fresh river above Paw- tucket Falls is called the Blackstone and the salt river it empties into below the falls is called the Seekonk River on Rhode Island maps, and the Providence River on U. S. Government maps.
In a two mile distance above the Pawtucket Falls there is a drop in the river of about fifty feet to mean tide level. A mile below the Valley Falls pond and over the Central Falls, the water drops twenty-five feet and finally another twenty-five feet more over the Pawtucket Falls into the tide water.
On the east, the Rehoboth side of Pawtucket Falls, the river banks are uniformly high and steep, rising abruptly fifteen to thirty feet to the Seekonk "great plain" which is bounded on the east by the Ten Mile River, a small fresh water stream which empties into the salt water river about two and one half miles south of the Paw- tucket Falls.
* Definition by William Brooks Cabot, R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. XXII, p. 38. Trumbull, Indian Names in Connecticut, p. 49, says that the Indian name means "a waterfall place".
+ For letter see Narragansett Club Publications, vol. VI, p. 112.
# See Early Rehoboth, vol. III, p. 13.
§ See Early Rehoboth, vol. III, p. 46.
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Early Rehoboth
The Rehoboth side of the falls was settled first. At a Rehoboth town meeting held 9 June 1645, lots were drawn in the Great Plain, "beginning on the west side [Pawtucket River], and he who is first on the west side shall be last upon the east [Ten Mile River]". This was a division of the width of the plain from the Pawtucket River to the Ten Mile River north of the Rehoboth Ring of the Green and was parcelled out in lots to fifty-eight Rehoboth proprietors.
The Smith and Bucklin families were original owners of large tracts of this plain land along the river and from an early date con- solidated their holdings. In 1738, Henry Smith, probably the grand- son of Ensign Henry Smith the first settler, sold Samuel Smith forty- eight acres of land on the east side of Pawtucket Falls bounded on the land "where the grist mill stands". In 1747, one or both of the Smiths conveyed the grist or "corn mill" to James Bucklin. Twenty-nine years later, in 1776, James Bucklin conveyed the mill to his son John.
Rehoboth early assumed proprietorship at the Pawtucket Falls when on 9 Feb. 1646 the townsmen agreed that Edward Sale, John Dogget, William Sabin, John Peram and William Thayer should have permission to set weirs at the cove and on Pawtucket River providing they "hinder not either English nor Indians from fishing at the falls at either place".
On the west, the Providence side of the river, the physical char- acteristics of the land are more diversified. About two miles west of the Blackstone River is the Moshassuck River, now an insignifi- cant stream. The watershed between these two rivers rises in some places into a high ridge topped by outcropping ledges. While the land generally slopes gradually to the valley of the Moshassuck, the banks of the Blackstone are in most places high, although both north and south from the falls a tract of level land lies between the river and the central ridge. This spot may be the 1637 "river and fields of Pawtucket".
No very early settlements were made on the Providence side for these Pawtucket lands were not held to be of any great value. On 10 Sept. 1646, Gregory Dexter, Thomas Olney, Roger and Robert Williams, who had been requested by the town to purchase "the right which Ousamequin pretendeth to a parcell of Land which lies between our lands at Pawtucket and an Indian plantation north- west", reported that it was "upland from ye water and most of it barren and rockie without meadow" *. On 27 July 1650, Roger Williams' brother Robert sold to William Blackstone his sixty acres of upland and two shares of meadow "lying above the second wad- ing-place above Pawtucket ffalls" t.
The first known settler on the Providence side of the Pawtucket Falls was Joseph Jencks # who by 1671 had built a sawmill and iron
* Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, vol. I, p. 33. The italics are the writer's.
t Early Providence Town Records, vol. II, p. 9.
# Joseph2 Jenckes, b. 1632, d. 4 Jan. 1717, was the son of Joseph, iron master at Saugus (Lynn), Mass., in 1647. He was at Warwick, R. I., 25 Mar. 1669, when the town granted him land on either side of the Pawtuxet River for a sawmill, he agreeing to let the towns people have boards at 4s.6d. the hundred, and all sawn work at a proportional price. On 10 Oct. 1671, he purchased 60
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Pawtucket
THE PAWTUCKET FALLS BRIDGE
A photograph of a wood-cut picture of the Pawtucket Falls bridge first pub- lished in 1881 in Prof. Wilfred H. Munro's Picturesque Rhode Island. The wood- cut was next used in 1886 in Providence Plantations, 250th Anniversary.
Drawn from a point south of the bridge looking north, the right side of the picture shows the old village of Pawtucket, town of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, on the east bank of the river. The west bank of the river, on the left of the picture, was in the old town of North Providence, Rhode Island.
The caption under the original picture tells us that this was the appearance of the bridge about 1789. This date is at least ten years too early as the picture could not have been drawn earlier than 1799 for in that year Samuel Slater & Company built a cotton mill in Rehoboth near the bridge on the east bank of the river. This cotton mill is the large three-story building shown in the picture at the east approach to the bridge.
The artist depicts a wooden bridge supported in the center on the rocks of the falls as were all of the early wooden bridges. Crossing the bridge is a man driving a one-horse shay. In the background, over the center of the bridge, can be seen the cupola of the old Slater Mill built in 1793.
So far as is known to the present writer, the buildings at the west approach to the bridge have not been identified. The two-story building on piles appears to stand on or near the site of Ezekiel Carpenter's old fulling mill in North Provi- dence, Rhode Island, where in 1790 Samuel Slater first successfully spun cotton yarn on his reproduced Arkwright patent cotton machinery.
South of these buildings were the old Jenckes iron forge, anchor foundry, and "Coal Yard", so-called from its huge storage piles of charcoal used in the various forges.
Until the year 1793, this Pawtucket Falls bridge was the only one connecting Rehoboth with Rhode Island. Before that date the bulk of the travel between the two places was over the two ancient "upper" and "lower" ferries located some four miles to the south.
In 1792, Moses Brown, and others, applied to the Rhode Island Legislature for a charter for a toll-bridge over the "Narrows" at the location of the so-called "Upper Ferry". A charter was granted for the "Central Bridge" which was erected the following year near the site of the present "Red Bridge". This new bridge, known as the "Moses Brown Bridge", was built of wood with a 24-foot draw.
The same year, 1792, the Legislature granted a charter for the erection of "Washington Bridge" at the "Lower Ferry" near the present Washington Bridge. This was also a toll-bridge with a 24-foot draw and was completed and opened for travel in 1793.
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Early Rehoboth
forge south of the falls, on part of a sixty-acre tract of land originally owned by Ezekiel Holliman. Both the sawmill and forge were de- stroyed in King Philip's War but were later rebuilt.
As shown in the previous chapter, the territory on the west side of the Pawtucket Falls and west of a narrow strip of land west of the river and north of the falls belonged to the Town of Providence. A strip of this land was taken and incorporated, 13 June 1765, as the Town of North Providence. The territory set off extended east and west from the Pawtucket to the Woonasquatucket Rivers and was about twice the size of the remaining Providence area. A small portion of this land was united with the Town of Providence on 29 June 1767 and another on 28 Mar. 1873. North Providence was again divided on 27 Mar. 1874; a portion was annexed to the City of Providence, making the tenth ward in that city, and a por- tion was annexed to the old Town of Pawtucket, Massachusetts. The act went into effect 1 May 1874 *. By act of the legislature in 1801, the East End of North Providence, at Pawtucket Falls, was made into the "District of Pawtucket" for the purpose of fire pro- tection.
The town of Rehoboth was divided in 1812; the eastern half re- taining the name Rehoboth and the western half taking the ancient name Seekonk. In the north end of the new township of Seekonk the village of Pawtucket grew faster than the parent town, and on 13 June 1814 the Massachusetts legislature granted a charter for a Pawtucket bank t. This village growth continued at such a rapid rate that the north end of Seekonk was set off and incorporated, 1 Mar. 1828, as the Town of Pawtucket, Massachusetts. All of this town, except a small portion lying easterly of Seven Mile River, was ceded by Massachusetts to Rhode Island, together with the present town of East Providence which was incorporated 1 Mar. 1862.
The only eighteenth century description we have of the Pawtucket Falls settlement is that written by Dr. Timothy Dwight. Chosen president of Yale University in 1795, he decided to devote the vaca- tions during his presidency to a regular course of travel through New England and New York, recording his impressions of the towns he visited. He started his travels in September, 1796, the accounts of which are found in a series of letters published in two volumes in 1821 under the title of Travels in New England and New York. In the preface of the first volume he said that "I wished to know the
acres of land near Pawtucket Falls, with rights of commonage, from Abel Potter and wife Rachel, who inherited the land from her grandfather, Ezekiel Holliman. On Jenckes' death in 1717, he bequeathed his mill property to sons Ebenezer and William.
* These divisions are clearly shown in a series of excellent maps in John Hutchins Cady's Rhode Island Boundaries (1636-1936), (Rhode Island Tercentenary Commission: Providence, 1936).
+ By an Act of the Senate and House of Representatives, Oliver Starkweather, Benjamin S. Wolcot, James Ellis, Eliphalet Slack, Lemuel Bishop, Remember Kent, Elijah Ingraham, Jesse May, and their associates, were created a corporation by the name of the Present Directors and company of the Pawtucket Bank. The capital stock was $100,000, in gold and silver, divided into shares of $100 each. It was further enacted that the bank "shall loan the Commonwealth any sum of money which may be required, not exceeding $20,000 at any one time, and that the Commonwealth shall never at any one time stand indebted to the bank, without its consent, for a larger sum than $30,000" [Private and Special Statutes, Commonwealth of Mass. (Boston, 1823), pp. 13-15.]
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Pawtucket
manner in which New England appeared, or to my eye would have appeared eighty or a hundred years before, but I soon found that this information was unobtainable. Feeling that some of those who will live eighty or a hundred years hence will have thoughts similar to my own, I resolved to report with exactness and sincerity what I saw and heard".
A keen observer, Dr. Dwight did a far better service to posterity than he knew, for to-day, one hundred and fifty-three years later, his eye-witness word pictures are source materials for the history of these towns at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the best example of which is probably his 1796 description of the Pawtucket Falls settlement, part of which was in Massachusetts and part in Rhode Island.
"Leaving Charlestown, Mass., on Wednesday 15 Oct. 1796, Dr. Dwight and party traveled some thirty miles through Boston, Roxbury, Milton, Quincy, Braintree, Weymouth, the outskirts of Hingham, stopping for the night at an inn in the western part of Scituate.
"The next day, Thursday 16 October, we traveled seventeen miles to Plymouth, arriving about noon. There we remained for the night, and the next morning, Friday 17 October, continued to Carver, eight miles; to Middleborough, thirteen miles; and from there, twenty-six miles to Taunton where we stopped for the night.
"The next morning, Saturday 18 October, we left Taunton for Providence, traveling through Attleborough, the hamlet of Pawtucket in the northern part of the town of Rehoboth, over the bridge at Pawtucket Falls into North Providence, a distance of twenty miles-thence four miles to Providence".
Writing of this village * at Pawtucket Falls on 18 Oct. 1796, Dr. Dwight is very careful to refer to the settlement on the east bank of the river as "the hamlet of Pawtucket in the northern part of the town of Rehoboth", and to the settlement on the west bank as "North Providence".
"Saturday October 18, we rode from Taunton to Providence through the skirts of Rehoboth, and Attleborough, and through North-Providence, twenty miles. The road is tolerably good to Pautucket river; and thence to Providence, four miles, is intolerably bad; being a deep sand, very heavy, and most uncomfortably set with stones of a considerable size.
"Attleborough is a township, distributed almost wholly into plantations, with only a small village around the first church. It includes two parishes; and two Presbyterian [Congregational], and two Baptist congregations.
* In the last seventy-three years there have been two principal Pawtucket, Rhode Island, his- tories written. An Historical Sketch of the Town of Pawtucket (1876), by Rev. Massena Goodrich, pastor of the Universalist Church, on the west side of the river, from 1857 to 1860, and from 1862 to 1875. This is one of those so-called narrative histories, all of which are uniformly without documentation. When the author reaches page 52 in his book, he says that "in a former part of this sketch imagination was allowed to give a picture of this region nearly two centuries ago". In this brief confession, Mr. Goodrich has himself correctly evaluated his own history book better than could any competent reviewer.
An Illustrated History of Pawtucket, Central Falls, and Vicinity, by Robert Grieve, published at Pawtucket, R. I., by the Pawtucket Gazette and Chronicle in 1897, was the second history pub- lished. This book, 509 pages, is primarily one of those commercial propositions in which more than half of the volume consists of 468 "Biographies of Present Citizens", together with their portraits. There are 114 additional illustrations including more portraits of individuals, pictures of residences, mills, etc. For a publication of its kind, it contains a good deal of well documented material and is by far the best history of Pawtucket yet published.
The early history of Pawtucket, Massachusetts, is found in the original records of the towns of Rehoboth, Seekonk, and Pawtucket, Massachusetts. The only printed history is the dozen pages, 230-242, in the back of Bliss's History of Rehoboth (1836).
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Early Rehoboth
The surface is moderately undulating, and the soil tolerably good. Provi- dence furnishes it with a market for everything which the inhabitants have for sale. In 1790, the number of dwelling-houses was 314
"Before we reached Providence, we crossed Seekonk plain: an absolute level, about five miles in length, and three and a half in breadth. This spot has for a long time been a favourite scene of the Rhode-Island horse races; and more than any other ground within my knowledge resembles Hempstead plain on Long-Island; devoted from an early period to the same miserable employment".
If Dr. Dwight allowed the small time horse racing on the Seekonk Great Plain to upset him so much a century and a half ago, he would probably die of apoplexy if he were alive to-day and could see on this same plain the Narragansett Race Track establishment where on one day, 3 Sept. 1945, $1,917,282.00 was wagered on nine horse races, of which sum $253,241.00 was on the sixth race *.
"Rehoboth is a large farming town, bounded on the South by the State of Rhode-Island, and on the North by Attleborough. Its surface to a great extent is level, but interspersed with hills or a moderate elevation. Its soil is tolerably fertile.
"In 1790, Rehoboth contained 688 houses and 4,710 inhabitants. In 1800, the number of inhabitants was 4,743, and in 1810, 4,866. The Indian name of Rehoboth was Seconnet [Seekonk]. It includes one Presbyterian [Congregational] and five Baptist congregations.
"In the North-Western corner of Rehoboth there is a compact, and neat settlement on the Pawtucket, or Providence river. This, with another on the Western bank, from what is called North Providence: although this name in strict propriety belongs only to the latter. This village is well-built; and wears a flourishing aspect. The river is a large mill-stream; and just below the village becomes navigable for boats. Directly under the bridge com- mences a romantic fall, which, extending obliquely down the river, furnishes a number of excellent mill-seats. Of this advantage the inhabitants have availed themselves. There is probably no spot in New-England, of the same extent, in which the same quantity, or variety, of manufacturing business is carried on [1810].
"In the year 1796, there were here
3 Anchor-forges,
1 Cotton Manufactory,
1 Fanning Mill,
2 Machines for cutting nails,
1 Flouring Mill,
1 Furnace for casting hollow ware; all moved by water,
1 Slitting Mill,
3 Snuff Mills,
1 Machine for cutting screws, moved by a horse,
1 Oil Mill,
3 Fulling Mills
And several forges for smiths'
1 Clothier's Works, work.
"The whole descent of the river is said to be fifty feet. The principal fall is about thirty. The mass of rocks, by which it is produced, is thrown together in the wildest confusion. When we passed this place, the river was low. In 1807, while crossing the ferry, just below, in an oblique direction near a mile in extent, during almost the whole of which it was visible, I had a remarkably fine view of this cataract. The river was full; and fell in a circuitous extent of little less than two hundred feet, and in a great variety of forms of wildness and grandeur.
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