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LAFAYETTE
RHODE ISLAND
M. L
Gc 974.502 L13g 1134257
2.50
GENEALOGY COLLECTION 1
m
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 00084 6680 E
To My Friend Herbert O. Brighamse, skilled in research and history.
George W. Jardin,
Providence. R.S. april 21, 1949.
LAFAYETTE RHODE ISLAND
LAFAYETTE RHODE ISLAND
A Few Phases of Its History from the Ice Age to the Atomic
By GEORGE W. GARDINER
THE J. C. HALL COMPANY Pawtucket, R. I.
Copyright 1949 by GEORGE W. GARDINER
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
1134257 TO MY MOTHER
Tyson - 2,50
FOREWORD
GILBERT STUART, the famous painter, when in Eng- land, was once asked where he was born. He answered, "In Narragansett, six miles from Pottawoom, ten miles from Poppasquash, four miles from Conanicut, and not far from the Pequot battlefield." This hardly left the inquiring Englishman any the wiser. But no doubt he assumed wisdom, and kept still.
In these modern days, it has been no uncommon experience for a traveling Lafayettian to be asked about the location of his habitat. It is hoped this little volume of reminiscence and history will answer the question in a manner more definite than the Stuart reply.
It was quite a common practice in days of yore to refer to a locality, where any form of machinery had been set up, as a "factory." Many small mills in the rural districts were described as "factories," with a handle-name such as "Butterfly Factory," "Ramtail Factory," "Acid Factory," &c. Even the Pawtuxet Valley mills and the locality around them were for a long time known to South County residents as the "Northern Factories." The little old mill at what is now Lafayette was known in the early 1800's as the "North Kingstown Cotton Factory."
General Lafayette, the close military associate and personal friend of General George Washington during
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FOREWORD
the Revolutionary War, revisited the United States in 1824. He was received with the greatest enthusiasm in a continuous triumphal procession over a route of some 5000 miles, including Rhode Island. Congress voted him $200,000 in recognition of his services in the Revolution.
Following his visit, his name was given to budding villages and towns, while some older ones replaced their names with that of the distinguished Frenchman. Somewhere in the changing ownership of the "North Kingstown Cotton Factory" after Lafayette's visit, the name "Lafayette Factory" was given to the plant, and it so appears on the Town records. Gradually, the name spread to the locality immediately surrounding the small mill and the three or four houses nestling in the dell of the Shewatuck. So when a United States post office was established there in 1856, it was offi- cially designated as "La Fayette." The name, however, is more generally written and printed as "Lafayette," both in referring to the General and to the village. Historians and dictionary publishers (notably Web- ster) use the latter form, but the United States Post Office Department still sticks to the official "La Fayette."
An old legend in the Thomas family tells of a weather vane that was set up in the vicinity when the first mill was beginning to form a community. This vane had a figure of Washington on one end, and one of Lafayette on the other. The idea was that which- ever figure remained in place the longest would be- stow its name on the village. The Lafayette figure won.
The following pages are designed to give a run-
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FOREWORD
ning comment on the geographic, historic, industrial, commercial and social development of the village and its tributary community, with sketches of the persons, families and events that have featured its growth. The volume is more particularly planned for the reminis- cent interest of those who have dwelt in Lafayette, and their descendants. At the same time, it is believed that the general reader, who possibly may not be at all familiar with the community, will find herein an ex- ample of the enterprise, patriotism, thrift, and civic integrity characteristic of thousands of similar small communities that have contributed, in no mean way, to make America great.
Providence, R. I., February, 1949.
THE AUTHOR
IN RECOGNITION
THE AUTHOR hereby makes his sincere acknowledg- ment to Mrs. Edwin W. Huling, without whose help, suggestions, and vast stock of local historical material, this volume could not have come into being to any- thing like its present extent.
Mary Eliza Huling is the daughter of Amos Allen Kenyon and Eunice Whitford Kenyon. She was born in Exeter, but like many other Exeterians who have lent their talents and enterprise to the Lafayette area, she came to the village in her late "teens." At the age of 20, she married Edwin W. Huling, son of Erie Wilson Huling and Sarah Tourgee Huling, a well- known figure with the Newport and Wickford Rail- road and Steamboat Company, and later a successful business man in local lines.
Mr. and Mrs. Huling have three children:
Leon Wilson who married Helen Hamilton. They have two children, Muriel Hamilton Huling and Joyce Lynne Huling.
Ruby Estelle who married Ernest Le Moine Arnold. They have two children, Gerald Huling Arnold and Rosemary Arnold.
Florence Esther who married William Herman Schmidt. They have two children, Robert Paul Schmidt and Elizabeth Ann Schmidt.
Mrs. Huling's ancestry reaches back to many of the
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IN RECOGNITION
early Rhode Island settlers. These include the original Alexander Huling, the original Beriah Brown, Richard Smith of Cocumcussoc, the Updikes, and the Hopkins, Reynolds, Lillibridge, and Whitford families. Her tracing of these strains of lineage have led her into a much wider field of genealogy and history, whereby she has accumulated a mass of both knowledge and material that is most comprehensive in local history.
Under the name "Mary Kenyon Huling," she has published "The Story of Pettaquamscutt," "A History of the Baptist Church in Exeter," "The Old Baptist Church in Stony Lane," "Mowbra Castle and the Phil- lips Family," and has made various contributions to historical societies such as the Daughters of the Ameri- can Revolution, of which she is an active member.
She has been a long-time member of the Baptist Church in Exeter and an earnest worker in the Advent Christian Church of Lafayette and its affiliated wel- fare societies. She has been solicitously interested in the preservation of the "Stony Lane Baptist Meeting House" and its ancient churchyard.
She has visited and inspected nearly every old his- toric house in the vicinity, and ransacked many an old attic in her search for data that was unobtainable elsewhere, familiarized herself with ancient State and Town records, tabulated the dates and names from headstones in family burying-grounds of the long, long ago, and indexed much of this information for ready reference. All this, supplemented by bulging scrap-books and a keen memory, centralizes into a rich mine of facts, figures and names for the seeker of historic truths.
Her early experiences in the hardy life on an Exeter
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IN RECOGNITION
farm gave her the health and stamina to pursue this arduous bent. Yet as a help-meet and mother, she has, at the same time, achieved the success denoted by a comfortable home and the satisfaction of a devoted husband and family. A seeker of the old in tradition and fact, she has herself become a skilled scholar in the ancient, an earnest example in community good- works, and a typical wife and mother, all in the best of American tradition.
GEORGE W. GARDINER
CONTENTS
Foreword . vii -
In Recognition .
. £ xi I. Lafayette-
A. In the Beginning Was the Brook I ·
B. The Brook Gets a Name . . 5
2. Houses and Families of the First Settlers ·
8
3. A Primitive Eden in a Wilderness 14 ·
4. Landlock and Wedlock
16
5. Food the First Essential . 18 .
6. The Housing and Help Problems 20
7. Women and the Winning of the Wilderness 22
8. Beriah Brown of the Third Generation, Sheriff of King's County and a Politician of Parts 24
9. Captain Jimmy Huling, Enterprising Business Man of Early Lafayette . · 28
10. Men of Mark in the Phillips Family . 33 ·
II. The Hendrick Family · 40
12. The Shewatuck-Mill-Maker
·
47
13. The Coming of the Iron Horse . 52
14. The Iron Horse is Harnessed . 62
15. Some of the Attendants of the Iron Horse . 75
16. Robert Rodman, Village Builder 86
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CONTENTS
17. The Ten Rod Road . · IO2
18. A Memory Stroll Adown Lafayette's Main Highway . 114
19. Stores, Shops, and Peddlers .
. I55
20. Churches and Creeds . · . ·
178
21. Elder Edwin R. Wood · 189 .
22. Schools and Schoolhouses . . 192
23. Amusements, Entertainments, Games and
Sports . 198
24. Doctors . 208
25. Courts and Judges .
. 212
26. The Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company . 217
27. A Saga of Swamptown-in the Seventies-and Seventy-five Years Later .
224
28. George T. Cranston, Soldier, Merchant-an Outstanding Figure in Village, Town and State · 243
29. Those Who Fought for Us · 2 50
30. Keeping Step with the March of Time · 2 52
31. Contemplation . 261
L'Envoi
. . 264 Acknowledgments . 266 .
I. Lafayette
A. In the Beginning Was the Brook
The river knows the way to the sea; Without a pilot it runs and falls, Blessing all lands with its charity. -EMERSON
MISS CAROLINE HAZARD, in her article "The Gilbert Stuart House," pays a tribute to the little stream Mettatoxet that runs down into Pettaquam- scutt River. At this meeting of "brook and brine," where the Stuart House was erected, a dam, a grist mill, a saw mill, a fulling mill, and, later, a snuff mill, were built. Miss Hazard cites the Ganges, the Nile, the Tiber, the Mississippi, and the Rio Grande, all of historical influence and grandeur, as fulfilling Emer- son's verse. She reminds us, however, of the lesser streams we should know in our own vicinity and State, for they, too, in their way, have blessed the land through which they run.
To know the early history of Lafayette, we must first come to know its river. Today we hardly give a thought to the existence of the small stream that flows silently down from the "Goose Nest Spring" to the "Old Bog." Yet it was a life-giving bounty of nature
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LAFAYETTE, RHODE ISLAND
in the days of the North Kingstown pioneers. Its pure water served in a variety of ways. It was drink to the people and to their cattle, always handy for house- hold uses in the homes along its course, watered much of the cleared land that lay in its winding route, and had sufficient flow for the building of dams. These dams set to work a grist mill, or a saw mill, or, later, a series of mills where yarn was spun and cloth was woven. In short, it provided the necessities of food and drink, as well as clothing and shelter.
But this brook was not always the small stream it is today. The geologists tell us that more than 250,000 years ago, the whole northeastern part of the United States, southward to what is now New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was capped by a vast sea of ice, so thick in places as to cover all but the highest mountains. Something like 25,000 years ago, due to a marvelous change in climate, this ice cap had melted and re- treated to the northern polar regions.
While the long period of ice-cover lasted, the main body was always on the move southward. In its course, it pushed along soil, boulders, stones, gravel and sand, finally depositing them along the way in what are called "moraines." It leveled off hills, cut out valleys, and in its melting left broad "wash plains." The ex- tensive sand and gravel pits now being operated on the Thomas property on the west shore of the "Old Bog," are local evidences of these "moraines."
The well-known "Kettle Hole" in Swamptown is another evidence of glacial action. In that case, huge chunks of the breaking-up ice gouged out a deep hole in the face of the earth, which later filled with water from the melt. Geologists term such a formation a
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LAFAYETTE
"kettle hole" or a "pot hole." Tradition has it that these "holes" are bottomless, as was once said of the Swamptown feature. Several of these "kettle holes" exist on Long Island. Lake Success, the temporary home of the United Nations on Long Island, is said to be the largest of these. It, too, was once said to be bottomless, but that was disproved in recent years.
"Queen's Fort," just above Scrabbletown, is a de- posit of huge boulders formerly broken off or picked up in the moving ice-cap and swept along in a mighty grinding movement which produced smaller stones and gravel and sand in places, or left the boulders in a jumbled heap when the melting came. The boulders show upon examination of their nature that in many cases they were brought from far distances in the north. At "Queen's Fort," the Indians may have filled some of the intervening spaces with smaller stones to complete this natural fort-like defence, but they hardly possessed the facilities or the skill to assemble the big boulders originally.
Besides the "kettle holes," other lakes, ponds, and huge rivers were created by the melting of the huge masses of ice in the changed temperatures. Here in southern Rhode Island, the territory formerly called the "Great Plain," extending from east of Exeter Hill southerly through the present Slocum potato fields, then through West Kingston's present "Fair Grounds," was once the "wash plain" of the glacier. At the coming of the white man to these parts, this plain was of virgin fertility for its soil was the long-accumu- lated and undisturbed deposit from the melting ice-cap. Some of the larger rivers thus formed from the melt filled the deep ravines that earlier had been cut by the
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LAFAYETTE, RHODE ISLAND
massive, tumbling chunks of ice, and swelled their currents into such force and volume that they cut new channels in their inevitable rush to the Bay and Ocean. This happened to the Pawtuxet to the north and to the Pawcatuck to the south.
Similarly, our "Goose Nest Brook" must have been, at one time, a much larger stream, for markings on the hillsides along its course show this plainly. Its source then was no tiny spring. It was the vast drainage from the "wash basin" of the Great Plain. The present hills overhanging the spring, the hills on the north side of the "Klondike," the hills of the railroad cut just south of Wickford Junction, the long curving hill in the rear of the houses on High Street that bends around to the Swamptown crossing of the Wickford Branch rail- road and then on to the "Old Bog," were retaining walls on the south side of this flood. On the north side of what is now the Ten Rod Road, there were the hills that extend from Wickford Junction to the east, down in back of the Rodman estates (including Lib- erty Hill), and ending at the elevation on which the "Old Castle" now stands.
Between these barriers was a flood of tumbling water. The valley between the hill of High Street and the New Haven Railroad was the wide bed of a river which overflowed the Phillips (Straight) farm, swept along what is now the Ten Rod Road and land on both sides, over the present mill sites, and into the depres- sion we now call the "Old Bog," from whence it con- tinued on to the Bay. It was an "Ol' Man River" that "just kep' rollin' along."
The grand scale on which Nature operates is spec- tacular in its changes. The magic, mighty shift in
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LAFAYETTE
climate over all this territory gradually drove back the glacier to the north, dissipating its melting floods. Many inland lakes and ponds were drained, while the raging rivers dwindled to calm streams or brooks or rills, and, in some cases were banished altogether. Ponds and springs and swamps became the remaining evidence of the vast tonnage of water once borne on the local back of the earth. These, the geologists tell us, give further evidence of the existence of under- ground streams or sheets of water, held captive by tons of overlying rocks and soil. Now and then they seep through to the surface in the form of the springs or swamps, or are pierced by man-made wells, or con- tinue to flow on to deep-lying subterranean outlets in- to the Bay or Ocean.
"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform."
B. The Brook Gets a Name
Thousands of years passed. Man appeared on the scene of what had been an icy waste. Where he came from is a disputed question. The first white men to arrive in Rhode Island territory found the land peopled by the same race that Columbus had named "Indians." It was the same race that the early Spanish had found in what is now our Southern States. The natives here in our section called themselves "Narragansetts." They dominated several lesser tribes scattered through this area. One of these lesser tribes had its dwelling place at the head-waters of a small brook which the Indians called "Shewatuck" or "Showatuck." This is none other than the brook we now call the "Goose
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LAFAYETTE, RHODE ISLAND
Nest Spring Brook," or the "Lafayette Brook," or the "Phillips Brook," and, latterly, the "Hatchery Brook." Roger Williams first mentions the tribe as the "Wun- nashowatuckoogs," but later shortened the name to "Showatucks." They were formerly allied with the Pequots and were spread over quite a territory ex- tending north and south and west from the brook, to judge from the Indian relics which have been un- earthed in the many directions. Whether the tribe took its name from the brook, or the brook took its name from the tribe, might be a question like "Which was first, the hen or the egg?" Rider, on his map of "Rhode Island Lands as the Indian Sachems Knew Them," affixes the name "Shewatuck" to this brook.
In later years, several recorded transactions refer to the brook as the "Annaquatucket." This was the In- dian name of the larger lower end of this stream emptying into the Bay at Hamilton. Rider also refers to the quite common Indian custom of giving dif- ferent names to different parts of the same river. Ap- parently the earlier settlers, for the most part, stayed close to the shore for safety and the convenience of transportation, and accepted the Indian name of the mouth of the stream, without investigating its source back in the wilderness, where its "root" name was quite different. We shall call it the "Shewatuck," at least in its upper reaches, and leave it to the Indian language experts to argue it out.
The chief of the "Showatucks," known to the Eng- lish as "Shawottuck," was a prominent figure of his day. Early white settlers from Massachusetts had taken up land farther south of the "Showatucks," on the "Pequot Path" which passed through the tribe's ter-
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LAFAYETTE
ritory to the vicinity of what is now Slocum and beyond. One of these settlers complained to the Mas- sachusetts authorities (Massachusetts was then laying claim to a large part of what is now the southern part of Rhode Island), that Shawottuck was a horse thief, having stolen some of the Englishman's mares. (Rider says that the horses were probably turned loose to feed and wandered away in the woods where the Indians found them running wild.) The Massachusetts Court fined the chief 20 pounds, apparently on the English- man's say-so, and sent an investigator to report on the case. Meantime, the horses had been returned to the English owner and Shawottuck informed the investi- gator that 20 pounds was a heap of wampum which he didn't happen to have by him just then, neither did he have the horses, for they had been returned. The crest- fallen investigator returned empty-handed to Mas- sachusetts, and in his report on the matter, stated that the Indians of that region were not only active and industrious, they were ingenious. He spoke of their skill in building but, curious as it now seems, made no mention of the "Queen's Fort," in the vicinity of which he must have been.
From various other sources it appears that the "Fort" had been made into a military defense and shelter. In it, or close to it, were stocks of Indian corn stored against the attack of enemies and a consequent siege. This indicates that corn was raised in that vicinity and therefore the land must have been at least partly cleared for cultivation. It was at Aspanansuck, or Ex- eter Hill, as we now know it, that Queen Wawaloam, widow of Miantinomi, dwelt at one time. A consider- able tribe must have been associated with her and the
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LAFAYETTE, RHODE ISLAND
raising of the staple food must have been carried on to a substantial degree, on the fertile plain thereabouts.
With the destruction of the most of the Narragan- sett tribe in the Great Swamp Fight, and the subse- quent capture of "Queen's Fort," 1675-1676, the territory in the regions we have been describing be- came subject to exploration and further settlement by the English who found a fertile soil and probably many clearings which the Indians had crudely devel- oped. Thus it was that the western part of North Kingstown became subject to the proprietorship of men who were familiar with the life and needs of this new land from their abode in earlier settled communi- ties. A Committee of the Colony, appointed for the sale of vacant lands in Narragansett, disposed of several tracts "West of Wickford," in 1709-1710. Here began the history of Lafayette in its more modern features.
2.
Houses and Families of the First 1
Settlers
THREE FAMILY NAMES became notable among the purchasers of these lands to the west-Brown, Huling, and Phillips. Yet to these must be added, for our purposes, the all-important names of Abigail Phe- nix and John Fones. While the deeds signed by the Colony Agents bear the date of 1709, the conveyances,
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FAMILIES OF THE FIRST SETTLERS
in some instances, add the phrase "where they now dwell" to the property description. This can only mean that some of the purchasers of 1709 were al- ready occupying the land bought.
An indication of the few settlers in the western part of the Town of North Kingstown, at this time, is found in the census figures of 1708, which credit the Town with 1200 people. But as South Kingstown had not then been set off as a separate Town, the established and growing settlements at Pettaquamscutt, Tower Hill, Point Judith, Boston Neck, etc. would decrease materially the figures for the modern North Kingstown area. Then, too, such of the whites as dwelt in today's North Kingstown area were mostly on lands that fringed the shores of the Bay, where traffic by water and over the Pequot Trail was handy and comparatively safe. Wickford Village was then just a stretch of land, marshes, and coves, with a few Indian huts or a lone shack of an Englishman. But immediately around Smith's Cocumcussoc and south to what is now Saunderstown, as well as north to Quidnesset and East Greenwich, white settlers had increased to substantial numbers in the 30 or 40 years immediately preceding.
The Quidnesset area, in particular, was a factor in the settlement of the Western Lands of the Town. One of the earliest emigrants from Quidnesset to this west- ern wilderness was Beriah Brown, whose house, now known as the "Beriah Manor," is just beyond the first Rotary west of Wickford Junction.
BERIAH BROWN was born in Rowley, Mass., in 1648. Apparently he dwelt at, or visited, Quidnesset, since he married the daughter of Alexander and Ab-
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LAFAYETTE, RHODE ISLAND
igail Phenix, of that settlement, in 1683. In 1709, he, with John Fones, Samuel Wait, Francis West, Jr., Thomas Baker and Aaron Jacques, bought from the Colony Agents, 792 acres of land lying along the northwest side of what is now the Ten Rod Road, extending south from the present first Rotary above Wickford Junction. Northerly and westerly this pur- chase extended to the Great Plain. Three of the orig- inal houses built on this purchase, the Beriah Manor, the West (one of the purchasers) or Josie Brown house, and the Fones (or John Phillips house), are still standing.
The Beriah Manor was probably built, in part at least, before 1709, since the deed of that year de- scribes the land conveyed as "where they (the pur- chasers) now dwell." Beriah was founder of the Brown family in these parts and his descendants played im- portant roles in the development and government of this section of the Town of North Kingstown, and of King's or Washington County. This rugged pioneer of the Brown family died in 1718 and was buried, during a raging snowstorm, in the old Brown graveyard on the top of the hill (where the snow had blown off), just back of the present Copper Kettle Inn. His grave is marked by a vaulted or "table" top.
ALEXANDER HULING was born in Newport, R. I., in 1665. As a young man he learned the trade of carpenter and, coming to North Kingstown, married a daughter of one of the famous Updike family of Cocumcussoc.
In 1709, he, with Thomas Havens, Charles Berry, Jeremiah Wilkey, Joseph Havens, John Hall, Joseph Austin, William Havens, William Spencer, Benjamin
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FAMILIES OF THE FIRST SETTLERS
Baker, Benjamin Nichols, William Hall and John North, made the so-called "Huling Purchase" of 1824 acres of land from the Colony Agents. This land was bounded on the east by the present Post Road from Devil's Foot to Collation Corners, then running north- erly or northwesterly along the Ten Rod Road through the whole length of the present village of Lafayette to the first Rotary above Wickford Junc- tion (a location known for many years as Huling's Corners), then along the Scrabbletown Road to the East Greenwich line and thence to Devil's Foot.
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