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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
THE OLD STONE BANK HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND
VOLUME III
PUBLISHED BY PROVIDENCE INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS
Go
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01067 5442
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
Gc 974.5 H130 v. 3 2233745
"THE OLD STONE BANK" HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND -
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PROVIDENCE INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS
ERECTED IN 1854 - ENLARGED AND REMODELED IN 1896.
THE FIRST BANK BUILDING OF THE PROVIDENCE INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS.
"THE OLD STONE BANK" HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND VOLUME III
By
JOHN WILLIAMS HALEY
" The Rhode Island Historian "
PUBLISHED BY PROVIDENCE INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS 86 SOUTH MAIN STREET PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND 1939
OLNEYVILLE BRANCH: 1917-21 WESTMINSTER STREET Olneyville Square
EMPIRE-ABORN BRANCH:
EMPIRE AND ABORN STREETS
Between
Westminster and Washington Streets
Allen County Public Library Ft. Wayne, ladiena
THE J. C. HALL COMPANY LITHOGRAPHERS, BINDERS, PRINTERS PROVIDENCE, R. I.
COPYRIGHT 1939 PROVIDENCE INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS
2233745
FOREWORD
T HIS volume contains selected stories adapted from the series of radio broadcasts presented, since 1927, by the Providence Institution for Savings, under the title of "The Rhode Island Historian of the Old Stone Bank." Inaugurated when radio communication was still in com- parative infancy, this original and unique means of enter- taining and instructing a vast number of people through- out southern New England is now considered to be the oldest sponsored broadcasting feature in the history of radio.
For a limited period this bank regularly published pamphlets containing printed copies of the weekly historical talks presented by "The Rhode Island Historian," but this practice was discontinued when the demands for these exceeded all expectations. Two large editions of bound volumes, containing copies of the talks given in the past, have also been widely distributed, and the popularity of these valuable compilations has been most gratifying.
Volume III of "The Old Stone Bank History of Rhode Island" includes a few of the chapters published in Volumes I and II, for the purpose of providing its readers with a fairly broad picture of important people and events in local annals. By no means suggesting a complete history of Rhode Island, the following accounts, arranged chronologically as nearly as possible, are offered with the hope that they may accomplish their purpose - the telling of the true story of Rhode Island and its people in an entertaining manner.
INDEX
PAGE
THE LAND AND WATERS
1
THE FIRST PEOPLE .
.
3
THE CHARACTER OF THE INDIANS
5
NATIVE MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND HABITS
8
RHODE ISLAND AND THE VIKINGS
11
EARLY EXPLORATIONS
13
THE FIRST SETTLER
. 16
ROGER WILLIAMS
18
EARLY DAYS OF THE PROVIDENCE SETTLEMENT
21
THE PROVIDENCE PURCHASE
23
WAR WITH THE PEQUOTS .
25
PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS
28 30
ANNE HUTCHINSON
MARY DYER
33
PORTSMOUTH AND NEWPORT
36
SAMUEL GORTON .
38
THE FOUNDING OF WARWICK
40
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE COLONY
43 45
THE COLONY ORGANIZES .
48
ROGER WILLIAMS' TRADING POST
50
DR. JOHN CLARKE
53
KING CHARLES' CHARTER .
56
AN INTERPRETATION OF THE CHARTER
58
MASSASOIT .
61
THE SON OF MASSASOIT
64
KING PHILIP'S WAR .
66
"THE LAST OF THE NARRAGANSETTS "
69
QUAKERS IN RHODE ISLAND
72
GOVERNOR ANDROS
74
·
·
"THE BLOUDY TENENT" AND TROUBLE AT HOME
PAGE
GOVERNOR SAMUEL CRANSTON . THE FOUNDER OF PAWTUCKET .
76
79
THE NARRAGANSETT COUNTRY .
81
SEA TRADE IN THE BEGINNING
83
PRIVATEERS AND PIRATES
85
THE BISHOP OF CLOYNE
EARLY RHODE ISLAND LIBRARIES
FERDINAND DE CELESTRO .
THE FIRST HORSES .
95
THE WINTER OF 1740
CROWN POINT .
THE VICIOUS TRIANGLE
THE CHARTER OF BROWN
105
THE OLD SYNAGOGUE IN NEWPORT .
108
CAUSES OF THE WAR
110
THE FIRST BLOW FOR LIBERTY
113
THE "GASPEE" AFFAIR
NEWS FROM LEXINGTON
THE CALL TO ARMS .
STEPHEN HOPKINS .
122
THE NAVY'S FIRST COMMANDER
. 125
RHODE ISLAND'S JUST CLAIM
127
GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE
. 130
THE BATTLE OF RHODE ISLAND
. 132
GEN. SULLIVAN AND WAR PROPAGANDA
135
AMERICA WELCOMES THE FRENCH
137
CHRISTMAS IN 1780
140
STEPHEN OLNEY
142
COLONEL WILLIAM BARTON
145
JOHN HOWLAND
148
RHODE ISLAND AND THE CONSTITUTION
150
GEORGE WASHINGTON AND RHODE ISLAND
153
THE WAD OF CONTINENTAL MONEY
162
THE TURNPIKE ERA .
165
Two FAMOUS VOYAGES
. 167
. 88 90 93
98 100 103
115 117 119
PAGE
BISCUIT CITY
. 170
COTTON AND RHODE ISLAND
172
THE SLAVE SHIP "COMMERCE"
175
A MAN OF ACTION
177
GREAT GALES .
179
THOMAS POYNTON IVES
. 182
ZACHARIAH ALLEN
184 .
HORACE MANN .
186
THE CHEPACHET ELEPHANT
. 189
DR. JOHN WILKES RICHMOND
191
THE BLACKSTONE CANAL .
. 194
SAM PATCH
. 196
THOMAS WILSON DORR
.
198
THE BATTLE OF CHEPACHET
201 .
THE VOYAGE OF THE BARK "EMIGRANT"
. 203
JOB DURFEE
206
FIGHTING FIRES
. 208
COMMODORE PERRY
.
211
THE WINNING OF JAPAN
. 214
BARNUM AND AVERY .
217 220
THE BIG SHOW
IDA LEWIS .
. 222
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN PROVIDENCE
. 224
THE CIVIL WAR
. 227
WILLIAM SPRAGUE
. 229
JOHN HAY .
232
THE WRECK AT RICHMOND SWITCH .
. 234
GRANT TAKES BRISTOL
.
. 236
PRESIDENT HAYES COMES TO PROVIDENCE
. 239
1819-1939
Extract from the report of Wilson G. Wing, President of the Providence Institu- tion for Savings, at the one hundred twentieth Annual Meeting of the Corporation, October 2, 1939
To the Members of the Corporation.
1819
Anniversaries logically give rise to retrospection, and on this one hundred twentieth birthday a brief review of the history of this Institution may furnish some foundation for a perspective in our present troubled times and anxieties for the future.
The War of 1812, against which the Rhode Island legislature passed a resolution, proved economically profitable to the state, as apprehension as to losses by reason of the disruption of commerce was subsequently dispelled by the profits accruing from a program of successful privateering. The capital acquired served as a stimulus for substantial industrial activity in this community of some 10,000 souls, but progress was seriously interrupted by the disastrous gale of 1815 which inflicted a most damaging blow to industries and people.
It may have been somewhat due to the loss of the savings of industrious citizens who had at that time no safe place for their accumulations of moneys that this Insti- tution was established.
Fourteen years prior the country had started on the first of its substantial territorial accretions by the so-called Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 for Fifteen Million Dollars, although the northern boundary west from Lake of the Woods was not deter- mined until 1818. In the year of our foundation Florida also had been purchased from Spain for Five Million Dollars.
The bank's first day's operations resulted in a total deposit of $1014 represented by twenty-seven accounts, one of which has remained open until this time.
1839
At this time the nation found itself experiencing one of the ever recurring depres- sions resulting from over expansion and industrial development. Travel and trans- portation by steamboat had become increasingly popular, and the year 1835 marked the beginning of the railway age, an era destined to play a vital part in the development of the nation over the following one hundred years.
James Monroe had inculcated his Monroe Doctrine and Andrew Jackson had destroyed the United States Bank. Providence, a city of 23,000, had been incorporated for seven years. Trains were running between this city and Boston on the east and to Stonington connecting with steamboats from that port to New York on the west.
Our twentieth birthday also witnessed an internal problem which threatened to disrupt the state. For nearly half a century the question of a constitution to supplant that of the charter granted by Charles the Second in 1663 had provoked bitter local controversy. The advocates of a new constitution were chiefly concerned over the extension of suffrage rights, and the controversy led to the disastrous Dorr War during which on June 25, 1842, this Institution experienced a panic : "In consequence of an
intended attack on this city by an armed body of insurgents, a panic was produced among the depositors, and a large amount of deposits was withdrawn, to an extent exceeding the cash funds on hand, and as it became necessary to provide means not only for the amount overdrawn but to meet such further demands as may be made, the Treasurer was authorized to hire of the Providence Bank the sum of Twenty Thousand Dollars."
Dorr was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, but released precisely one year later. His brother, Sullivan Dorr, was a First Vice-President of this Institution from 1830 to 1835.
Texas, having attained its independence from Mexico in 1836, was on its way to joining the Union, finally accomplished in 1845 but not until after a settlement of some Ten Million Dollars had been granted to the young empire in the adjustment of a territorial dispute on its western border.
Presumably in consequence of the disruption of the United States Bank, this Institu- tion became actively interested in the stocks of local banks. Although the records are somewhat shadowy, probably our first bank stock investment was in the Farmers & Mechanics Bank, predecessor of the Phenix organized in 1835, for during the year 1834 the Treasurer was authorized to pay for sixteen additional shares. On practically the same day one thousand shares of Blackstone Canal were purchased, and during 1838 an interest was acquired in the Providence Bank. The retention of and addition to these investments for a period of over one hundred years is evidence as to the enduring stability of our local institutions. Dividends to depositors were consistently maintained at 5%.
1859
On almost precisely the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the bank, John Brown seized the government arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and events swiftly progressed to the catastrophe of the Civil War. Both Abraham Lincoln and Senator Douglas, competing for the presidency, addressed Rhode Islanders at Rocky Point, and when the election returns were counted it was found that the state had gone for Lincoln by twelve to seven thousand.
Providence with its population of 50,000 began sending volunteers to the northern armies in 1861, and during the war period the state sent over 24,000 men at an estimated cost of Six and One-half Million Dollars.
Ten thousand three hundred thirty-eight depositors owned $2,085,000, having received dividends varying in rates, while the Institution had moved to new quarters especially built in Grecian style in 1854.
During the previous two decades Texas had joined the Union; Oregon by treaty with Great Britain was added in 1846; and in 1848 California, afterwards embracing the states as we now know them of Nevada, Utah, Arizona and a part of Oregon, was appropriated from Mexico with an indemnity to the latter of Fifteen Million Dollars, plus in 1853 a strip known as the Gadsden Purchase embracing Arizona and New Mexico for Ten Million Dollars in addition.
1879
This birthday saw national prosperity progressing by leaps and bounds after the trials of the post war period. The nation was emerging from the pioneer stage, and besides absorbing a steady tide of migration from Europe which helped to develop undigested territory to the west, was lending energy to industrial development and
providing, conversely, markets for the products of mines and manufactories with its concomitant benefits to railroading.
New England capital was playing a very important part in this western develop- ment, supplementing the tide of moneys accruing from European sources. Alaska had been purchased from Russia two years previous for $7,200,000. Providence had grown to more than 100,000 people. Roger Williams Park was in process of develop- ment and people were beginning to look to the skies, with balloon ascensions increasing in popularity. Almost 21,000 depositors owned over $8,800,000 on the bank's sixtieth birthday. The variation in dividend rates during this period evidenced the troubled post war readjustments, - dividends varied from 6% and 7%, and even 8% in 1865, to 4%.
1899
Our eightieth birthday witnessed the end of the Spanish War with the treaty of peace signed in 1899. A regiment from the state had been mustered but did not see active service.
Work was begun on the state capitol and the general assembly held its first session two years later. The city had grown to slightly over 175,000 and this Institution had kept pace with 34,728 depositors having accumulated almost Fifteen Million Dollars. Dividends had been maintained at 4%.
The most popular investments of the time were in transportation companies, both electric urban and suburban and railroad corporations. Marconi had made claims for transoceanic wireless telephone communications, electric cars had supplanted horse cars in a large measure, plans were announced for a modern central fire station on Exchange Place, and President Faunce became the head of Brown University.
Two territorial additions had taken effect in the form of the Hawaiian Islands in 1898 and acquirement of the Philippines from Spain in 1899. It is interesting to note that during a great deal of agitation at the time, Chamberlain, the elder, made many speeches looking to an alliance between Great Britain, Germany and the United States, observing that England had no longer a community of interests with Russia or France.
1919
Once more our birthday was in a year of peace conferences, that of the fateful truce at Versailles, shortly followed by the Communist Internationale in Russia. Wartime prohibition became effective June 30th, to be succeeded by federal prohibition in the following year through an act, however, never ratified by our individualistic state. Women in Rhode Island began registering as voters.
Two significant changes in the policy of this Institution had taken place. A maximum deposit of $1000 prevailing since the establishment of the bank was raised in 1901 to $1500 and subsequently in 1917 to $2500. Fifty-three thousand four hundred and thirty-two depositors owned $33,405,000, and Providence had grown to just under 238,000. Returns to depositors were at 32% and 4%.
While each twenty year period has shown industrial expansion and progress in invention, this period saw, besides the terrific social and political upheaval of the Great War, the beginnings of two developments destined to change the whole complexion of our ways of living. During these years the airplane and automobile were brought to a state of practical operation leading to the tremendous expansion realized in the last twenty years.
Purchase of the Virgin Islands from Denmark for Twenty-five Million Dollars was consummated in 1917, and this country turned from the debtor condition prevailing since its foundation into that of a creditor nation.
1939
So we have arrived at our one hundred twentieth anniversary with our two new branches and a modernized main office, with fresh recollections of the terrific hurricane of just over a year ago, and after an epoch which has experienced the greatest expansion and depression in our history, surviving a veritable turmoil of affairs, economic, financial, political and social.
In this period the electric railways industry reached its peak in 1922, while 1930 apparently marked the climax of the railroad era. Rallying from the depths of 1932 and 1933, it seemed only two months ago that we were apparently again knocking at the threshold of a new uplift, with the blessings of new industries having their inception in earlier years being brought to further refinement and development.
Until about the turn of the century savings banks had been recognized as most essential components of our banking structure, furnishing the only facilities for the modest accumulations of liquid capital available to individuals of modest means. Commercial banks saw little profit and considerable annoyance attendant on multi- tudinous transactions in small amounts. They avoided the investment of time money in forms that rendered quick realization impracticable, and by their policies established a severe distinction between deposits of demand and time.
However, this line of demarkation was not to be continued. Many small banks, particularly in rural communities, found deposit volume, regardless of type, essential to their successful operation. Larger institutions grew to tremendous proportions by acquisitions and consolidations, and time money became a constantly mounting pro- portion of deposit liability. The eleemosynary nature of the mutual savings bank did not appeal to the leading citizens in the rapidly developing new communities to the westward, and the development of savings banks without profit motive, largely confined to states along the North Atlantic Seaboard, practically ceased. Indeed, much discussion as to the imminent decease of these old-fashioned institutions took place in the roaring 1920's, but their record, with over 25% of the prevailing deposit liability nationwide during 1932 and 1933, furnished conviction as to their enduring qualities.
Today it might appear that supplements to the integrity of time moneys in the shape of deposit insurance, social programs in the form of old age pensions and unem- ployment insurance, and attractive opportunities for investment in U. S. Baby Bonds presented in an intensive campaign subsidized by the government might threaten the conservative progress of mutual savings banks. However, in view of the all-time high records in both deposits and liabilities, these developments apparently supplement their objectives.
The contribution to the citizens of this community of the Old Stone Bank (so-called since the erection of its first building in 1854) has been inconspicuous but substantial. Over 300,000 individuals have opened and closed their accounts, benefited, without interruption, by dividend accretions at rates dictated by current conditions through the years.
In these days of billions the Seventy Million Dollars paid to our depositors seems inconsequential. However, dollars and values must be viewed as relative in the period
that has been reviewed. This sum is larger by Eight Million Dollars than all the moneys paid for the acquisition of territory by this nation up to the purchase of the Virgin Islands in 1917. Today it is equivalent to the cost of a modern fully equipped battleship and two submarines.
It seems in the distant past, but is actually but a short time, when we were confi- dently looking forward to a changed and better world in which to live, benefited by automobile, airplane, radio and improved methods in industry resulting from research, only to find ourselves in a world of conflict, disaster, and fearful of unforeseeable contingencies, with the bitter reflection that the existing state of affairs appears the consequence of intolerance and errors of judgment and discretion committed in the last twenty years.
It is inappropriate, however, to indulge in gloomy prophecies on birthdays, and far more satisfying to resolve that means shall be found to utilize our material advantages, our strength and higher ideals for the betterment of all people everywhere.
This brief sketch of our past history, with its recital of growth and development and its survival of wars, excursions, alarms and storms, lends confident conviction in the ability of this Institution to carry on for the best interests of its 78,491 depositors with $66,969,473.39 through the encouragement and assistance of its friends interested in the continued progress of a project established so many years ago for the mutual benefit of its depositors and community.
THE LAND AND WATERS
T WHAT long period from creation to the time when the area today known as Rhode Island became habitable for man and beast may forever remain a dim mys- tery ; in fact, little is known of life here a century or so before the coming of the white man, but enough remains for us to conceive an account, rather an observation that, for the present, must constitute the first chapter in, or prologue to, Rhode Island history. And that chapter or pro- logue will treat of the physical features of the area in which we live, unchanged but little since the time, three hundred years ago, when man with his pen first put down the recordings of what tran- spired in this little patch of American soil, its greatest length but forty-eight miles ; its greatest width but thirty-seven. But, land and waters have a close relationship to history. Land and waters have much to do with determining the destinies of its inhabitants.
Rhode Island and the adjacent area that constitutes the Narragansett basin, or that land drained directly or indirectly by Narragansett Bay, was at one time shaped into its present general physical appearance by a great glacier, or ice river, that flowed slowly but steadily down from the north, eventually emptying itself into the sea. This great glacier, impos- sible to conceive in magnitude and irre- sistible power, may have moved very slowly across the nearly level floor of Southern Massachusetts until it ap- proached the vicinity of present Woon- socket. From there to what is now Provi- dence, a distance of only a few miles, the drop of approximately sixty feet per mile
gave this ice filled, semi-fluid stream con- siderable velocity and momentum as it gouged its way down the Blackstone and old Moshassuck River beds. From the deductions of geologists we can picture this enormous ice plough fashioning the bed of the Providence River, cutting the channels that created the islands in Narragansett Bay, perhaps shearing off mountains to hills, smoothing rough ridges and crags; grinding rocks to sands and clay; picking up giant boulders and transporting them to distant points ; wiping fertile soil from hillsides and spreading it in the lowlands ; chopping out rugged headlands ; smoothing out curving beaches; cutting, dredging, ripping and pushing. That which was here before the glacial recession became completely transformed into what is here today, in the form of land and waters, allowing for the comparatively slight changes wrought by erosion, by a few centuries of soil and subsoil geological transformations, and by the hand of man in his constant strug- gle to make his home more habitable and his industry, trade or profession more profitable.
This Narragansett glacier was probably confined to the Blackstone River bed by the high elevations of land in Woonsocket and Cumberland. It is quite possible that the Sakonnet River and Mount Hope Bay were fashioned by another glacial stream or by a tributary of the main ice flow. If this generally accepted theory is true, it is logical to conceive that there was a joining of flows at the north- ern end of Aquidneck near Bristol Ferry, with one branch continuing down to the
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PROVIDENCE INSTITUTION FOR SAVINGS
sea through the Sakonnet channel, and another dredging its way along the west- ern side of the great island at the lower end of the Bay.
And again it is quite conceivable that the land area of Rhode Island as well as that of Southern Massachusetts and Con- necticut at one time extended many miles south of the present ocean bounds. Some scientists have gone so far as to say that the land at Boston was at least forty miles from the sea at the end of the last glacial period. The same might have been true of Rhode Island and surrounding country. Those who are familiar with the coastline in this vicinity can readily visualize how a great plunging mass of hard-packed ice might have plunged itself into the sea pushing up from below the surface of the water the present land formations which we call Long Island, Fishers Island, Nan- tucket, Martha's Vineyard and Block Island.
At any rate, the Rhode Island area attained its outward appearance many, many centuries ago, and as the time approached when a new race of men was destined to live and hunt in its forests; to settle upon and cultivate its shores ; to fish and sail upon its waters, Nature, in all her goodness, had bestowed upon it the advantages and resources necessary in an abode for active, hardy and vigorous men. In the hills, valleys, streams and waterfalls were the exhaustless forces that would create and sustain manu- factures of many varieties ; in the climate and soils the rewarding fruits of intelli- gent tillage; in the open-harbor tidal waters, uniting in one great artery to the ocean, the streams of agricultural and manufacturing industries, the opportuni- ties and wealth of commercial enterprises. The first man to dwell in this spot found virgin forests on all sides awaiting the cutting into rude planks and timbers for the building of pioneer homes at some far distant date. These same forests were overrun with deer, and many species of small animals, their flesh offering sus- tenance, their hides, warmth and bodily protection. The streams, bays, harbors,
ponds and lakes were stocked with fish, and the mud flats were as yet undis- turbed, hoarding unlimited stores of shellfish down through the ages. Game birds flew this way not yet knowing the deadly sting of a whizzing arrow or the stunning power of a hunter's volley.
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