USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > Middletown > An historical sketch of Middletown, R.I. : from its organization, in 1743, to the Centennial year, 1876 > Part 2
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And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the justices of the peace, living within the aforesaid town of Middletown, shall remain and continue in their aforesaid offices until the next general election ; and that the first of said justices of the peace grant forth his warrant to call the inhabitants of said Middletown together on Tuesday next, being the 20th day of August instant, to elect and appoint said town officers as they shall have occasion for, and the law directs ; and to appoint the times and places of their town meetings ; and to choose and elect two deputies to represent them at the next General Assembly, and so on, as by the charter is directed.
And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that said town of Middletown shall send one grand and three petit jurors to the superior court of judicature, court of assize and general jail delivery ; and three grand and three petit jurors to every inferior court of common pleas and general sessions of the peace held within the county of Newport ; and that the town of Newport shall hereafter send to each of the aforesaid courts so many jurors less of what they are now compelled by law, as is ordered to be sent by the afore- said town of Middletown."
Under this Act the division between the towns was made August 24th, 1743. The first town meeting was held August 30th, and the organization was perfected by the election of two deputies to the General Assembly, a town clerk, town treasurer, town sergeant, six councilmen, three constables, one packer, one sealer of weights and measures, three rate- makers, two overseers of the poor, four surveyors of high- ways, three fence viewers, one vendue master, one pound keeper, three field drivers, three viewers of flax and hemp, two wood corders-thirty-eight officers of seventeen classes- and they also appointed a committee to erect a pound. The first meeting of the town council was held September 12th,
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at which licenses to sell liquors were granted to three men upon their giving bonds to keep order, and John Champlain was licensed "to retail strong liquors those days that the council sits at his house." Meetings of the council were established for the third Monday in each month, at 10 o'clock in the morning, but this hour was soon after changed to eleven, with a fine of six pence for delay or absence with- out good excuse. The council acted as a court of probate, board of health, overseers of the poor, and commissioners of licenses, and also decided who might become inhabitants of the town. Beyond these duties and the laying out and repairing of highways, there is little of interest in the coun- cil proceedings, which occupy seven volumes of records. Matters of general interest were always discussed in town meetings, the records of which are contained in three large volumes. There is an old volume of Proprietors records extending from 1702 to 1756, which describes the common lands, and records the disposition made of them. These commons were in several parcels-the town common of one hundred and one acres on the main road, fifty-eight on the west side, and forty-three on the east, including a six acre school lot-Lenthal's plain common of two hundred twenty- eight and a half acres, Clarke's common, being part of the bequest of Dr. John Clarke for charitable uses-Sachuest neck and beach and the adjoining rocky lands-land on the southwest neck, besides Goat and Coaster's Harbor islands. Most of these were divided by a committee of fourteen men appointed by the Proprietors January 12th, 1701-2, who on the 11th of February proposed :
1st-That two lots of six acres each be set off as school land.
2d-That six acres more be set off for school land on "the common near the pound.".
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3d-That one acre near the town be set off for a prison, and one acre for an almshouse and house of correction. The other propositions relate to the mode of division among the Proprietors-a shilling an acre, to cover expenses, to be paid by each person to whom land is awarded. A list of one hundred and eleven names of those entitled to whole shares of land appears in the records. On 12th March 1701-2 Sam- uel Cranston and Nathaniel Coddington were appointed to survey the undivided lands. June 17th, the Proprietors "agreed that the common adjoining William Barker and others there should be for the rocky land allowed to the eastward of the second ledge of rocks one half for the rocks, and the neighborhood should have liberty to dig and cart away of the stones of that common for their use if they have any occasion for them, and what rocks to the westward of the ledge the surveyors or committee to give allowance at their discretion." (1) The surveys; being completed in July, the work of division began. On the 31st, four acres were set apart on Goat Island upon which to build a fort. In De- cember the divided lands were confirmed to the grantees by vote of the Proprietors. The next year, in June, 1703, some lands on the southwest neck that had not yet been laid out, were surveyed and divided, and in August, 1704, the same was done with Goat and Coaster's Harbor islands. The Proprietors kept up their organization after these divisions, but very rarely met. On the 26th of February, 1744, by a formal vote they unanimously agreed "to relinquish up to the town of Middletown all their right and title in the lands lying on Sachuest beach, to be by the said town managed from time to time forever hereafter as an estate belonging to said town." The last record of the Proprietors is dated
1 This clause is quoted on p. 373, Vol. 2, of Town Meeting records in the Report of a Committee "to enquire into all the roads and commonages in said town," made April 20th, 1836,
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1756, April 21. John Barker was chosen clerk, and a com- mittee was appointed to transfer to him from the widow of the late clerk, Edward Easton, the Proprietor's records. Most of the lands had long since been divided, and the greater part of those which remained in common had been conveyed to the town of Middletown twelve years before. The asso- ciation of Proprietors became extinct.
In November, 1743, the first tax, of £200, for town cxpenses, was voted.
A committee was appointed to draft ordinances for the town government, and the clerk was ordered to provide a pair of stocks and whipping post. The elections for town officers were appointed to be held on the second Wednesday in May, and a list of eighty-four freemen was enrolled. In March following, it was voted to pay twenty pounds each to Col. Daniel Updike and James Honeyman. Jr., for their ser- vices done for this town." This service was rendered in pro- curing the act of incorporation. A committee to settle accounts with Newport was chosen. Acts were passed for impounding cattle and sheep, regulating surveyors of high- ways, and giving a bounty of eight pence for the destruction of crows, and three pence for black birds, from April 1st to June 10th. Four years later, this bounty was increased to eighteen pence for crows and eight for blackbirds, and in 1749 the act was repealed. Free inhabitants, or housekeep- ers, were to work the roads for three days in September. Action was taken on building a bridge over the creek at Easton's beach, and on repairing the school house.
Freemen were admitted, jurors drawn and deputies elected at the April and August meetings, and town officers were chosen in May. In August, 1744, a proposition to sue New- port for the town's rights in Goat and Coaster's Harbor
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islands was made, but a vigorous protest, signed by twenty freemen, on the ground that these places belonged to New- port in the division, put an end to the unjust claim. In May, 1745, the town formally accepted the grant of Sachu- est common made by the Proprietors the preceding Feb- ruary. The next year the beach was sold to Jonathan Easton for £237.18. There were at this time two school houses in the town. A teacher was engaged for one year, to occupy each house half the time, and to keep school five days in the week. His salary was to be paid by the rent of the school lands, and by a weekly charge for tuition, and in case these sources did not suffice, then by a draft on the town treasurer for the balance due.
A peculiarity of those days was the oath against bribery, which, by a law of the colony passed at the August session, 1746, was required to be taken by all freemen. The statute required an oath to be administered to every voter, and another to be taken by every officer, not to receive or offer bribes in any manner. A single vote cast for any officer under such circumstances, should invalidate his election, and in all trials under the Act, the evidence of the person offering the bribe might be taken against the accused. The law was to be read in town meeting at each semi-annual election for five years, and the name of any violator of it was to be struck from the roll of freemen.
Questions relating to the schools have been the subject of frequent controversy in the town, from its organization down to a recent date. At first the schools were in charge of a committee, but in May, 1747, "they were put in the hands of the town council, and in August their management was taken from the council, and a teacher was hired by the town meet- ing. The next year the business was properly intrusted
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again to a committee. This arrangement continued till August, 1754, when it was
"Voted, That the late method of managing the two schools in this town be altered, and that for the future they be man- aged as follows, viz :- that the town be divided into two squadrons, one house in each squadron, and that each squad- ron shall have the sole power of managing their own school house and lands by leasing out the same, and employing schoolmasters as it shall be most agreeable to them, and the dividing line between the squadrons shall be along the high- way from the south end of Moon's lane and so northward along the east highway to Portsmouth, by James Mitchell's shop."
The schools thus passed into the hands of their separate districts, or "squadrons" as they were termed, which system continued till the reorganization of the school system of the State in 1845.
Town meetings were held alternately in the east and west school-houses. They were called by the town sergeant noti- fying each freeman personally till 1752, when the plan of posting notices in public places was permanently adopted. Fifteen days' notice was required by this ordinance, and the notices usually stated the purpose of the meeting.
In May, 1746, the small pox appeared in the town, and the council, acting as a board of health, took vigorous measures to prevent its spreading. The lane leading to the infected spot was closed by a fence, a guard was stationed near by, with orders to kill all dogs and cattle at or near the place, and a very thorough course of purification was adopted in the house. There was no more trouble from this cause for twenty-eight years.
The opening of highways, as it is a subject of the greatest public importance, has always been a source of contention in Middletown. Not a road of any consequence has ever been projected, that has not been opposed, either by that
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narrow prejudice which fails to discern in a direct benefit to one portion of a community the real good of all, or else by a dogged obstinacy which sets up the will of the individual against the wishes or the prosperity of the whole. Anxious sessions of the Council have often resulted in referring these questions to the final decisions of town meetings, and years have elapsed before a necessary improvement has been effected, and then at greater cost and trouble in the end than would have sufficed to open half a dozen roads. Let one example of the truth of these remarks be followed in detail through the records, at the risk of being tedious. January 18th, 1747-8, a petition was presented to the Council to open a road from Easton's beach to Sachuest. February 15th this petition was rejected. The petitioners appealed to the Gen- eral Assembly, and in October the Council appointed a com- mittee to prepare an answer to the petition before the As- sembly. On the 20th March following, the report of this committee was referred, and on the 18th December it was rejected. On the 24th February, a memorial to the General Assembly in regard to this road was prepared. Three days later, the Assembly adopted a report of their committee that a driftway was sufficient and an open highway was not re- quired. This was a defeat of the petitioners for an open highway, but it virtually established the road. May 21, 1750, a new committee was appointed by the Council to again lay out the road. Five days later the report of that committee was accepted, and seven pounds damages were · awarded to Jonathan Easton, whose land the road crossed. Easton appealed from this award, and on 18th June a jury was warned to hear this appeal. On 4th August a warrant was issued to summon this jury. They met on the 13th and sustained the lay out. A suit was then brought by the town 4
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against Easton for expenses in re-laying out the road. Easton then petitioned the General Assembly, and on 19th Novem- ber the Council appointed a committee to answer Easton's petition before the Assembly. On the first of December this committee reported to the Council, and their answer was ordered to be sent to the General Assembly. January 21st the town treasurer was ordered to sue Easton for the expenses of the last lay out of the road. The contest before the Assembly did not result in a manner satisfactory to the town, and on May 20th, 1751, a further reply to Easton's petition to the Assembly was ordered to be made, and an attorney to be employed for the town. The case went against the town, and August 17, 1752, Easton having got judgment against the town council for his cost in petitioning the Assembly for relief about the driftway, the Council pe- titioned the General Assembly for stay of execution. Thus for more than five years the town was involved in useless litigation, harassed by the wilfulness of one obstinate land- owner, and finally by the direct interposition of the General Assembly received a road which the public interest demanded, but which vacillation on one side and perverseness on the other had so long held in abeyance.
But more serious subjects were soon to engage the atten- tion and employ the combative energies of the townsmen. In 1754 the alarm of war summoned the young men of America to arms. The attempt of the commissioners at Paris to define the boundaries of the French and English possessions in North America had failed. The advanced posts of the rival nations were pushed nearer to each other. Fort Duquesne was built by the French on the site of Pitts- burg. An expedition against that point, led by Lieutenant- Colonel George Washington, with a detachment of Virginia
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volunteers, surprised the advance guard of the French near the Great Meadows, on the night of the twenty-seventh of May, and begun a war more wide spread in its range and more momentous in its results than any conflict of modern times. The struggle for the possession of the Ohio Valley, then a remote and little known region in the American wilderness, was to involve the whole world in war, and at the end of nine years to result in driving the French entirely from the Western continent, in founding a great British empire in India, in establishing the Prussian monarchy in Europe, and in giving to England the supremacy of the seas, and to her American colonies the discipline and the stimulus necessary, a few years later, for successful revolt. Throughout the colonies recruiting was active. An expedition against Crown Point was planned, and in March, 1755, Rhode Island sent four hundred men, under Col. Christopher Harris, to join the army of Sir William Johnson, assembled in the Mohawk country for this purpose. Braddock's defeat on the 9th of July spread consternation through the colonies and called for renewed efforts to arrest the threatened triumph of the French. A special session of the Assembly was convened, and three additional companies of fifty men each, in excess of the Rhode Island quota, were equipped and sent to Albany. On the eighth of September, the day of General Lyman's victory at Lake George, Gov. Hopkins called another special session of the Assembly. Still more troops were required, and four additional companies were raised by this colony. Col Harris's regiment was increased to 750 men in eleven companies. It was a heavy strain upon the already exhausted people, but it was bravely met. Three men was the propor- tion allotted to Middletown in this last levy, and a bounty of £180 was voted to them in addition to that offered by the
·
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colony. To raise this sum a tax of £200 was assessed. James Phillips advanced £100, half the amount, and eighty pounds more were paid on the spot by other townsmen. The next year, upon a further levy of troops, £700 bounty was voted for the seven men required from this town, and this was increased in January, 1757, to £1634. The rapid deprecia- tion of the colonial paper issues may account for this increase of bounty. In April, 1758, twelve men were enlisted for the new campaign, in which the Rhode Island regiment was in- creased to one thousand men, and £500 bounty was paid to them. This was the last levy of troops in this town during the war, that appears upon the records.
For ten years nothing of note occurred in the affairs of the town. In the meantime the colony, while exhausting its resources in the prosecution of the war, was distracted by a bitter political contest at home. The struggle between the rival parties, headed respectively by Samuel Ward and Stephen Hopkins. had continued with alternating success for thirteen years. Into the conflict between town and country, hard money and paper, peace and war, there entered the sharper elements of personal enmity, till even the amenities of social life were sacrificed to the spirit of party. But sud- denly the shadow of a mightier struggle, the end whereof no human eye could foresee, was thrown across the path of the colonists. In the presence of this portentous gloom, the strife of party ceased. The two popular governors both withdrew, and a fusion of the rival parties was effected in the interest of peace at home, and for resistance to aggressions by the British ministry. At a town meeting, January 6th, 1768, a plan presented by the people of Newport to encour- age colonial industry, frugality, and domestic manufactures, was adopted. The following vote was passed, looking to the
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reconciliation of parties, which was effected a few weeks later. "Whereas this colony hath for several years past been unhappily divided by party and faction, the consequences of which were pernicious and tend to the entire destruction of this once happy, flourishing colony. It is therefore voted by this town meeting that our Representatives take the same into consideration, and use their utmost endeavors for a con- ciliation of parties before the next general election."
There were still some unsettled sources of disagreement in the town. Sachuest beach had been sold to Jonathan Easton in 1746, but the town claimed a common right to take seaweed, which was disputed by Easton. November 18th, 1771, the Council called a town meeting, held on the 21st, at which it was decided to defend Isaac Smith in a suit brought against him by Easton for taking seaweed.
In January, 1774, the people of Newport called the first meeting in the colony to oppose the introduction of tea by the East India Company, and requested the other towns to do the same. Middletown followed on the 9th of February, with the following resolutions, the most concise of any that were adopted :
"Mr. John Clarke, Moderator. The town came into the following resolves ;- 1. Resolved, That we will have noth- ing to do with the East India Company's irksome tea, nor any other subject to the like duty. 2. Resolved, That we will heartily unite with our American Brethren in supporting the inhabitants of this continent in all their just rights and privileges ; and we do disown any right in the Parliament of Great Britain to tax America. Voted and passed. Witness, John Barker, town clerk."
In November the small pox again appeared. The cases were sent to the alms house at Coaster's Harbor. The same
.
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precautions were adopted as during the previous epidemic. Two years prior to this it had been brought to Newport by a vessel, and the question of adopting the Turkish preventive of inoculation had agitated the community. The Rep- resentatives from this town had been instructed to oppose in the General Assembly its introduction into the colony ; while in Newport town meetings were held on four successive days, and in only one did the advocates of inoculation obtain a majority of seven votes, while in the other three meetings its opponents had prevailed by a yet closer vote. For thir- teen years the disease appeared at different times. In 1785 it was toted, 33 to 15, "that inoculation be not practiced in this town," and it was not till 1787 that the opposition in Middletown finally yielded, and the Council ordered that a family in which the disease had appeared should be inocula- ted.
On the 4th January, 1775, it was "Voted, that John Barker, Wm. Stoddard, Esqr., Capt. James Potter, Mr. Isaac Smith, Capt. Wm. Taggart, Mr. Nicholas Easton, and Mr. Joshua Barker be a committee of correspondence for this town, agreeable to the eleventh article of the Continental Congress." On 29th August, ten more were chosen as a "Committee of Inspection." The next year was one of alarm, and of active military preparation. The town me- morialized the Assembly in February in regard to its exposed position. In April it received two field pieces from the State, and organized an artillery company, with John Bull as captain and Elisha Allen, lieutenant. In June, forty bushels of salt at six shillings, and one thousand pounds of wool, at two shillings, were bought for the town. In Sep- tember a bounty of forty-two shillings was voted to privates who furnished their own blankets, and forty-eight shillings
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to those who furnished all their equipments. The names of ten enlisted men appear on the records September 21st. These were recruits for Col. Richmond's regiment, then at New- port. On 23d November the clerk was instructed to remove the records in case of danger. The peril was now imminent. On December 2d a bounty of forty-two shillings was voted to men enlisted for three months in Col. Sayles' regiment. This was the last town meeting for thirty-seven months, for on that day a British fleet of eleven ships, under Sir Peter Parker, appeared off Block Island, and on the 8th, 6000 British troops landed at Greensdale, in this town, and after a night of pillage, marched into Newport. The enemy held the island till October 25th, 1779, notwithstanding two attempts to dislodge them ; an abortive effort in October, 1777, under Gen. Spencer, and Sullivan's expedition, result- ing in the brilliant but fruitless victory of 29th August, 1778, which received the high enconium of Lafayette, that "it was the best fought action of the war." This town was the scene of many gallant deeds during that period to which we can barely refer. The daring capture of Prescott by Col. Wm. Barton on the night of July 9th, 1777, occurred just north of the town line in Portsmouth. The less known, but scarcely less courageous conduct of Isaac Barker of Middle- town, is worthy of commemoration. Pretending to be a tory, he remained on his farm upon the east side of the island, in plain sight of the Seaconnet shore. A British colonel was quartered at his house, from whom Barker often learned the designs of the enemy. A system of signals was arranged between him and Lieut. Chapin of Sherburne's reg- iment, stationed on the opposite shore, by means of bars and a stake in a stone wall, which could be seen from Seaconnet with a spy glass. The farm was near North point towards
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the end of which is a ledge of rocks wherein was a crevice used by Barker as a post-office. In this crevice he would deposit a letter at night when anything of importance was to be communicated, and the next day would arrange the signal at the bars. Chapin would then come over in a boat by night and get the letter. This plan required great courage and address, but was successfully practiced by Barker for fourteen months, from August, 1778, till the British left the island, although at the constant risk of his life. Several times he narrowly escaped discovery. On the 15th August, 1778, Sullivan's army advanced within two miles of the hos- tile lines, which extended from Tonomy hill to Easton's pond. That night a detachment fortified Honeyman's hill, within half a mile of the first line of British works on Bliss's hill. For five days a continual cannonade was kept up along the whole line, and the enemy were driven from some of their outposts. The sudden departure of the French fleet alone prevented the capture of the whole British army at that time. On the 28th October the gallant exploit of Major Silas Talbot in capturing the Pigot galley, then blockading the east passage, added another to the revolutionary events of the town. .
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