USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > History of Newport County, Rhode Island. From the year 1638 to the year 1887, including the settlement of its towns, and their subsequent progress > Part 49
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But it is in miniatures that Newport is especially rich. For this was the home of Malbone. Among these a profile likeness of Mary Lyman, later Mrs. Benjamin Hazard; of Mrs. Amory at the age of eighteen; of Mr. Preble, a brother of the commo- dore; of Major John Handy of the continental army; of Rich- ard Kidder Randolph; of Charles De Wolf. Mr. George C. Mason, Sr., from whose Reminiscences of Newport the list is taken, and who gives the ownership of the portraits at the date of his publication (1884), considers the "finest Malbone " then in Newport to be a miniature of Ray Greene, attorney general of Rhode Island. Two beautiful miniatures, one of a daughter of Gen. Nathaniel Greene, and one of a Mrs. Turner, painted at the south when the artist was at the apogee of his talent, are now owned by a New York lady, and make part of the interest- ing collection she is forming in memory of her late father. They may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. There is also in Newport a locket miniature of John Bannister, by the same artist.
There is a miniature of Mrs. John Brown, a daughter of Angustus Lucas, who was born in 1697 and married to Captain Brown in 1717; one of Miss Montaudevert, later the wife of the famous Captain Lawrence, one of Washington bearing the in- itials A. R., and one of Colonel Lear, Washington's secretary; miniature likenesses of Lientenant Cox, later Purser Cox, and his wife; of Miss Verplanck, of Verplanck Point, New York,
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later the wife of Colonel de Vanx, of Charleston; a nameless miniature of a Qnaker lady, by Trott. There is still another fine miniature, by the same delicate hand, of Mrs. Samuel Powel, of Philadelphia. In the Powel family of Newport there is a store of miniatures, some of foreign artists. Mr. Mason names miniatures of Cornelius Low, of New York; of Colonel Richard Cary, an aid of Washington; of Eliza Hunter, a clasp miniature by Copley, and one of her sister Katharine, wife of the Comte de Cardigan (these were two of the three charming young girls whom Lauzun mentions in his memoirs); miniatures of Mr. and Mrs. Field, of Princeton, the lady a daughter of Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, signer of the declaration of independ. ence. These (by an unknown hand) were taken to England by John Paul Jones to be mounted, and were brought home in their peculiar setting. Mr. Mason mentions one of his grand- mother, Margaret Mason, whose maiden name was Champlin. Finally, in the writer's family, a miniature of Colonel Ebenezer Stevens, of the Second continental artillery, in uniform, painted during the revolution by a French officer; and a pair of minia- tres of the Misses Babcock, of New York, by Ingham. Be- sides miniatures there are numerous silhouettes and some of the characteristic works of St. Memin.
NEWSPAPERS .- The first newspaper published in New Eng- land was the Boston News Letter, 1704; the second was the Boston Gazette, 1709; the third, the Boston Courant, 1721. The fourth was established at Newport by James Franklin, elder brother of Benjamin, who had been one of the printers of the Boston Courant. It was a single sheet and bore the title of the Rhode Island Gazette. The first number bears date September 27th, 1732. It was discontinued in 1733. The Newport Mer- cury, the first issue of which was June 20th, 1758, was also es- tablished by James Franklin, the younger. Franklin dying in 1762, it was continued by his mother and her son-in-law, Sam- uel Hall. Mrs. Franklin died in 1763, after which Hall pub- lished the paper until Solomon Southwick became its proprietor in 1768. Southwick was a thorough whig and patriot. On the coming of the British he buried his press and went to Albany. In 1779, the British having evacuated the town, he returned and on January 5th, 1780, the Mercury again appeared as printed by Southwick and Barber, and its publication has never since been discontinued or intermitted. It is now owned and pub-
FIG
RESIDENCE OF J. J. VAN ALEN.
Newport
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lished by the Hon. John P. Sanborn, whose first number ap- peared November 16th, 1872. It has a wide circulation among the sons of Newport and appears weekly in a double sheet. Its politics are republican. During the British occupa- tion in 1777-79 the Newport Gazette was published by John Howe in Thames street, near the Parade. The Newport Herald made its appearance in 1787-88-90, printed by Peter Edes on Thames street; an intermittent publication, the object of which was to oppose paper money. The United States Chronicle ap- peared at Newport and Providence in 1791, the Rhode Island Museum in 1794, the Weekly Companion and Commercial Sen- tinel in 1798 and 1799. This closes Hanmett's list of publica- tions in the last century.
The Rhode Island Republican began September 25th, 1800, published by Oliver Farnsworth, near the Coffee House in Thames street, and continued till 1841.
There are to-day printed and published in Newport one daily newspaper, the Daily News, and three weeklys, the Mercury, Journal and Newport Enterprise.
The first almanac published in Newport was the Rhode Is- land or "Poor Robin almanac," printed in 1728, by James Franklin, by him continued till 1735 and printed by his son in 1741.
The first printed book was "Hammett's Vindication."-It came from the press of James Franklin in 1727.
NOTABLE EVENTS .- Execution of Pirates, 1723 .- The extent and boldness of pirates and freebooters during the early days of the eighteenth century has been related. The wholesale ex- ecution of twenty-six, taken in the very act, while the black flag was flying from the masthead of their sloops, brought to an end this atrocious practice. The capture of their vessels, the "Ranger" and "Fortune," in June, soon after their plunder and destruction of the ship " Amsterdam Merchant," and while attacking H. M. ship " Greyhound," off the east end of Long Island, under the misapprehension that she was a mer- chantman, was quickly followed by the trial at Newport of the pirate crews, thirty-six in number. Twenty-six were hanged on Gravelly point, opposite the town, on the 19th of July, 1723. Their bodies were taken to Goat island and buried between high and low water mark. One of these men only belonged to Rhode island.
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The last execution in Newport county was of a sailor, who had committed several burglaries. He was hanged on Easton's beach, in November, 1764.
The Great Storm, 1740 .- According to the diary of William Greene of Warwick, who sat in the assemblyduring this season, "the winter of 1740 was the coldest known in New England since the memory of man." At Warwick, where the assembly was sitting, there fell on the 28th, 29th and 30th of January full three feet of snow, in addition to what lay on the ground be- fore. The tops of the stone walls and fences were so crushed that cattle passed over them. "During the great snow storm the last of Jannary there was a great loss both of cattle and sheep ; some were smothered, and great numbers of sheep were driven into the sea by the wind." The snow in the woods was three feet deep on the 15th of March. "In the midst of the winter it was frozen from the mainland to Block island, and thence southward ont to sea."
The Hessian Storm, 1778 .- This, which is remembered as the great snow storm, though not of as long duration as that of 1740, was quite as severe. It commenced on the night of the 22d of December. The snow fell in great quantities and the cold was intense. The sentinels of the British army (then oc- cupying the town) of the outer lines were found after the storm frozen to death at their posts. The storm received the name of the " Hessian Storm " from the large number of the mercenary troops of that country who perished. The French fleet of d'Estaing, which had stood out to sea, was so much disabled by it that the officers unanimously signed a protest against enter- ing the harbor.
The Dark Day, 1780 .- The winter of 1779-80 had been re- markable for its atmospheric phenomena ; spots on the face of the sun, auroral displays of unusual brilliancy and duration, the severity of the weather, and the continuance of snow on the ground from November till April. The spring opened late and even May was dry and cold. Such were the conditions pre- cedent to the 19th of May, 1780. The day dawned as usual. Clouds soon gathered thick to the southward. The wind blew in gusts, with occasional thunder. Darkness began to creep over the earth. ^ By the middle of the forenoon the darkness was as of night. The day birds took to their roosts, the night birds came out from their cover; the occupations of life were
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impossible without candle light. There was a general dread of approaching calamity, and the superstitious thought that the last day had come and awaited the trumpet call. There had been analogons phenomena in America since the English settlement : in October, 1716: August 9th, 1732 ; October 19th, 1762 (all old style). Not dissimilar in cause was the recent Yellow Day, September 6th, 1881. The canses of all these phenomena were the gathering of the smoke of burning forests, blown by north- erly and westerly winds to the sea coast, and backed up against dense, impermeable sea fogs.
The Yellow Fever, 1799 .- A malignant disorder thus desig- nated was brought to Newport by the U. S. Frigate " General Greene," which arrived from the West India station on the 27th of July, 1799. The disease broke out on the voyage, and a large number went into hospital on arrival. The contagion spread, and in its course carried off many persons.
The September Gale, 1815 .- The 23d of September, 1815, is rendered memorable by a most awful and destructive storm. The gale commenced in the morning at the N. E., and continued increasing in violence, the wind varying from N. E. to S. E. and S. W., until 11 o'clock, when it began to abate, and by 1 o'clock the danger from wind and tide was over. The tide rose three feet higher than it had ever been known before. Two dwelling houses and nine stores and workshops on the long wharf were swept away by the violence of the wind and waves. In one of the houses five persons perished. Many of the wharves on the point were carried away. The steeples of the First and Second Congregational churches were partly blown down and the roofs of the Episcopal and First Congregational churches were partly carried away. The shipping in the har- bor were driven from their anchorage and went ashore. The damage to property was great.
The Asiatic Cholera, 1832-1849 .- This terrible scourge made its first appearance in the neighborhood of Calcutta. Crossing the eastern hemisphere it ravaged France and England and, unstayed by the Atlantic barrier, was wafted to the American continent. First striking Canada, the shortest sea line, it passed to Albany and New York, where it raged throughout the summer of 1832. At the June session the Rhode Island assembly recommended a public fast. Bnt prayer has no avail against the order of nature, which is the higher law; the only
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visible expression of a supreme power. In July the island was visited. Newport was favored, indeed almost exempt. In 1849, when the cholera reappeared, not a single death from the dis- ease occurred in Newport. In 1854, when it again appeared, the exemption of Newport was not so complete. A special hos- pital was early established by the city council, and the total number of deaths by the disease and by cholera infantum, which were ignorantly classed together in the reports, was fifty- nine, of whom forty were adults, this latter number being probably the true number of victims to cholera proper.
VISITS .- Washington entered Newport for the first time in the spring of 1781 for a conference with Rochambeau pre- vions to the summer campaign. The details of this interesting occasion appear in a previous chapter. His second and last visit was as president of the United States in Angust, 1790. An account of this visit, written by William Smith, member of the first congress of the United States, recently made public, gives some interesting details of this second and last visit of Washington. The object of his visit was to show his appreci- ation of the accession of Rhode Island, the only outstanding state, to the Union. Congress adjourned at New York on the 13th of Angust. The president and his party left the seat of government on Sunday, the 15th, on board a Rhode Island packet, and arrived at Newport, after a pleasant passage, on Tuesday morning. Salutes were fired as the vessel entered the harbor. The principal inhabitants were in waiting at Long Wharf. The president was escorted to the Brenton house, then the principal house of entertainment, and kept by Mrs. Almy. This historic building is still standing, graced by stately linden trees, on the easterly side of Thames street. Thence he was escorted to the state house where he held a public reception in the council chamber, and at five in the afternoon sat down to dinner in the representatives' chamber; the table being set with services of silver contributed for the occasion by the principal gentlemen of the town. The thirteen regular toasts were drank, Washington giving the "town of Newport," and Judge Mar- chant, immediately on his withdrawal, " the man we love." In the presidential party were Governor Clinton, of New York, Jefferson, then secretary of state, Judge Blair of the supreme court, and three gentlemen of the " president's family," Colonel Humphreys, Major Jackson and Mr. Nelson. The next morn-
Pastazard
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ELMHYRST RESIDENCE OFF R N
HAZARD.
HIOCANON
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ing, Wednesday, the 18th, the president and his wife embarked for Providence.
It was on this occasion that the Hebrew congregation in New- port, through Moses Seixas, warden, "the children of the stock of Abraham," as they styled themselves, delivered to the president an address of welcome, a noble and touching ac- knowledgment of their gratitude for the liberty the Union promised. The president replied at a length not less than their own and in full appreciation of the sentiments of the address.
Andrew Jackson, president of the United States, visited New- port on his northern tonr on the 19th of June, 1833. He was received on his arrival by the Newport artillery company.
General Grant, president of the United States, visited New- port and exchanged courtesies with the city authorities on Saturday, Angust 21st, 1869. He was received by Mayor At- kinson and a committee of the city council and conducted to the state house, where he formally welcomed the citizens, after which the president returned to the residence of Governor E. D. Morgan, where he held a brilliant reception in the afternoon, and in the evening attended a gay hop at the Ocean House. Other entertainments followed. The president quietly left the city on Wednesday, in a light carriage, driving to the railroad station and himself holding the reins.
THE GOLD FEVER, 1849 .- The excitement which spread over the entire country east of the Rocky mountains on the news of the discovery of gold in placers in California, ran high in New England and reached fever heat in Newport, whose people from earliest days were always keen for adventure. Toward the close of the year 1848 a company, promoted by Captain Charles Cozzens and others, was organized, and the whaling ship " And- ley Clarke " purchased and fitted out. A company of seventy- four persons, in which nearly every one of the old Newport families was represented, enrolled their names, and the good ship sailed for the " land of gokl" under the command of Cap- tain Ayrault Wanton Dennis, on the afternoon of February 15tl1, 1849. She doubled Cape Horn and dropped anchor with- in the Golden Gate on the Ist day of September, after a voyage of one hundred and ninety-eight days. The enterprising com pany found San Francisco in full activity, the passengers by the _Aspinwall steamers having long preceded them and taken the first cream of the extraordinary profits of this nnexampled
33
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movement. Nevertheless many of the company were fortunate, and the credit of Newport stood high on the Pacific coast. That their old home was not forgotten in the struggle for riches appeared in the interest shown by the colors sent by them to the First Rhode Island regiment in the war of the rebellion, and by their active co-operation in the reunions of the sons of Newport in 1859 and 1884.
RE-UNION OF THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF NEWPORT, 1852, 1884 .- In the autumn of 1858 a call appeared in the Newport Mer- cury inviting the "Exiles from Eden" to visit Newport in August of the next year. The attention of the city council was called to the subject by William H. Cranston, mayor of the city, in June, and the sum of one thousand dollars was voted to the ex- penses of the celebration, which had assumed form and name. A convention of the incorporated bodies in the city was called, to which delegates were sent: the Artillery Company, Colonel Turner; St. John's Lodge, No. 1, Gilbert Chase, Esq .; R. I. . Lodge, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, William B. Sher- man, Esq .; Newport Historical Society, Hon. Thomas R. Hun- ter; Redwood Library, George C. Mason, Esq .; Atlantic Di- vision, Sons of Temperance, S. T. Hopkins, Esq .; Board of Fire Wards, ex-mayor William J. Swinburne; Musical Institute, Ira N. Stanley, Esq .; Philharmonic Society, J. W. Wood, Esq .; Hook and Ladder Co., William H. Greene, Esq .; Engine Com- panies: No. 3, Captains Julius Sayer, No. 4, George S. Ward, No. 5, Lewis Lawton Simmons, Esq., No. 7, Henry B. Burdick, Esq. The convention elected Thomas Coggeshall secretary and treasurer, appointed committees of detail and placed the gener- al management under charge of the Hon. William J. Swinburne as chief marshal. On the 23d of August there was a large gath- ering in the tastefully decorated city, which was gayly illumin- ated on the eve of the celebration. The register of names opened at the mayor's office received over, eleven hundred signatures. The returning sons and daughters came in from every section of the country. An account of this interesting celebration, with an appendix giving the registered names, was prepared by Mr. George C. Mason and printed by the committee of arrange- ments. On this occasion the United States and the service was represented by John Magruder of Virginia and his staff. Bu- chanan was then president, and the southern officers of the reg- nlar army had all the choice posts. Magruder commanded at
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Fort Adams and it is but just to say, did his full share in the hospitalities of the city during the period of his command.
In the winter of 1883 the project was broached of a repetition of the celebration of 1859, on its twenty-fifth anniversary, but practical form was not assumed until the 6th of May, 1884, when Robert S. Franklin, mayor of the city, brought the sub- ject before the city council who, the same day, named a special committee to carry out the plan. A publie meeting was held at the opera house on the 16th of May, and an organization completed : Chairman, John Waters ; secretary, Frank G. Harris ; treasurer, Charles T. Hopkins, and chief marshal, Wil- liam J. Swinburne. Preparations were begun and formal meet- ings of the Sons of Newport were held at the four centers of Newport emigration-Providence, New York, New Bedford and Boston. The legislature passed an act authorizing the city council to expend the sum of three thousand dollars for the Fourth of July celebration, and it was directed to hold the re- union on this day. The summer residents of Newport came forward in a most generous manner. The Izard lot was selected for the erection of the mammoth tent, and Mr. George Washi- ington, the colored caterer, was charged with the entertainment of the concourse of people. The procession moved from Wash- ington square, starting from in front of the state house, the marshal leading, at eleven o'clock. Nearly four thousand per- sons were in line, while the streets were thronged along the ronte of march through Broadway, Marlborough, Thames, Franklin, Spring to Broadway again ; thence by Mann avenue, Kay street, Bellevue avenue to Bowery, Spring to the Izard lot. A history of the celebration was prepared and published by the secretary, Mr. Frank G. Harris, in 1885. One of the most val- uable of its chapters is a retrospective glance over the quarter of a century elapsed since the first re-union. The taxable property of the city had risen from $10, 484, 400 in 1859, to $27,- 543,600 in 1884. Whole sections, then only field land, had been converted into summer residences, and the part of thecity about Broadway and the contiguous streets filled with comfort- able homes for the permanent population. The manufacturing interest had died out, or rather been burned out by repeated fires, and the mills and factories had not been rebuilt, yet the amount of deposits in the savings banks had shown a constant increase; indicating a change but not a decline in the industries
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of the city. The war of the rebellion had come and gone and was already almost forgotten. The genial Colonel Magruder had seceded with his state, and a young U. S. officer, with an old Rhode Island name, Lieutenant Dyer, of Light Battery F, Fourth United States Artillery, the original company raised by Alexander Hamilton in New York in 1776, responded to the toast to the army. The union that Hamilton welded, the guns of his battery had protected and helped to preserve.
TRADE AND COMMERCE .- In the very beginnings of Pilgrim settlement there is record of one English skipper who had the daring to sail his sloop on trading trips, coasting from Boston around Cape Cod to the Connecticut river. Before the coming of Coddington to Aquidneck, before even the solitary landing of Roger Williams at Seekonk, John Oldham had put into the harbor of the Narragansett and been the guest of Canoniens at his home on Conanicut island. The Indian chief, either from friendship for the man or desiring to extend the trade of his tribe, had before 1636 given to the captain an island in the Nar- ragansett bay, Chibachuwesa (later Prudence) in the Indian tongue, famous for its store of fish, on condition that he should settle upon it and dwell near to him and his son. Oldham was murdered by the Pequots at Block Island in 1636. That the trade was active and more than one vessel engaged appears from the fact that still another captain, John Gallup, returning also from the Connecticut river, and seeing Oldham's vessel near the island and full of Indians, bore up for it, boarded and drove the savages into the sea, and found the mangled body of Old- ham. But there is no mention of any other white man trading at or near this time within the bay. Such is the meagerness of this class of information that we have not fallen on any mention of this coastwise trade between the eastern settlements of New England and Connecticut and New York until the time of Phil- ip's war. Captain Church, in his narrative, mentions his en- gagement of Mr. Anthony Low, who put into the harbor of Newport with a loaded vessel bound to the westward, to take him to Plymonth. This was about the close of June, 1676. In August of the same year the records of a court martial held in Newport show that Captain Anthony Low was then engaged by the court to transport seven Indians, found guilty of being eu- gaged in Philip's designs, out of the colony. The inference is natural that the vessel was engaged in a regular coasting trade.
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He is known to have gone as far as New York on these trips.
The first trading houses in the Narragansett country were ou the mainland, in the neighborhood of what is now known as Wickford. The pioneer in this enterprise, according to the testimony of Roger Williams (concerning the Narragansett country, 1679), was Richard Smith, a man of estate in Glocester- shire, England, who, selling his property in the mother country, came over to New England about 1637, and first settled at Tann- ton, in the colony of New England; but disagreeing with the authorities in religious matters came into Narragansett, and ob- taining the favor of the sachems "he broke the ice (at his great charges and hazards) and put up in the thickest of the barbari- ans the first house among them."
Shortly after, Roger Williams, and with him a Mr. Wilcox (whom we suppose to be either the Edward Wilcocks admitted inhabitant of Newport in 1638, or Daniel Wilcox appointed on the grand inquest of Newport in 1643), built a second trading house near to the first. Both were in operation in 1642-3, soon after which Williams sold his home and settlement to " Richard Smith, who lived there alone for many years, his honse being the resting place and rendezvous for all travellers passing that way, which was of great use and benefit to the country." In the beginning these men were only permitted to live upon the land by sufferance and favor, but abont 1649 the Narragansett princes together assembled, and many hundred Indians present granted by "livery and seizing a tract of several hundred acres about a mile in length and so down to the sea." Here in this first trading house Richard Smith and Captain Richard Smith, Jr., his son, lived together, industrious and thriving, for over forty years. In it the father died. This house, fortified and garrisoned, was the headquarters of General Josiah Winslow and the rendezvous of the troops of the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies on the famous expedition of 1675 in Philip's war. Here, from its abundant store of corn, provisions and cattle, Captain Church prepared for the coming of the main forces. The garrison is known in the histories as Major Smith's garrison, and the ferry, the principal in that neighborhood, as Smith's ferry (now Wickford). In the grant of land by Conia- quon, sachem (son of Miantonomi), of the northern tract to Governor Winthrop, Major Atherton and others, Richard Smith, Sr., and Richard Smith, Jr., are named as of Cocumco-
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