USA > Rhode Island > Picturesque Rhode Island : pen and pencil sketches of the scenery and history its cities, towns, and hamlets, and of men who have made them famous > Part 7
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PICTURESQUE RHODE ISLAND.
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The genius of Irving has summed up the character and life of the dead king in this eloquent paragraph : "Such is the scanty story of the brave, but unfortunate King Philip ; persecuted when living, slandered and dishonored when dead. If, however, we con- sider even the prejudiced anecdotes furnished us by his enemies, we may perceive in them traces of amiable and lofty character sufficient to awaken sympathy for his fate, and respect for his memory. Wc find that, amidst all the harassing cares and ferocious passions of constant warfare, he was alive to the softer feelings of connubial love and paternal tenderness, and to the generous sentiment of friendship. The captivity of his 'beloved wife and only son' are mentioned with exultation, as causing him poignant misery ; the death of any near friend is triumphantly recorded as a new blow on his sensibilities ; but the treachery and desertion of many of his fol- lowers, in whose affections he had confided, is said to have desolated his heart, and to have bereaved him of all further comfort. He was a patriot attached to his native soil- a prince true to his subjects, and indignant of their wrong,- a soldier, daring in battle, firm in
Residence of Mrs R. D. Smith.
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BRISTOL.
adversity, patient of fatigue, of hunger, of every variety of bodily suffering, and ready to perish in the cause he had espoused. Proud of heart, and with an untamable love of natural liberty, he preferred to enjoy it among the beasts of the forest, or in the dismal and famished recesses of swamps and morasses, rather than bow his haughty spirit to submis- sión, and live dependent and despised in the ease and luxury of the settle- ments. With heroic qual- ities and bold achieve- ments that would have graced a civilized war- rior, and have rendered him the theme of the poet and the historian, he lived a wanderer and a fugitive REID in his native land, and The Rogers Free Library. went down, like a lonely bark foundering amid darkness and tempest, without a pitying eye to weep his fall or a friendly hand to record his struggle."
The echoes of the death-cry of the last sachem of the Wampa noags had only just died away when a dispute concerning the suc- cession to his lands arose between the neighboring colonies of Ply- mouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Rhode Island. Another claimant also appeared in the person of John Crowne, an English poet, who was at the time a prominent figure at the court of King Charles II. The committee to whom the whole subject was referred by the Privy Council, decided in favor of the Plymouth Colony. To that colony, therefore, by special grant from the king, the lands were conveyed, a quit rent of seven beaver-skins per annum being reserved to the Crown.
On the fourteenth day of September, 1680, the Mount Hope Lands were sold by the General Court of Plymouth to four mer- chants of Boston : Nathaniel Byfield, John Walley, Nathaniel Oliver, and Stephen Burton. In that same year the settlement of Bristol was begun. Its four "First Proprietors" were men of unusual prom- inence in the colony of Massachusetts ; the advanced ideas which
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they held concerning its future were made manifest in the plans they adopted for its welfare and development. Not a town in New England had before been laid out upon such a liberal scale; not a town had been founded in which such liberal provisions were made for the support of religion and for the main- tenance of public schools. The name Bristol was prob- ably taken because of the prominence which Bristol, England, then held. The English city was the most important sea-port in Great Britain. Its people hoped that the American Bristol might become the great sea-port of New England.
It was intended by its proprietors that the new town should be "a town for trade and commerce," and prominent in trade and commerce it immediately became. Its principal The Town Hall. commercial relations were with the West Indies and the Spanish Main. For almost a century and a half the streets of Havana and the other prominent West Indian cities were more familiar to the feet of its enterprising 'sailors than even the streets of the great cities of their native land.
In January, 1746-7, the Mount Hope peninsula became a part of Rhode Island, and Bristol was at once accorded an honored place among the towns of the little colony. Puritan ideas had governed its early legislation, but its nearness to the territory Roger Williams once governed had worn away almost every trace of Puritan preju- dices. In one respect Bristol was far in advance of any other town in Rhode Island. The Rhode Island towns, for the most part, had almost entirely neglected to make provision for the support of good public schools. The records of the first Bristol town-meetings per- petuate the votes that were passed concerning the " maintaining of an able school master."
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BRISTOL.
In the events which preceded the Revolution, Bristol gave forth no uncertain sound as to the course it intended to pursue. It sent out a boat's crew to assist in the de- struction of the British armed schooner " Gaspee." Its con- tributions flowed freely to the relief of the distressed citizens of Boston. When the British held possession of the bay, all these things were remembered against it. On the 7th of Oc- tober, 1775, three English ships of war and several smaller ves- sels cast anchor before the town. Their commander de- manded that some representa- - tive man of the place should visit his ship to learn the pro- The Congregational Church. posals he had to make. Answer was made that the people of the town would consider his demands the next morning, whereupon, almost immediately, the British vessels began to bombard the place. For an hour and a half, until one of the citizens went on board the flag-ship, a very heavy fire was kept up. Very many buildings were struck, but, strange to say, no one was hurt by the flying balls. One man only, the Rev. John Burt, was found dead in a corn-field the next morning. For a long time he had been sick and feeble, and the horrors of the night were too much for his weakened spirit to endure. The next day the requisitions of the British comman- der were partially complied with, and the fleet sailed back to New- port.
Three years later came a heavier calamity. A band of 500 British and Hessian troops descended upon Bristol, and burned almost all the houses upon the principal street. Even the Episcopal Church, which had always been under the charge of the English " Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts," was burned, the English soldiers believing it to be a "Dissenters' Meeting-house." when they set it on fire. Very many of the town's people were car- ried to Newport as prisoners.
In the War of 1812 came the day of retaliation. In less than a month after the President of the United States had issued his proc-
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lamation of war, the private armed brig " Yankee " sailed away from the harbor of Bristol upon its first cruise against the ships of Great Britain. The success of the " Yankee " is unparalleled in the history of American privateers. Six cruises she made in all. In her first cruise of less than three months she captured ten prizes, one of which netted over $200,000. The coast of Africa was her second cruising-ground (many of her crew were familiar with all its promi- nent ports, but of that more in future). She was absent one hun- dred and fifty days. Then she came leisurely sailing up the bay with a prize on either side. Eight vessels she had captured, and one only of them had been retaken. The amount of prize-money apportioned to each share as the result of the third cruise was $173.54, -- very respectable wages for a common sailor to earn in the short space of three months. The fourth cruise was a comparative fail- ure, but the fifth more than made up for it. The owners received more than $200,000 as their share of its profits. The share of the smallest cabin-boy was more than seven hundred dollars. The sixth and last cruise opened auspiciously, but the richest prize was lost upon Charleston bar, and only one vessel of any value was brought
into port. The "Yankee " was in service less than three years, yet in those years she captured British property amounting in value to almost a million of pounds. Many of her prizes were of course retaken, but she sent into Bristol a million of dollars as the profit from her cruises.
The stain upon the history of Bristol is the share which it took in the infamous African slave- trade, a stain which is also to be observed upon the records of many of its sister towns. New- port was more prominent in this business than Bristol, and it was The Methodist Episcopal Church. upon Providence ships that the most noted of the Bristol captains first learned the route to the African slave-pens. The age was in fault as well as the moral sentiment of
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BRISTOL.
e
e
Residence of Gen. A. E. Burnside.
the Rhode Island towns. The world has grown better since the last slaver sailed out from Narragansett Bay, and the moral sentiment of Bristol has more than kept pace with the general progress of the age. Bitterly the town mourns to-day over those black pages that cannot be suppressed. and nowhere in the United States is there felt a deeper abhorrence for the sin of slavery.
The " round trip " of a slaver was usually an exceedingly profit- able one. Most of the vessels engaged in the trade were either schooners or sloops. From the distilleries near the wharves in Bris- tol, they were filled with great casks of newly-made New England rum. (Hardly palatable would such a fiery beverage seem to the more delicate tastes of the present day ; but like the nectar of the gods it was to the well-seasoned throats of our hardy ancestors.) Some goods of the gorgeous hues most pleasing to barbaric eyes were also placed on board, and the vessel was cleared for the coast of Africa. The voyage to the coast was almost always a long one. The earlier slave-ships were not built for speed, but simply to carry freight. The stay upon the coast was also of considerable length. One by one, the hogsheads of rum were bartered for slaves, until the necessary return cargo was obtained. Then the captain sailed for the West Indies, where his living freight was always disposed of without trouble. There he would take on board a load of molasses for his owner's distillery, and hasten back to Bristol. All this was done in the years before the slave-trade was declared to be illegal.
12
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PICTURESQUE RHODE ISLAND.
For the slave-trade after the year 1808, when the "horrors of the Middle Passage" drew upon it the execrations of the whole world, the merchants of Bristol should not be held responsible.
In the year 1804 the ports of South Carolina were opened for the importation of slaves. They remained open for four years, and almost forty thou- sand negroes were imported during that time. Of the two hundred and two slave-vessels entered at the Charleston Cus- tom-House, sixty-one be- longed to Charleston mer- chants, seventy belonged to natives of Great Britain, and fifty-nine were owned in Rhode Island. In the Rhode The Baptist Church. Island vessels were imported 8,238 slaves. Of these, 3,914 are credited to Bristol, 3,488 to Newport, 556 to Providence, and 280 to Warren. Many of the vessels entered as belonging in Charleston were really owned by Rhode Island men, as any one familiar with the names of the merchants of that day can easily learn from examining the full tables. The number to be set down to the credit (or discredit) of Bristol, should therefore be even larger than that which is here given.
Some idea of the commercial importance of the town during the first quarter of the present century may be gained from the amount of duties paid at its custom-house. These are some of the statistics preserved upon the official books. The middle column gives the number of foreign arrivals in each year :
18IO
89 . $152,380 92 I816 109,181 78 1817
1812
100,137 61 I818
68 103,665 69
69 126,437 87 1813 30
1814
72,468 42
1820
50
· 121,570 40
1815
120,693 53
44
. 137,275 06
1821 48 53
$78,543 97 74,095 28
18II
55 19 33 96
152,966 04 1819
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BRISTOL.
During these years the average population of the town was con- siderably less than 3,000 people. The disproportionate amount of its business is therefore plainly evident. It maintained extensive commercial relations with the ports of Northern and Southern Europe, with China, with the "Northwest Coast," with Africa, and of course with the West Indies. In the year 1825 Bristol merchants began to make large investments in the whale-fishery, and, as a consequence, the general commerce of the port began to decline. In 1837 twenty whale-ships bore the name of Bristol upon their sterns ; the aggre- gate tonnage of this fleet was 6,256 tons. After the discovery of gold in California the whale-fishery was gradually abandoned. The feeble remnant of the town's foreign commerce almost entirely dis- appeared in the late civil war.
Very different is the thriving manufacturing town of to-day from the bustling little sea-port of half a century ago, and yet every sum- mer finds it crowded with visitors, who seem never to tire of gazing upon its tranquil beauty. A passing traveler, wandering through it on a pleasant July afternoon, could form no idea of the energy which is the birthright of the place. Its broad and shady streets are then almost deserted. Heavy loads of merchandise pass along them
Residence of S. P. Colt, Esq.
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PICTURESQUE RHODE ISLAND.
from time to time, but they seem strangely out of place beneath the waving branches of the magnificent elms. Everything wears the restful air one expects to behold only in the verdant lanes of some remote country village. When the great engines cease to throb, and the shadows of evening fall, the old town wakes from its sleep, and for a few hours its streets are as crowded as are the thorough- fares of a great city at mid-day. Then the noise dies away, and at midnight only the firm tread of the watchman echoes feebly through the sleepy air.
WARREN .- Not far from Baker's wharf, in the town of Warren, a stream of water "the size of a man's arm" flows out from a sluice-way under the ground, and downward to the river, during all but one of the twelve months of the year. It comes from a spring in the mid- dle of one of the public streets. This spring was once distant about eighty feet from the "high-water mark " of the early days of the village. When the wharf near it was built, and buildings rose thickly around, the land about it was gradually raised, and the spring itself was The Methodist Episcopal Church. walled up like a well. It is now about eight feet deep. For un- known ages the waters of this fountain have been gushing forth. Pure and clear are they to-day, in their basin of stone, as when they cooled the parched throat of the first white man who halted beside its verdant banks.
A little more than two centuries and a half ago, the wigwams of an Indian village were standing about this spring. Giant forest trees waved their green branches above the dusky forms that reclined in placid enjoyment along its banks. Great heaps of clam-shells and of oyster-shells, scattered everywhere about, showed that the spot had been for many ages a favorite camping-ground of the red men. The name of this Indian village, in the year 1621, was Sowams. Its
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ruler was the sachem of the Pokanoket tribe, the chieftain Massasoiet. The name of the fountain is to-day almost the only thing which remains to keep the fact in mind. It is still called Massasoiet's Spring.
Massasoiet was one of the most prominent char- acters in the early history of this country. The writers of the seventeenth century tell us that he was " a very lusty man, grave of countenance, spare of speech, in his attire differing little or nothing from his follow- ers." On ceremonial oc- casions his face was painted a " sad red " and oiled. He wore a chain of white bone beads about his neck, and a long knife in his bosom. From the chain of beads a little bag, filled with tobacco, was usually sus- pended. In addition to the singular shrewdness and the unusual insight into the motives of men which was the dis- tinguishing characteristic of his race, Massasoiet possessed genius which would have been called statesmanlike, had his
Warren - From the Beacon.
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skin been less dark, or his lot cast in other lands. When the Eng- lish landed at Plymouth, he hastened to bid them welcome and to form an alliance with them. All his life he remained their steadfast friend, never wavering in even the slightest degree from the faith pledged at his first interview with them. More than once, when fam- ine laid its terrible hand upon the feeble white settlements, the princely generosity of this illustrious savage rescued the starving settlers almost from the jaws of death. Conspiracies against the English, which neighboring tribes had formed, were oftentimes thwarted by his wise counsels and his fearless assertions of friend- ship. Before his death the faintly visible trail which had formerly connected Sowams with Plymouth had become a well-defined bridle- path, deeply marked by the tread of thousands of passing feet.
Two visits paid by Plymouth men to Massasoiet are worthy of special mention. The first was made in 1621, when Edward Win- slow and Stephen Hopkins were sent by Governor Bradford to return the visit the sachem had lately made to the infant settlement. The two white men carried with them as presents a horseman's laced coat of red cotton, and a copper chain. The chieftain was absent when the envoys reached his residence. One of them attempted to discharge his musket in order to give notice of their arrival, but was forced to desist because of the terror manifested by the women and children. The salute they gave to Massasoiet on his arrival pleased him greatly. The presents seemed to afford him extreme delight, and he yielded a ready and willing assent to all the proposals the Englishmen had to make. No notice had been sent to the sachem of the intended visit ; he had therefore had no opportunity to make any preparation for the reception of his guests, and the proverbial scantiness of Indian fare was more than borne out on this occasion. The whole party were forced to go supperless to bed ; not until noon of the next day was any food procured, and the few fishes some of the tribe had shot were then by no means sufficient to appease the hunger of the throng who had crowded in to gaze upon the two Englishmen. In the large wigwam of Massasoiet, Winslow and Hopkins found shelter, but not rest, during the night of their stay. The sleeping-place was a plat- form of rough boards, thinly covered with a mat of skins. On this rude couch, Massasoiet placed his visitors, " with himself and his wife, they at one end and the Englishmen at the other, and two more of Massasoiet's men pressed by and upon them, so that they were worse weary of the lodging than the journey." The next day they went back to Plymouth.
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WARREN.
A View of Main Street.
Two years later news came to Plymouth that Massasoiet was sick and likely to die,-also that a Dutch ship had been stranded upon the shore of the Sowams River, not far from the sachem's residence. Again Edward Winslow was sent to visit the Indian king. (He was also to communicate with the captain of the Dutch vessel, but the ship had left the bay before he reached Sowams.) John Hampden, he who in later years bore such a glorious part in the struggle which gave to England a free constitution, went with him as his companion. When Winslow and his friend reached Sowams they found the chieftain's wigwam so crowded that they could hardly effect an entrance, though the Indians readily made way for them as they pressed in. "There were they in the midst of their charms for him, making such a hellish noise as it distem- pered us who were well, and therefore unlike to ease him that was sick. About him were six or eight women, who chafed his arms, legs, and thighs, to keep heat in him. When they had made an end of their charming, one told him that his friends, the English- men, were come to see him." The chieftain's sight was gone, but his understanding was still left him. Feebly he welcomed Winslow, and in the same breath bade him farewell. But the self-reliant colonist had come to restore Massasoiet to health, and was not
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daunted by the extremely unfavorable state in which he found his patient. The remedies at his command were few and simple, but his excellent common sense enabled him to use them so well that the sick man was soon out of danger and rapidly recovering. The gratitude of the chief knew no bounds. " Upon his recovery he brake forth into these speeches : 'Now I see that the English are my friends and love me, and whilst I live I will never forget the kindness they have showed me."" Faithfully he kept his word. Says Cotton Mather : "The fees he paid his English doctor were a confession of a plot among several nations of the Indians' to destroy the English."
It is believed that the deed of " Sowams and parts adjacent " was the last document that Massasoiet signed. The deed is given in the name of " Osamequen and Wamsetto, his son," and is dated " 29th March, 1653." (Osamequen was the name the sachem had taken a few years before. The Indians often changed their names to commemorate important events in their lives.) The territory of Warren was originally included in the town of Swansea. In the Swansea town records the site of the village is spoken of as Brooks' Pasture. When the first house was built upon it cannot be ascer- tained. There were eighteen houses in the village when Philip's War broke out. All these were burned; their inhabitants fled to the Island of Rhode Island. Soon after the close of the war Brooks' Pasture was carefully surveyed and laid out in house-lots. A new settlement was begun upon it, and its inhabitants were divided into three ranks, according to the peculiar system then in vogue in Swansea. (Of this strange regulation more will be said in another place.) In the year 1746 it was enacted by the Legislature of Rhode Island that " that part of the territory confirmed to Rhode Island, which has heretofore been part of Swansey and Barrington, with a small part of Rehoboth thereto adjoining, with the inhabit- ants thereon, be incorporated into a township by the name of War- ren." "The name of this town was given in honor of Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who the year before, June, 1745, had commanded the English fleet, which in conjunction with the colonial army of 4,400 men, under the command of Gen. William Pepperell, captured Louisburg and the Island of Cape Breton, after a storming and siege of six weeks' continuance."
On the 25th of May, 1778, a band of British troops made a raid upon the town, The special object of the expedition was to destroy
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WARREN.
a flotilla of boats that had been collected by the Americans in the Kickemuit River. Seventy or more of these boats the British piled together and burnt. They also burnt the row-galley "Washington," and a grist-mill. Returning to Warren, they set fire to the Baptist Church, the Baptist parson- age, a powder magazine, and several other buildings. Having pillaged many houses and taken many prisoners, they hastened southward to the destruction of Bristol. Mr. Fessenden, in his His- tory of Warren (published in 1845), thus notes the pas- sage of the troops : " Aged people, still living among us, well remember the appear- ance of these soldiers as they passed through the town. The British were dressed in The Baptist Church, old-fashioned red coats, cocked hats, and small-clothes, with a great display of laced trimmings, shoe and knee buckles. The Hessians wore enormous fur caps and large, wide, and loose boots, into which they thrust all kinds of articles pilfered from the houses ; and these articles hanging over the tops of their boots gave them a singularly grotesque appearance as they left the town. A lady now living, and several others were at the time in the house which was after- wards Bradshaw's bake-house, on the east side of Main Street. They saw the troops pass by in hasty retreat, and at a short distance in the rear a single individual, encumbered with a big drum, unable to keep up with the main body. These heroic women ran out and surrounded him, and told him he was their prisoner, when he im- mediately surrendered, saying he was glad of it, for he was faint and tired. This prisoner was afterward exchanged for one of the citizens of Warren."
Before the Revolutionary War, Warren was largely engaged in the whale-fishery and in foreign commerce. Fourteen of its vessels were lost during the war, and it was many years before others were procured to take their places. The whale-fishery, indeed, was not again prosecuted until the year 1821, when the ship " Rosalie " was
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