Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 37

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

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BRIDGING OF STREAMS-Bridges replaced ferries over narrow waterways and wading through shallow streams. The earliest bridge in Rhode Island crossed from east side to west side in Providence, and was the predecessor of the wide bridge at Market Square. Almost immediately subtle questions of responsibility for bridge construction and maintenance trou- bled legislators, reaching to the ultimate liability of colony (or state) and municipality. The town of Providence was aided by lottery in rebuilding the town bridge when the latter was carried away by freshet or storm. The General Assembly was gracious in granting lotteries, contributions to the success of which were voluntary, whereas it hesitated to expend its meagre revenues for bridge building, lest an excess of expenditures constrain the levying of a tax. The colony divided with Massachusetts, after lengthy negotiations in which the latter evinced little interest if not complete indifference, the cost of building and maintaining a bridge across the Seekonk-Blackstone River near the falls that divide these continuous rivers and mark the place where the Blackstone becomes the Seekonk. The Assembly reluctantly assumed even a share of the cost of maintaining a bridge across the Pawtuxet River at the dividing line between Cranston and Warwick, and assisted in replacing a bridge across the Pettaquamscott probably only because Providence and South Kingstown both were seeking relief after the same storm and formed a strong bloc in the General Assembly. The problem of maintaining a bridge across the Pawcatuck River at Westerly was not simplified by the quarrels of Rhode Island and Connecticut over boundary lines. The General Assembly, after receiving petitions from several towns for assistance in building or rebuilding bridges considered the advisability of defining colony-state and municipal responsibility; the tendency, though no statute was enacted, was toward town liabilityt for bridges wholly within a town and joint responsibility of towns for bridges across streams that served as boundary lines. This policy was consistent

*9 Wheaton 1.

¡Enforced by indictment. State vs. Cumberland, 7 R. I. 75.

ARCH BRIDGE, SHOWING SLATERSVILLE MILL, SLATERSVILLE

MAIN STREET, LOOKING WEST, SLATERSVILLE

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with the attitude with reference to roads, responsibility being local, but in the instance of bridges it did not serve to solve the problem of allocating responsibility in instances in which it was certain that a bridge on a main line of travel through colony or state served not only the towns on either side of the stream to be crossed, but also generally the travelling public of the commonwealth. In the period in which both roads and bridges were built by quasi-public turnpike corporations, which recouped expenditure and earned a profit for stockholders by levying tolls, a distinctly public solution of the problem could be evaded. Toll bridges were constructed across the Seekonk River by John Brown near India Point, and by Moses Brown near the site of Red Bridge; across the Barrington and Warren Rivers, and across the Sea- connet River at the site of Stone Bridge. When in 1869, the Red Bridge was replaced, the expenditure of $55,000 was allocated : State $20,000, Providence $20,000, East Providence $15,000. On the other hand, the Division Street bridge across the Seekonk connecting the town and village of Pawtucket, 1873; the Point Street Bridge, 1870, and the Crawford Street bridge, 1875, both in Providence, were constructed without contribution by the state. A later bridge policy, associated in its development with the state public roads system, will be dis- cussed in other paragraphs.

ROAD BUILDING-As a colony, Rhode Island built no roads. In the instances in which committees or commissions were appointed by the General Assembly to lay out roads, the colony function was limited to surveying the line of the highway and defining it by statute in such manner as to establish direction and uniform width, and to order the removal of gates, fences, walls or other obstructions. This was true of the main roads, which in the earliest instances tended to follow the Indian trails, and of roads established later between Rhode Island settlements, and between Rhode Island settlements and settlements in neighboring colonies. There was no provision for construction of roads at colony expense, nor for con- tribution of any part of the cost of building from the general treasury. Lotteries were granted occasionally to assist in the improvement of roads. The colonial General Assembly ordered the paving of certain streets in Newport, that is, the Parade in front of the Colony House lead- ing to Long Wharf, and Thames Street between the ferry and Long Wharf, to assure a rea- sonably good appearance of the principal streets in the "metropolitan." Providence later turned the precedent to advantage with reference to streets near the Colony House, and was granted lotteries to pave other streets.

As a rule, however, the General Assembly was constrained, both by the limited revenues of the colony and its own unwillingness to incur the odium of increasing revenues by recourse to direct taxation, to a very conservative attitude toward public improvements. This colonial inhibition descended upon the General Assembly of the state of Rhode Island, although the Revolutionary debt confronting the Assembly when independence had been achieved was almost sufficient to negative appropriations. The emphasis on Separatism, which in Rhode Island was translated into a greater respect for individual rights than prevailed anywhere else in the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as applied to towns nourished the most complete approach to municipal autonomy that was possible short of disruption of the body politic, and even that was threatened. Rhode Island towns knew neither of the maxims "one for all" and "all for one"; the Rhode Island slogan might more accurately be phrased "every town for itself." The prevailing philosophy was opposed to colony or state assump- tion of responsibility for building roads or streets, so clearly could these be identified as parts of the towns which they traversed. The first quarter of the nineteenth century had almost elapsed before a state road policy developed in Rhode Island. Except as open waterways facilitated transportation and travel, both were restricted physically in colonial days, but not more so in Rhode Island than elsewhere in America; witness the long journey of George Washington from Mount Vernon to New York preceding his inauguration as President. When, in 1736, a stage coach line between Newport and Boston was granted a franchise, a

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coach leaving Boston at two o'clock Tuesday morning was scheduled to reach Bristol at noon on Wednesday. The coach did not cross the ferry at Bristol Narrows; the passengers were ferried across, and were taken in another coach from Bristol Ferry, in Portsmouth, twelve miles down the island to Newport. Completion of the sixty-mile journey in forty hours was considered fast travelling before 1750. Aside from the limitations of travel by horses or in horse-drawn vehicles, even when relays were furnished frequently, roads were bad --- usually in the beginning because built of sand or clay, and later worse than bad if repairing was neglected.

In Rhode Island a town that failed to repair its roads might be indicted and fined .¿ "The mode of mending roads for a long time after the settlement of the state was very simple.§ The town elected surveyors, and these surveyors called upon the landowners, farmers and others, to turn out for the work with men and teams, according to their ability. Districts were assigned to them. But it was not until 1798 that towns were authorized to assess a tax for that purpose. In June, 1808, the tax system was made general. The assignment of districts was provided for in 1747, 1766, etc. In June, 1847, a law, which had been passed specially for South Kingstown, was made general, authorizing the election of surveyors in April, and pro- viding that the surveyors should be elected in the order of districts, etc. These various provi- sions, adopted from time to time, and afterward incorporated together, account for some of the apparent and real inconsistencies in the statute." A citizen against whom a tax had been assessed might commute the payment of money by working on the roads.] In more recent years the state assumes responsibility for the construction and maintenance of roads made part of the state system of public roads, and town responsibility for the maintenance and repair of other roads is enforced indirectly, by holding the town liable to answer suits for damages incurred while travelling or using public town highways. The town may limit its liability somewhat by accepting or refusing to accept a road as a "public highway," but it cannot avoid responsibility for roads established as public highways by long use .**

PACKET LINES AND STEAMBOATS-Rhode Islanders went down to the sea in ships, brigs, brigantines, schooners and large sloops; for traffic in Narragansett Bay and on coastwise trips through Long Island Sound packets were preferred. Packets were vessels of from seventy- five to one hundred tons, built on lines to assure speed, sloop rigged with a single mast to carry a wide spread of canvas, including foresails, topsails, and sometimes spinnaker. The sloop was fast, quick in stays, easy to handle with sheet and rudder, and of light draft suitable for sailing in shallow water. Providence Williams, son of Roger Williams, owned and sailed a sloop as early as 1675. The "Hannah," packet, Captain Lindsey, lured H. M. S. "Gaspee" to destruction on the soft bed of mud on Namquit Point. The "Hancock," packet, Captain Brown, brought President Washington and party to Rhode Island from New York in August, 1790, and carried them back. Packets carried freight as well as passengers, and as travel and traffic increased in volume, sailed on regular schedules that were dependable. Packets fur- nished a favorite means of travel between Rhode Island ports, particularly Newport and Provi- dence, and New York, anticipating the steamboat lines of later years and accommodating not only Rhode Islanders and Knickerbockers, but travellers from points further north and east, and south and west, who reached Rhode Island or New York by other types of transportation. Thus merchants and others from Boston and beyond might ride to Newport or Providence by stagecoach, and sail for New York by packet. The time of passage varied with the speed of the vessel, and with tide, wind and weather, from the record trip of eighteen hours between Providence and New York made by the "Huntress," packet, to a week. The shorter passage was much preferred by captain and owner, not only because of pride in accomplishment and

#State vs. Cumberland, 6 R. I. 496.

§Note by Justice Potter, 13 R. I. 323.

TSee in re Registry Law, 12 R. I. 580.

** State vs. Cumberland, 6 R. I. 496 ; and see North Providence vs. Dyerville Mfg. Co., 13 R. I. 45.

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seamanship, but also because the fare, usually ten dollars, included meals. While the longer journey from Narragansett Bay to the Hudson River appeals more to romantic imagination and gathers to itself a wealth of story and tradition, packet service in Narragansett Bay was most important for Rhode Island. Packets travelled up and down and across the bay in every direction, through the three passages between the islands at the entrance to the bay, and in and out of the estuaries which opened north toward Providence, west toward East Greenwich and Wickford, and east toward Taunton. Rhode Island was bound closely by means of rapid communication and transportation that facilitated a prosperous intersectional trade.

Early experiments with steamboats in Narragansett Bay* were not pressed sufficiently to disturb the serenity of the proprietors of packets, although Elijah Ormsbee's "Experiment" was the forerunner of successful steam navigation. When the "Firefly," steamboat, under- took, in 1817, to establish a regular service between Newport and Providence, the packets pooled resources and starved the steamboat out by successful competition. The "Firefly" made its first trip from Newport to Providence on May 28, 1817, in three hours; she carried President Monroe from Bristol to Providence while he was visiting Rhode Island in the same year. But the packet captains, by offering to carry passengers between Newport and Provi- dence for twenty-five cents, or for nothing if they failed to make the trip in shorter time than the "Firefly," captured and held the patronage, and the "Firefly" was withdrawn from Rhode Island for service where sailors were less intrepid and enterprising. The packet triumph was temporary and brief ; six years later a line of steamboats between Providence and New York was established by the Fulton company, and the first successful line was followed by others. Owners of packets sought to combat the steamboat competition by recourse to legislation. The Fulton company had been granted a monopoly of steam navigation in New York waters, and Connecticut had excluded steamboats from her ports as a measure of retaliation for the monopoly. The Rhode Island Senate was persuaded to pass an act levying a tax of fifty cents per passenger on the new steamboats, but the House deferred action. Meanwhile the opening of a steam ferry between New Jersey and New York had precipitated litigation, and the case known as Gibbons vs. Ogdent was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision in Gibbons vs. Ogden, declaring the New York monopoly void and asserting federal jurisdiction in navigable waters, applied equally to Connecticut's embargo, and the proposed tax approved by the Rhode Island Senate. Monopoly, embargo and tax-all were unconsti- tutional, and the steamboats had come to stay. Thereafter the prosperity of the packets dimin- ished, and their service gradually was replaced by steamboats on long and short trips, although, so late as 1839, the General Assembly was constrained to order the head of Long Wharf at Newport reserved for steamboats. The packets, resorting to obstructive tactics, were forbid- den to tie up at such times and in such manner as to prevent steamboats from reaching the wharf to discharge and take on passengers and freight. At that time steamboats plying between Narragansett Bay and New York stopped usually at both Newport and Providence.

In the twentieth century little of the commerce that passes through Narragansett Bay is carried on sailing vessels ; even the fishermen have equipped their staunch boats with gasoline engines. Something of the Rhode Island love for a piping wind and flapping canvas is pre- served, however, in fleets of yachts and small pleasure craft, and the waters of the bay, dotted with the sails of these, recall the exploits of packet days, and the races between rival captains.

TURNPIKES AND STAGECOACHES -- With the metamorphosis of Rhode Island, whereby the most intensely industrial of American states has emerged from a farming and maritime com- munity, a system of internal transportation became necessary to meet the needs of factories and population massed along the banks of non-navigable streams. Rhode Island developed the turnpike company, operating a toll road. The earliest Rhode Island turnpike companies were

*Chapter XV.

+9 Wheaton 1.

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chartered just before 1800, almost simultaneously with the introduction of the factory system, and the last in 1842, when the steam railroad system had been practically completed as to main lines. The turnpikes were located principally in the northern section of the state, as might be expected because of their intimate relation to the extension of manufacturing. Some of the major ventures were the Providence and Norwich (Connecticut) turnpike; Providence and Boston, extending through North Providence, Smithfield, Cumberland, Attleboro and Wren- tham, toward Boston; Rhode Island and Connecticut, through Providence, Johnston, Scituate and Foster ; Smithfield, toward Douglas (Massachusetts) ; Louisquissett, northward through factory villages; Providence and Pawtucket; Powder Mill, Providence to Greenville; Cov- entry and Cranston; Foster and Scituate; Providence and Pawcatuck; Pawtuxet (from Providence).

The principle underlying the turnpike system was revealed in charters and toll rates. The turnpike company was obligated to maintain a road in reasonably passable condition for vehicular traffic, on penalty of forfeiting tolls or franchise. Tolls were levied at rates stated in the charters on vehicles and animals, but not on pedestrians. The exempting of "persons passing .... for the purpose of attending public worship or funerals; .... of persons living within four miles of the place of the turnpike, passing on said turnpike road for the purpose of attending town meetings or other town business, or going to or from mills, or for the purposes of husbandry," indicate that the burden of providing and maintaining the road was to be placed on travelers who were not of the community. Any other practice with refer- ence to the latter would, in most instances, violate established rights, as the turnpike roads often incorporated stretches of old roads, the company contracting to maintain these, as well as new sections, in passable condition. Exemptions were construed favorably to traffic; thus a lower rate for vehicles carrying United States mail was held to apply to a coach actually carrying letters although no contract had been made .*

The turnpike roads not only helped to solve the problem of transporting raw material to inland factories and finished manufactured goods from inland factories to tidewater, but also facilitated the development of stagecoach lines operating on regular schedules. A picturesque type of wayside inn and tavern arose along the line to accommodate stagecoach travelers, usually close to the places where the coaches stopped to exchange horses, or at convenient intervals to tempt travelers to rest for the night instead of pressing on with the coach, if, indeed, the latter also did not stop. Taverns were located also in the larger factory villages, catering to salesmen and others who visited the factories. The stagecoaches on turnpike roads radiating from Providence served also as feeders of passengers for the packets operating in Narragansett Bay, or sailing to ports along the Sound or to New York. Travelers from Bos- ton or farther north or east would choose a short overland ride to Providence in a reasonably comfortable coach, operating on a guaranteed time schedule, and a water trip on a fast packet to New York, in preference to a long stagecoach ride across country, even in the general direction of the "air line" through Blackstone, Willimantic and Hartford. When stagecoach lines to Norwich and New London via Pawcatuck had been established, some took the stage to Stonington or New London, and a packet thence westward. Poor sailors dreaded the water trip around Point Judith even in reasonably pleasant weather. Operating both turnpike road and coaches, the road companies prospered usually; in the event of separate ownership, the road helped the coaches, and the coaches helped the road, each the other, to make a profit.

Railroad competition eventually made both unprofitable. For a time the railroad compe- tition was effective only for "long hauls," the coaches operating on "branch" lines serving as feeders. The railroads captured both passenger and freight transportation, eventually, and the rumbling coach with its prancing horses disappeared from Rhode Island, perhaps moving westward with the frontier. The roads remained. Few of the turnpike companies were suc-

*R. I. and Connecticut Turnpike Society vs. Harris, 6 R. I. 224.

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cessful in the sense that through toll earnings they were able to collect "the full amount of the cost of making and laying out said road, and of purchasing the land through which the same shall pass, and twelve per cent. per annum for the interest of all such costs, after deducting the incidental charges, and expenses of keeping said road in repair, and of collecting the tolls," and were dissolved, the roads then vesting in the state. Some were abandoned by their pro- prietors as operation was found to be unprofitable. The General Assembly in 1864 authorized towns to acquire the property of turnpike and toll bridge companies by purchase. Six years later it was reported that there were three toll bridges-Stone Bridge across the Seaconnet, and bridges across the Barrington and Warren Rivers-and six turnpikes still collecting tolls. The total mileage of turnpike toll roads was less than fifty in 1870. The state enforced for- feiture of charters for neglect to maintain turnpikes in passable condition, and in instances in which the companies transferred rights to other agencies .; The state purchased the fran- chise of the Rhode Island and Connecticut turnpike in 1872. Most turnpikes had been con- verted into public roads before 1875, thus ending a system that never had been popular and that had become obnoxious. Turnpike roads as returned to the state, abandoned, forfeited or purchased, became part of town public road systems, and towns became responsible for main- tenance of roads and bridges along the line.}

BLACKSTONE CANAL-One other venture in transportation before steam had revolution- ized traffic on land and water was the Blackstone Canal, completed in 1828, and affording an all-water route between Providence and Worcester, along the course of one of the greatest manufacturing rivers in the world. John Brown, thirty years earlier, had planned a canal route from tidewater at Providence to Worcester via the Blackstone River, and thence west- ward to the Connecticut River Valley. The Blackstone Canal afforded facilities for freight and passenger transportation, the former in fleets of flat-bottomed scows drawn by horses or mules, and the latter in the "Lady Carrington," a liner, of unusual construction, elegantly fitted up with cabin and other conveniences. The passenger boat made trips north and south on alter- nate days. The canal was a failure financially, although most who had subscribed to the stock recouped losses through investment in the Providence and Worcester Railroad. The charter granted to the latter required the abandonment of the canal, and restoration of water rights by removal of locks that changed water levels. The railroad paralleled the canal along most of the route between the two cities, and accomplished both the purposes of the canal, that is : (I) furnishing convenient transportation facilities for factories in the Blackstone Valley, and (2) opening up central Massachusetts as a profitable trade center.

A CENTURY AGO-One hundred years ago Rhode Island depended on turnpike road, stagecoach and oxcart, canal and canal boat, for travel and transportation above tidewater, and principally upon sailing vessels, fast packets and heavier boats, for travel and transportation on navigable rivers, bay and ocean. Steamboats had entered into active competition with sail- ing vessels and had begun to crowd the latter in a way that indicated that their era was approaching termination. Two railroad charters had been granted in the United States, the Mohawk and Hudson, 1825, and the Baltimore and Ohio, 1827, and only thirty miles of rail- ways were in operation in 1830, when the "Providence Journal," in January, advocated the building of a railroad between Providence and Boston. "The best project for a railroad that we have seen is that from Boston to this town," said the "Journal" in an editorial. "The traveling now between the two places is immense, and by many is supposed to exceed 50,000 persons annually. In addition to this great number of passengers, there are vast quantities of freight transported in wagons between the two places. A railroad would vastly increase the quantity of freight and number of passengers-and then the convenience to business men.

State vs. Pawtuxet Turnpike Company, 8 R. I. 182, 521.

#North Providence vs. Dyerville Mfg. Co., 13 R. I. 45.

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Should the railroad be built, a man could ride on rails to Boston in two hours; he might leave home in the morning, transact in the city what business he had to do and return home to din- ner at his usual time. This would be bringing the two places very near together. It would certainly increase the traveling." The editorial is significant also because of the estimate of the traffic between Providence and Boston in 1830, including as it did in the number of 50,000 those who passed through Providence traveling south or north to destinations other than Providence and Boston. Dow* estimated the number of stagecoaches, entering and leaving Providence, "not counting large stages running to points within twelve miles" of the town, as 328 a week in the summer of 1829. The large traffic between Providence and Boston was related to packet and steamboat lines to New York, many of the coaches being driven directly to the wharves.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 37

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716