Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 86

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

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 86

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

II2I

SPANISH-AMERICAN AND WORLD WARS

Battery C at the time held a position near Samogneux. Lieutenant Emmet O'Neal's verses recall the incident :

THE LITTLE PLATOON THAT STAYS ON GUARD. "It doesn't seem right that we should go, And leave you here on guard; We always shared the watch, you know, And made the hours less hard. But orders came from 'Command on High' That you, the little platoon, Should keep your posts as the years pass by At Glory's shrine-Verdun.

"As now we turn away from you And move toward love and home, We try to laugh and sing, 'tis true, But leaden thoughts will roam Back there to you in the sacred heath, Where not a flower is seen; They go to place a memory wreath Of love forever green.

"We go; you stay; we know not why- Sealed orders made it so ; The Marshal from his place in the sky Has spoken, not the foe. The silent courier's whisper brought A smile, no sign of loss; A promise of tokens in Heaven wrought, A shining bit of His Cross."

Private Alfred M. E. Meyerowitz was cited for distinguished service when, on November 3, after being wounded severely while repairing a telephone communication line, he continued inspection to the end before reporting for surgical assistance. On November II Battery C was in position near Fort Douaumont. The three batteries returned to Rhode Island with other con- tingents of the Yankee Division.

OTHER RHODE ISLAND UNITS-Closely associated in active service with Batteries A, B and C of One Hundred Third United States Field Artillery was One Hundred Third Machine Gun Battery, comprised principally of troops from the cavalry, Rhode Island National Guard. The flags of these Rhode Island units are designated for the same engagements, thus : "Chemin- des-Dames sector, France, February 6-March 21, 1918; Toul (Boucq) sector, France, April 3- June 28, 1918; Aisne-Marne offensive, France, July 18-25, 1918; St. Mihiel offensive, France, September 12-16, 1918; Troyon sector, France, September 17-October 8, 1918; Meuse-Ar- gonne offensive. France, October 8-November 11, 1918." Other Rhode Island units were the Four Hundred Seventeenth Telegraph Battalion, United States Signal Corps, designated for "Marbache sector, France, September 25-November 1I, 1918"; and Three Hundred First United States Engineers, designated for "St. Mihiel offensive, France, September 12-16, 1918; Toul sector, France, September 17-November 11, 1918."

Of Rhode Island men who enlisted as volunteers or who were drafted many had not been called for mobilization when armistice was announced, and others who had been called and sent forward to cantonments remained in camp after armistice until orders for mustering out were issued. Many Rhode Islanders reached France but not the trenches nor the open battlefields in the St. Mihiel and Argonne offensive movements. Some had arrived too late to be thrown into the American drives that broke the German lines, and ended the war ; others were engaged for many months in that effective service behind the fighting line which made possible the main- tenance of undiminished strength in contact with the enemy. Some drove automobiles in supply trains and transport service, and were frequently under fire as the Germans raked with shot and

R. I .- 71

II22

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

shell the lines of communication which their aviators discovered. Rhode Island mechanics from steel and iron and other metal shops were invaluable in France in the service of repairing and renovating military machinery, including cannon and arms of all types, which needed readjust- ment frequently when subjected to the strain of modern warfare with high explosives and heavy projectiles. Betsy the Sniper had been replaced in so many parts while in position in the Toul sector that there was reasonable doubt that any of the original equipment except the gun barrel remained when Betsy was withdrawn. A modern army is a vast economic organization occupy- ing an area extending miles back from the fighting lines and there are other services in vast numbers and kinds to be performed besides the duties ordinarily associated with fighting.

Of the accomplishments of Rhode Islanders who went away quietly, because of national neutrality between 1914 and 1917, to enlist in Canadian, English or French units, particularly the last because of the glorious memories of Lafayette and the French army which had made its headquarters in Rhode Island during the Revolution; of Rhode Islanders, citizens and some classified as aliens because they had not completed the process of naturalization, who went "home" to join the colors, including large contingents of Greeks and Italians ; of Rhode Island- ers who enlisted in federal service, army, navy, marines or aviation ; of Rhode Islanders who were drafted and assigned to units in the national army in which state origins were sublimated ; of chaplains who braved exposure in the trenches or the dangers of the battlefield to carry spiritual comfort to living and dying, including Father William J. Farrell, who was wounded, and Father Thomas A. Coffey, who died in service ; of physicians and surgeons, including Doc- tor William H. Buffum, who died overseas; and of nurses in hospitals, in the trenches and in the open battlefield, who ministered to sick and wounded; of social workers of the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations, of the Knights of Columbus, and of the Salvation Army, who braved danger in order to be near those whom they would help ; of Rhode Islanders who left their homes to work elsewhere in shipyards, including 5000 who volunteered for service in the construction of warships and the emergency fleet, and of others, patriots all, who helped in various ways, even if it were only working longer hours and harder day by day to speed production of things necessary for war service ; of the home guards organized for domestic defence and the preservation of order should occasion arise, only this passing mention may be made. One hundred fifty Rhode Islanders received distinguished service awards or were cited for conspicuous bravery or gallantry, besides those who were promoted as a reward for consist- ent and diligent service or unusual achievement. Nearly 700 Rhode Islanders died in service,* the long roll of the honored dead including the names of such as Alexander Farnum Lippitt, and Rowland Hazard Mclaughlin, scions of old and distinguished Rhode Island families; and, of newer Rhode Island families, sons bearing the names of Patrick Grady, Napoleon Riendeau, Otto Kammerer, Iver Johnson, Simon Steiner, Rocco Baglio, Manuel Rose, Christian Papa- thansopoulous, Paleslaw Wasilewski and others. All had been "buddies" in the service of democracy.

ARMISTICE AND AFTER-The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 arrived with the One Hundred Third United States Field Artillery, the One Hundred Third United States Machine Gun Battery and the Three Hundred First United States Engi- neers, Rhode Island mostly, all in position in contact sectors, and participating in the firing, which continued until the moment of the armistice arrived. The quiet, which was startling in contrast with the din which had preceded, was broken by the shouts and cheers of rejoicing that the war was over. In Rhode Island an impromptu celebration of armistice and returning peace had already occurred on November 7, on the morning of which a false report of peace had occasioned the blowing of whistles, the ringing of bells and an outpouring of the people for rejoicing, which ended when the early news dispatch was contradicted. The difference of

*Casualties 684 ; wounded 2,400.

II23

SPANISH-AMERICAN AND WORLD WARS

hours in international clock-time brought the news of actual cessation of hostilities at eleven o'clock on November 11, 1918, to Rhode Island early in the morning by Rhode Island daylight saving time, and from dawn the streets were thronged with those who had left care behind in their joy. A few who went to work as usual in some factories were ordered "off the job for today" by committees of the celebrating thousands. Schools were dismissed in instances in which even a few pupils had gathered for instruction. Processions were organized and con- tinued through the daylight hours and long into the night. At noon His Excellency the Gov- ernor recognized that Rhode Island was celebrating a holiday de facto, and made it a holiday de lege by issuing a proclamation. The celebration of first Armistice Day was a splendid exhibi- tion of liberty without license, of an unprecedented demonstration of public joy without an instance of disorder.

Followed official celebrations and demonstrations, and receptions to detachments of Rhode Islanders returning from overseas ; but there was nothing in any of these, in spite of tremen- dous enthusiasm, to equal the spontaneous celebration of Armistice Day without a prepared program. In the days that followed, Exchange Place in Providence was decorated with a Vic- tory arch and a court of triumph, the arch crowned with an heroic reproduction of the Greek statue of Victory, and bearing the inscription :

"TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO WENT FORTH AND RETURNED NOT "WHOSE SOULS ARE MARCHING ON."

In the midst of the rejoicing Rhode Island went over the top for the fifth time in its sub- scription to the fifth national bond issue, called the Victory Loan, and raised a million and a half of dollars as its contribution to war relief work. At a special meeting on February 10, 1920, the people by an overwhelming vote approved a bond issue of $2,500,000 to fund the payment of a bonus to each Rhode Islander who had entered war service. The federal plan for demobiliz- ing war forces and the care of those who had been disabled included rehabilitation by education or other training for return to remunerative employment. In the latter service the resources of the Rhode Island School of Design and of Providence Trade School were utilized, additional to appointments on federal scholarships at Rhode Island colleges and other schools.

Following the Spanish-American War the United Spanish War Veterans organized. The association includes eight camps in Rhode Island named as follows : Captain Allyn K. Capron, Rear Admiral Charles M. Thomas, Sidney F. Hoar, Robert Brucker, Rudolph H. Breault, Joseph J. Woolley, Peter E. Henchey and Lieutenant Commander Gardiner C. Sims. The department commanders of the Rhode Island department have been : Dr. Lester S. Hill, Arthur B. Spink, George A. Forsythe, William Mackay, Arthur L. Lake, Charles W. Abbott, Jr., Edgar R. Barker, Isaac F. Gavitt, Marshall W. Hall, Henry Wolcott, William J. Hancock, Edgar M. Patterson, William E. Arnold, Herbert Bliss, James D. Wells, William A. Stafford, Herman C. Richter, Michael A. Sullivan, Albert E. Whitaker, Thomas P. McGee, William G. Laird, Galen E. Nichols, Thomas Caulfield and Walter M. Baker. Associated with the United Spanish War Veterans is an auxiliary organization of women with six divisions.

Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States were organized as a society in 1899 to comprise veterans who served on foreign soil or in foreign waters during war time. Following the World War, veterans who had been overseas were admitted. The organization has twenty- three posts in Rhode Island named as follows: Captain Thomas W. Connell, Darnborough- Parkin, Rocco Baglio, Sylvester S. Payne, Robert T. Johnson, Donald E. Carlton, Thomas J. Waters, Lieutenant Harold Flynn, Yankee Division, Major Walter J. Gatchell, Surprise- Woodhouse, Eugene Perry, Newport, Sergeant David Langevin, McKenna-McAllister, Cor- poral Albert P. Cahill, Frank Cerbo, Washington County, James E. Keegan, Arthur M. Burton, Eugene T. Lefebvre, Joseph Bucci, and Sergeant Edward Dempsey.

II24

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

The American Legion was organized at Paris in February, 1919, and the Rhode Island Department in Rhode Island in April, 1919. The membership comprises men and women who served in the World War without distinction between those who went overseas, and those who were not sent abroad. The Rhode Island department includes thirty-four posts named as fol- lows : Providence, West Warwick, Andrew F. Young, Pawtucket, James Stanton, Kearney, Newport, Barrington, Alphonse Yelle, Riverside, Warren, North Kingstown, Cumberland, East Greenwich, Harold W. Merrill, Burrillville, Portsmouth, Scituate, Auburn, Stark-Parker, Jamestown, Richard J. Dennis, Warwick, Gordon Greene, David Papineau, Dodge-Goulais, John McKeown, Saylesville, South County, Roger Williams, Block Island, Little Compton, Municipal, South Kingstown and Herman Cooper. The department commanders have been Alexander H. Johnson, William P. Sheffield, Luke H. Callan, Thomas J. H. Pierce, Bertram W. Wall, R. B. Littlefield, John P. Hartigan, W. F. Thorpe, Francis B. Condon, Charles R. Johnson, and Charles W. Anthony. The American Legion has an auxiliary organization with twenty-six units in Rhode Island. Closely associated is the Rhode Island State Chapter of the American War Mothers, open to mothers of sons and daughters who served in the World War. The American War Mothers are organized in three local chapters in Rhode Island, as follows : Providence, West Side. and Narragansett.

November II is the World War holiday in Rhode Island. It was proclaimed a public holiday as "Liberty Day" on November II, 1918, after the people had made it a holiday by observance. It was proclaimed again as "Armistice Day" in 1919 and 1920, and was made an annual legal holiday by action of the General Assembly on April 27, 1921.

East Greenwich was one of the earliest Rhode Island towns to erect a memorial to the vet- erans of the World War. The inscription reads: "The town of East Greenwich erects this memorial in grateful remembrance of her citizens who served in the military or naval forces of the United States or the Allies during the World War. They carried on that liberty might be enjoyed throughout the world." Other towns followed, erecting tablets or monuments, among the latter being spirited "Doughboys" in bronze at Apponaug in Warwick and Centre- dale in North Providence. Lincoln erected a memorial schoolhouse including an auditorium, and in addition, at Manville, a monument consisting of a granite column surmounted by a globe. World War cannon were obtained by vote of Congress and placed in parks or prominent posi- tions in front of public buildings. Streets and squares were named for soldiers and sailors who died. At Brown University a memorial gate was erected at the entrance to the campus facing Manning Street. At Rhode Island State College a boulder with a bronze plate commemorates the service of alumni and students. Action in Providence was delayed because ( I) of discussion of the form of a suitable memorial, and (2) of the proper location. The Providence monument, a tall fluted granite shaft surmounted by the colossal figure of a woman looking seaward, stands in the great city square on the axis of State House and Providence River. With stars at the top, the fluted shaft represents the American flag. Around the base are sculptured allegorical figures. Battles of the World War are recalled by the inscriptions. The monument was designed by Paul P. Cret, and C. P. Jennewein was the sculptor. The inscription reads : "By this memorial the city of Providence commemorates the loyalty, courage and fidelity of all her citizens who served in the World War, whose high courage shall summon us to love and serve our country." The monument was dedicated on the anniversary of Armistice Day, November II, 1929.

CHAPTER XL. WOMAN'S PART IN MAKING RHODE ISLAND.

OGER Williams left for posterity in his letters his own story of his flight into the wilderness to avoid exile to England, of his life among the Indians during the winter of 1635-1636, of his journey subsequently to the wigwams of the Pequots with the purpose of preventing a coalition of powerful Indian tribes against the white settlers, and of his two voyages to England on diplomatic mis- sions for Rhode Island. Little is known of the patient, self-sacrificing, long-suffering Mary Barnard, whom Roger Williams married before leaving England on his first voyage to America. With what agony must she have witnessed his departure into the black of a Decem- ber night in 1635, nestling two infant children to her breast as she wondered what fate might befall her husband and their father? And what had the future for her, should he fall a victim to winter exposure or to the tomahawk of a savage? Happily reunited at Providence, the family was in such humble circumstances that Winthrop, who visited the Williams home in Providence, stirred to pity because of what he saw, thrust a gold coin into Mary Williams' hand as he was leaving. Mother of Roger Williams' children, she saw her husband depart time and again on public errands for which the colony, grudgingly and ungraciously, barely reim- bursed him to the extent of paying his traveling expenses. Roger Williams was not a good economist, and he was not keen to recognize or to take advantage of opportunities to accumu- late an estate. His relations with the Indians were such that they were frequently a burden in their presumption on his hospitality. Many times while Roger Williams was away his family faced poverty and actual privation. They lived with him in the wilds of the Indian country while Roger Williams maintained his Indian trading post near Wickford. In her husband's disclosure, through his letters, of some of the most intimate incidents of his life, there is never a word that records a complaint by Mary Williams. She was the silent partner of the joys and triumphs, as well as of the sorrows and humiliations, that marked the vicissitudes of fortune attending the life of the Rhode Island pioneer-the model wife and mother cast in a mold that fitted her to be an ideal helpmate, an heroic figure though clad in the garments of humility.

Anne Marbury was as brilliant as Mary Williams was retiring. The latter is known only as the wife of a distinguished husband; of the former it is recorded that she came from England as Mistress Hutchinson accompanied by her husband and their fifteen children. And thus it was while both lived-Anne and Master Hutchinson. None of her contemporaries denied the intellectual capacity of Anne Hutchinson, much as they resented the stinging words with which she punctured their egotism and shattered their self-complacency. She had been dis- tinguished in England before she came to Massachusetts, and had she been a man in what was a man's century, would have attained any position to which her ambition might have led her to aspire. Here was a woman whose vigor of mind equalled the best among the Puritan divines in the metaphysics that passed for theology, and in the ingenuity with which she confounded them in argument, and dissected and ground their syllogisms to dust. A spirit like hers could not thrive in the stifling atmosphere of Massachusetts, stagnant and fetid with repression ; it must die or cause an explosion, and it chose the latter. Baffled because they could neither silence her tongue nor answer her convincingly, routed in debate and discomfited because her heresy threatened to destroy utterly the theocratic control which they had established, her enemies took counsel against her and prosecuted her both in church and in the civil court, prac- tically identical in personnel and absolutely identical in conclusions. She was excommunicated

II26

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

from church and publicly cursed, and she was banished by the civil authority with the order that "she go out from among them, and trouble the land no more." Society thus frequently condemns the elite and casts it forth, even if not condemned to death. Like Blackstone, who had withdrawn quietly in silent protest; like Williams, who had departed while an edict of banishment awaited enforcement; like Hooker, whose migration with his congregation gave the Puritans more than momentary concern-Anne Hutchinson went out of Massachusetts. Her kindly ministrations to the sick in Boston, her teaching in the classes of women who gathered in her home to hear her discuss the preaching of the Puritan ministers, and the sympathy that rises in the human heart for the oppressed and persecuted surrounded her with friends. While many of them were under ban with her and subject to a similar edict of banish- ment, there were others who chose to follow her into the wilderness, and who with her founded a second settlement in the Narragansett Bay country. Some of her enemies rejoiced that she had come to judgment when Anne Hutchinson and members of her family and household were tortured and slain by hostile Indians in New York in 1643.

Not all of those who came to Rhode Island were fitted intellectually or temperamentally to enjoy the unusual liberties afforded in this New England refuge for the oppressed and persecuted. Among those who were as sadly out of place in Providence as they would be in almost any other society was Joshua Verein, a troublesome young fellow when viewed through even the tolerant eyes of Roger Williams. Yet Joshua Verein was not molested until he under- took to assert a control over his wife's conscience and action which was contrary to the prin- ciples of soul liberty for which Providence had been founded. Because Joshua Verein forbade his wife to attend religious services and threatened, if he did not actually resort to violence, the town took Joshua Verein to task and punished him by disfranchisement. This public recognition of woman's right to do her own thinking and to carry thought into action in mat- ters which concerned her principally, marked the new plantation at Providence as a com- munity practicing the doctrine proclaimed by its founder as without limitation or distinction because of sex. Of Mrs. Joshua Verein history preserves no picture other than that of a gentle woman wedded to an overbearing, if not a brutal, husband, who undertook by bullying to drag her down to his own level. The action in Providence was remarkable in a century in which a man was still the unquestioned master in his household in most that concerned the life and welfare of his family ; it exalted woman, proclaiming her complete equality in matters of conscience with man.

Fourth of Rhode Island women of the earliest settlements whose names have found a place on the pages of history was Mary Dyer, on whose arm Anne Hutchinson leaned on that day when the latter walked out of the church at Boston, excommunicated and outcast with the curse of the minister ringing in her ears. Mary Dyer also came to Rhode Island. Like many others of those who had sympathized with Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer became a Friend and thus anathema in Massachusetts. Found there while on an errand of mercy, con- demned to death as a Friend, pardoned on the scaffold after she had been prepared for hang- ing as last of a party of three the deaths of two of whom she had been compelled to witness as they were hanged before her eyes, suffered to depart with the threat of death if she returned, Mary Dyer went back to die as a demonstration of her faith and with the hope that hanging of a woman might shame the Massachusetts fanatics back to their senses. Leaving husband and family, bidding them farewell for the last time because she knew full well the penalty that awaited her and the willingness of the Puritans to inflict it, she went to a martyr's death on Boston Common, June 1, 1660. The sacrifice was wasted and in vain; it failed to sicken the Puritans of the atrocities committed upon her brethren in the name of religion. The Puritans desisted only when commanded to do so by a peremptory edict of the King of England.

DEAL LUNCH

CONIMICUT PHAR

DROPS

COMIMICUT PRAPRACY

CORNER AT CONIMICUT

RECEPTION HOSPITAL, HOWARD

II27

WOMEN'S PART IN MAKING RHODE ISLAND

These four were types of the women who settled in Rhode Island-Mary Barnard Wil- liams, the humble, patient, uncomplaining wife and mother ; Anne Marbury Hutchinson, bril- liant and militant controversialist in an age in which metaphysics reached almost the utmost of subtlety, disturber of the Puritan conscience, threatening destruction of the theocracy and the inner circle which had gained control of it, and yet model wife and mother, gentle nurse of the sick and comforter of the afflicted; Mrs. Joshua Verein, described by Williams as "a gracious and modest woman," whose ill-treatment by her "boisterous and desperate" husband appealed to the chivalry of the men of Providence; and Mary Dyer, who sought and won a martyr's crown for the sake of conscience. The women of Rhode Island, quite as much as their husbands and brothers, gave to Rhode Island part of the noble spirit which has dominated its later history. They went out into the wilderness with their men, into the land of the savage ; they left comfortable homes for pioneer cabins ; they labored in the heat of the day ; they bore their part in the planting and building of a new civilization, facing danger, privation and poverty. They became mothers of a race of hardy free men and women, learning from the examples of both parents those lessons the fruition of which has made Rhode Island a dis- tinctive commonwealth realizing a magnificent ideal. Their daughters carried on while their sons wove the fabric of an unusual history.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 86

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