USA > Rhode Island > Washington County > Narragansett > South county studies of some eighteenth century persons, places & conditions in that portion of Rhode Island called Narragansett > Part 11
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THE WORLDLY GOODS OF A PURITAN FROM THE WILLETT PAPERS
T HE inventories of our forefathers' worldly goods, made out with the conscientious and painstaking diligence customary in the Colonial times of leisurely simplicity, afford a sort of photographic record of the every-day life of a Puritan household. Whoever has unearthed one of these creased and yellowed old docu- ments will readily recall the interest with which he explored its' dusty pages for suggestive items, as he followed the worthy appraisers in their tortuous pro- gress through all the nooks and corners of the house, while engaged in the minute examination which duty obliged them to make of its contents after the depart- ure of its master for a far country. In the faded chirog- raphy of the paper now before us, the inventory of the estate of Captain Andrew Willett, a Boston merchant in middle life, but at the time of his death a substan- tial householder of Boston Neck, Kingstown, Rhode Island, and a son to the worshipful Thomas Willett, first mayor of New York City, we may find enumer- ated among the goods and chattels sundry inanimate acquaintances of long standing, familiarized to us by their associations with the pages of old English nov- els, or even with the lines of Shakespeare, the amber of whose verse has preserved many stray sticks and straws floated down to us from eddies in the current of time.
The date of our paper is 1712, and the house de- scribed is the homestead built by John Saffin,1 son-in-
1 On the hill in Saunderstown, known as the Carpenter Place.
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law of Thomas Willett, in 1692, and which stood until 1872.
"In the Haull," as our recorder hath it, we find im- primis:
1 napkin press of wallnut £3 -S. 2
1 oake table ovoll
2 ditto square
- 10
One of these last-named tables, "turned all over with knobs and rings," but having only the usual comple- ment of legs, was of the variety mysteriously known as "hundred-legged" (our rude forefathers had not learned to say centipede). To continue our brief selec- tions from the list:
7 leather chairs £3 -s.
6 do wooden bottoms
-
12
3 do flag bottoms
-
9
2 joynt Stooles
-
1
2 Turkey work carpets
2 -
1 looking glass
1 -
1 paire bellows
-
1
1 do hand irons
2
-
Shovell and tongs
-
12
4 brushes and prospective Glass
7
1 case of knives and forks
-
10
1 silver tankard, 2 porringers, 2 cups and 9 Spoons 26
5
-
1 clock
3 -
-
20 glass bottles of severall sorts
The valuation is most punctiliously made; and we learn, for instance, from this accurate paper that the above-named "joynt Stooles" are estimated at abso- lutely no hundreds and no tens of pounds, but are sim- ply to be rated at one shilling. The eight-day clock is
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still in use, and has not yet faltered in its stern duty of ticking away frail mortal lives. It has told the hours of birth, bridal, and burial for five generations of its owners, and it stood for more than one hundred and fifty years in the same homestead where this inventory was prepared.
"In the roome adjoining below stairs" (the sleeping- room lately occupied by the deceased) are found:
1 feather bed, curtins, vallons, pillows, bolster and blankets, coverlid and bedstead £10 -s.
1 trunnell bedstead and feather bed, blanket and rugg 5
1 10
2 portmantell and 2 pillions - 10
2 wast belts
2
2 sworde silver hilts
5
-
2 pr. of pistolls
4
-
1 silver buchell and wast girdle
8
-
2 pr. of old curtains 2
-
1 pr. money scales and weights -
9
1 pr. brass scales and 1 brass compass 12
Bookes of several sorts, history and other, 94 15
-
3 larg chests
-
This library, of nearly a hundred volumes, was a large collection to be owned by our Narragansett captain and yeoman, at a period but little later than that of which Macaulay writes: "An esquire then passed for a great scholar among his neighbors if 'Hudibras,' and 'Baker's Chronicle,' 'Tarlton's Jests,' and 'The Seven Champions of Christendom,' lay in his hall win- dow, among the fishing rods and fowling pieces." The hand that had girded on the "wast belt" and grasped the "sworde" and "pistoll" of the list, had also known
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the finer uses of the "bookes of history" which were studied here in this little corner of an obscure province at the close of that century which our authority calls "the least intelligent in the later English annals."
One significant word, the name of Puritan, will in- dicate the contrast between the British and the colo- nial esquires, and show us why we find the latter fur- nished not only "Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword," but not devoid of interest in those branches of learning to which, as our own Palfrey has shown, the genuine Puritan was no stranger. One of these volumes was the ponderous "Du Bartas," of 1621, and another, a "Practicall Catechism," of 600 closely printed octavo pages of Puritan theology, bears on the title-page the autograph of "Tho: Willett," the father of Andrew, whose estate is the subject of our inventory. Both were doubtless zealous readers of so precious a manual, and it is still, if not "daily conned," at least regarded with the respect due to its weight of learning and its association with the departed worthies.
We will now inspect the goodly plenishings of the "Haull Chamber" or "spare room." Here are £28 worth of bedding, and an equal valuation is set upon the stores of "Linning," "Holland," and "Diaper." We also note such choice luxuries as the following :
6 Turkey worke chairs £6 -s.
6 chairs covered with serge
3 -
1 ouall table 1 -
1 chest of drawers 2
10
1 looking glass - 15
1 case with pewter bottles - 10
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This last-named relic of old-time customs, an iron- bound, oaken chest, about three feet square and con- taining four bottles, was brought by Thomas Willett from Leyden in 1629. It had belonged to his father, and, as tradition says, had been carried by him in sun- dry campaigns under the English flag. It is now in the possession of the Rhode Island Historical Society.
1 pr. larg brass andirons £4 -s. 6
1 pr. small brass doggs
1 chimbley iron back - 12
From a hasty glance at the humble "kitchin cham- ber " we bring away a list of bedding at £10, while the bedstead and its "curtains and vailins of Cam- blet," are valued at £1. "Two pair andirons," with a wrought quilt coverlid," and "two old flag-bottom chairs," are worth no more than £5 19s. "In the long room" the "oats, barley and wheat," with the "two old chests and two boxes" which contain them, are esti- mated at £3 4s. "In the garrat," the "twenty pounds feathers and three old flock beds with bedding" are set down in the sum of £3.
"In the kitchen" are found :
36 pewter dishes
£12
5s.
1 copper pott
1 4
Brass kettles of severall sorts
6
18
1 large iron kettle and 2 small ditto
1 5
3 iron potts
-
6
1 pr large andirons
1
-
1 iron back 1 -
This chimney back bore in rude figures an early date of the seventeenth century.
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3 trammells
2 frying pans
-
-s. 15
3 spits -
18
2 gridirons
-
3
1 iron fender -
3
1 ladle and flesh fork and 2 smoothing boxes and heaters 10 -
2 gunns 3
-
3 brass candlesticks and 3 iron ones 1
2
2 pr sheep shares and 1 hammer -
6
2 skillet frames -
2
2 spinning wheels wooden and 2 linning do - 14
1 iron driping pan
- 12
Brass and iron seem to have been among the precious metals of the period. When they were so highly valued it was not strange that in the stories which a certain old Guinea negro used to tell in this kitchen he always de- scribed the household utensils of the king, his father, as made of gold-iron.
1 brass pestell, & mortar, and 3 axes 14s.
2 sawes, 1 drawing knife, 2 augers, 1 goug and chisell 12
1 pr of old wheell boxes 10
2 sithes, 1 carpenter's addze 6
3 old sithes & 3 forke 15
"To more in the house" is the next entry under which appear such miscellaneous matters as:
3 chaines £1
4s.
Iron for 2 horse garrds
-
6
2 saddles 1 -
1 pillion 10 -
2 brides 2
-
1 cart & ox bow, & irons and yoakes 3
6
1 iron bar, 3 hoes - 16
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£1
3 pr pot hookes and 2 chafindish
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23 old milk keelers
£2
3s.
1 churne & a cheese Tub
-
12
8 cheese fatts Old barr'ls & tubs
- 10
-
5
"In the Crib" the appraisers find:
Corne, about 40 bush'ls
£4
-s.
2 oxen
10
-
6 cows
44
-
2 three-year old heffers
5
-
2 steers, three-year olds
2
6
1 bull
4
-
6 yearlings
7 10
180 sheep
63
-
2 horses
7 -
13 hogs, young & old
3
14
With a singular sense of the fitness of things, the ap- praisers here insert the item:
To his wearing apparell of all sorts £30 -S.
Silver-headed cane
15
-
3 silver salts
1
-
After this casual interruption, the list of stock is thus resumed:
1 negro man
£30
-S.
1 negro woman
25
-
1 pr. of brass scales
-
-
2
Country bills
22
-
-
-
6
1 currell and whisell
15
3 sickells
-
4
1 copper wattering pot
10
-
1 grindstone
- 10
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6
1 cart rope
A warming pan
10
6 milk and water pales
-
Worldly Goods of a Puritan
The whole amount of the inventoried property of Cap- tain Andrew Willett is but £515 15s., according to the valuation of the appraisers, "Cha: Dickinson," a vestry- man, in 1718, of St. Paul's, Narragansett, and "Nath'l Coddington," a relative of Andrew Willett's widow.
The formula signed by "Sam'l ffones, Town Clerke," runs as follows: "Major Nath'l Coddington and Mr. Charles Dickinson, the above subscribers, did both personally appear before the Town Counsel of Kings- town the 22nd day of Aprill 1712 and Did Declare upon oath the above and within written Inventory, upon two Sheets of paper was a True Inventory of what was presented to their View to the best of their Under- standing."
A great part of the old Kingstown records having been destroyed by fire, there is probably no copy ex- tant of this faithful inventory. After the searching ex- amination which we have made of the personal effects of the deceased, we feel that we cannot accuse him (even according to the primitive standards of his time) of devotion to the vainglory of the world, nor deny him whatever merit there may be in the moderate use of comforts and the renunciation of luxuries. Such insight as the legal record affords concerning his character and surroundings leads us from this particular inquiry to more general speculations, and that mild form of moralizing into which the reader of much musty man- uscript naturally falls, prompts us to muse upon the mental and spiritual legacies which are occasionally left by those whose worldly goods would not fill even so long a list as stands in the name of our Puritanic yeoman.
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THE HELMES OF SOUTH KINGSTOWN
T HE Helme family homestead, dating from a cen- tury and a half ago, and built after the usual fashion of esquire's houses at that period, is still stand- ing, on Tower Hill, in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. On the opposite side of the ancient highway is a large burial-ground, the former site of the Congregational Church, of which Dr. Joseph Torrey, of Newport, was pastor, from the organization of the parish, 1732, until his death, some sixty years later, and here are buried many of the Helmes, with others of the first settlers of Narragansett.
"Go where the ancient pathway guides, See where our sires laid down Their smiling babes, their cherished brides, The patriarchs of the town ; Hast thou a tear for buried love? A sigh for transient power? All that a century left above, Go, read it in an hour !"
Tower Hill was named, and to some extent settled, so early as the days of Roger Williams, who mentions, as a familiar landmark, the craggy ledge on the sum- mit of the Hill, called by him Pettaquamscutt Rock, although now known by the less distinctive, if more agreeable, name of Narragansett Rock. Although it is claimed for Tower Hill-and no doubt justly-that it was once the home of hospitality, ease, and elegance, few vestiges of its former estate now remain, and the occasional visitor cares less for the faded splendors of a century ago, than for the immortal beauty of the land-
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The Helmes of South Kingstown
scape, to which Nature has granted the fairest features of both coast and inland scenery-the rich green fields and slopes, the wall of purple forest, dark against the western horizon, the gracefully winding stream, the glimpse of New England's most beautiful seaport looking far and unreal through the fast-gathering mists, and beyond all, the broad freedom of ocean- view. Still the traditions of the spot will always pos- sess a certain interest, especially for those who belong to the Narragansett country. Here, for instance, is the old house once occupied by the descendants of Jireh Bull, and built on the original site of the block-house, held during Philip's War by a garrison of fifteen per- sons, including women and children, and where Cap- tain Church's men expected to pass the night before the battle, known to Narragansett tradition as the Great Swamp Fight; but arrived to find only the smoking ruins of the building, and to learn that only two of the garrison had escaped torture and death at the hands of their savage foes. What wonder that they all fought with so desperate a courage on the morning that suc- ceeded such a night?
Tower Hill was the ancient seat of the County Court, since transferred to Kingston Village. Here stood court- house, jail, church, and school-house. The school was supported by the Sewall Fund. The building in which the boys of 1773 conned their tasks, constructed with an ingenious defiance of all the sanitary regulations which modern science has taught us to regard as in- dispensable, still survives;1 too insignificant to suffer
1 This old school-house was blown down in October, 1923; the Helme and Bull houses long preceded it.
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from the envy of time. Here, also, was the old-time tav- ern, with its swinging sign, classically lettered “Pro Bono Publico," underneath which the cheerful stage- coach drew up, with much rustic ceremony, once a week, while the village idlers gathered to hear the lat- est intelligence from New London or Newport. The broad, natural plain at the foot of the hill, used by the Colonial militia as a training-ground, was also the place of execution for capital offenders. Here once stood the gibbet on which Carter, the execrated murderer of Jackson, after protesting his innocence in a speech, the hardened assertions of which thrilled the spectators with horror, suffered the last rigors of English law, which sought to avenge the crime by denying a burial to the lifeless remains of the criminal. Strange picture of Colonial times! Strange union of the purity and sa- credness of domestic life with the senseless barbarities of an uncivilized age and nation!
In the graveyard mentioned above, the stones, of the shape so aptly described as "high-shouldered" by a New England poet, display the rude likenesses of cherubs, or, in those of later date, of weeping willows, with borders of carving intended to be ornamental- the inscriptions, plain and concise-mere names and dates, hallowed by a text of Scripture, thus marking the transition period from the simple unconscious quaintness of our earlier times to the greater com- plexity of taste which now prevails. Hence, no epitaph can be found in the least suggestive of that one on a respected citizen of primitive Boston, so manifestly in- spired by "the unlettered Muse," who, after solemnly pacing through several long-drawn lines, replete with
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The Helmes of South Kingstown
the usual pious commonplaces, with a suddenness quite startling in funereal literature, turns a sharp corner by hoping, in well-meant but slightly unsteady rhyme, that, in a future state of existence,
" We ever may be happy With virtuous William Paddy."
Little, indeed, can be learned from the monuments, almost as silent as the buried tenants of the graves be- neath. What does this sunken stone, on which the brief line of record is nearly effaced by the storms of more than a hundred winters, tell us of the changeful life of the "Madam Hester Powell," to whose memory it was erected ? - a native of Rochelle, but, exiled from that Huguenot stronghold in early womanhood, accom- panying her mother, the wife of Gabriel Bernon, in her dangerous flight to Holland, then marrying a Protes- tant gentleman of Welsh family, emigrating with him to the town of Newport, in the hospitable Rhode Island Colony, and, after his death, coming to spend her few remaining years near the quiet country home of her children. The reticent stone gives no hint of all the strange chances which brought a daughter of ancient Rochelle, "proud city of the waters," to find a last rest- ing-place on the remote Narragansett shore.
The Helmes were probably of Puritan ancestry, in the direct line. A Gawen [Gawain?] Helme was one of the "Massachusetts Company." The family history is so interwoven with that of the Bernons, that it will be necessary to refer briefly to the latter. Gabriel Ber- non, a Huguenot exile, and ancestor of several Rhode Island families, as the Dorrs, Allens, Dyers, Hoppins,
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Crawfords, Whipples, and others, was of an honor- able family in Rochelle, France, where he held the office of hereditary registrar. The name of Bernon ap- pears in Froissart's Chronicles. Benjamin Faneuil, the father of Peter Faneuil, the Boston merchant, was a relative of Gabriel Bernon, and came with him to America. The latter, after suffering two years' impris- onment for his Protestant opinions, escaped to Holland just before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, sailed from there for England, remained some years in Lon- don, came thence to Boston, lived in Newport, and for ten years in Narragansett; but fixed his permanent residence in Providence, where he was instrumental in the establishment of St. John's Church. His first wife was Hester or Ester LeRoy, daughter of François Le- Roy, of Rochelle; his second was Mary, daughter of William Harris, who landed with Roger Williams, at What Cheer Rock. This lady accompanied him to England, where both were presented at the court of Queen Anne. He died in 1736, aged ninety-two years. "He was decently buried, under the Episcopal Church at Providence [St. John's, where a mural tablet to his memory has recently been erected ], and a great con- course of people attended his funeral, to whom the Rev. Mr. Brown preached an agreeable eloquent sermon, from Psalm xxxix : iv."
Hester, a daughter of the first wife, married Adam ap Howell, or Powell. Her widowhood was passed in Nar- ragansett, where she died in 1746. Her grave on Tower Hill has been already described. "Madam Powell's pew" could still be identified in the old Narragansett Church, prior to its removal to Wickford, in 1800.
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The Helmes of South Kingstown
Her husband's name is connected with a curious anecdote, which so vividly recalls the time of the witch- craft delusion, that it is here quoted from a letter of his great-grandson, the late Willett Carpenter, of North Kingstown :
"My mother was wont to relate thefollowing story as an instance of her grandfather's shrewdness. He was a Newport merchant, and made frequent journeys to Boston and Salem, attended by his negro servant, Peter, who, whilst at one of these places, went into the Court-house, where some of the witches were on trial. On his return to the house where his master lodged, he was taken apparently with convulsion fits, falling down in great agony, and the people of the house called him bewitched, but Mr. Powell, who had ex- pressed much indignation at the scenes he had lately witnessed, declared with much energy that nobody should be hanged for Peter, for he would himself undertake his cure. Accordingly, having observed him some time attentively, he applied his horsewhip to Peter (but for the first and only time), with such ef- fect that he gladly returned to his duty."
It is also storied, as the quaint old diarists say, that one of the Helme family once visited Salem Court House when the "witches" and their accusers were confronted with one another. He had scarcely entered when one of the sufferers, a young woman, was at- tacked with convulsions, which, of course, elicited much sympathy from the spectators. When, on her recovery, she was asked the name of the sorcerer whose spells had been the cause of her suffering, she promptly re- plied that it was the stranger who had just come in!
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But while the officers of the law, animated by the in- dignation of the whole assembly, were sternly seeking the offender, whose recent entrance had been over- looked, all attention being centred on the afflicted girls, Mr. Helme lost no time in escaping from the court house and the town, no doubt glad enough to regain the land of Roger Williams and liberty.
This story is suggestive of the examination, in Salem Meeting House, of honest Captain Alden (son of the first John Alden, of Plymouth). His sword was taken from him because it was said that he afflicted his ac- cusers with it. "He was bid to look upon the afflicted, at which they would presently fall down. Then Alden asked [Judge] Gedney why his looking upon him did not cause him to fall down also, but Gedney could give no reason."
The only children of Adam and Hester Powell were Ester and Elizabeth, both of whom were educated in Boston. Thelatter married, in 1733, the Reverend Sam- uel Seabury, a graduate of Harvard College, who had been preparing for the Congregational ministry, but was induced by the arguments of the Reverend Dr. MacSparran, rector of St. Paul's, Narragansett, to take orders in the English Church, was appointed by the Venerable Society first missionary to New London, and was afterwards rector of Hempstead, Long Island. At the time of his marriage to Miss Powell he was a widower with one son, the Samuel Seabury who was, in 1784, consecrated as the first Bishop in America.
Ester Powell married, in 1738, James Helme, Esq., of Tower Hill, eldest of the twelve sons of Rowse Helme, the first of the name in Narragansett. She died while
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still comparatively young-in her forty-sixth year, - leaving a family of seven sons and one daughter, and was sincerely mourned by her husband, who remained constant to her memory all his life.
His election by the General Assembly as Chief Jus- tice of the Supreme Court of the colony took place in 1767, and he was reëlected through all the changes of the times as Chief or Associate Justice of the same until 1775. He died two years later, and is buried on Tower Hill. His political sympathies may be divined from the tenor of the following letter, addressed to Mar- tin Howard, Jr., a Newport lawyer and politician, who had been, in 1765, appointed by the Crown stamp- master for the colony, jointly with Augustus John- son and Dr. Moffatt. Their houses were immediately attacked and much injured by a mob. The unpopu- lar trio fled, but Mr. Howard received a more lucra- tive appointment. Some time afterwards, when visiting his Newport friends, he observed to Secretary Ward, "Henry, you may rely upon it, I shall have no quarrel with the Sons of Liberty in Newport, for they made me Chief Justice of North Carolina, with a thousand pounds sterling a year."
S. Kingstown, Dec. 30th, 1766.
MY DEAR SIR :
By my good friend Dr. Moffatt I rec'd your favour of Aug. 10th, as also your most acceptable Present; so extremely welcome, so exactly useful, that you have really given Sight to the Blind, and I beg to return my most hearty thanks.
Your appointment to the Chief Seat of Justice in
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North Carolina, and your safe arrival, gave me the most sensible Pleasure, especially as I am told the Post will be worth £1000 or £1200 sterl'g a year. I heartily congratulate you thereon. Your favourable Reception by the King's Ministers, and the Honours you have received, as they give your Friends the greatest Plea- sure, so they are the most mortifying circumstances to your Enemies. . . .
The Dr. only called upon me one night, Nov. 14th, and that we spent with company. The next morning went to Newport, from thence to Boston, from whence he returned to Providence, preferred a petition (for they would not receive a memorial) to the General Assembly, for compensation for the damages of August, 1765, returned to Newport, and I have not heard from him since, though at parting he promised to write me by the post. So that I have had no opportunity to hear the particulars of your European adventure. I impa- tiently await his return, when I hope to have his com- pany some days. . . .
I have many things to tell you of the politics of this distracted little colony, but will defer them till we meet.
Mr. John Cooke certainly deserves the returns of a most sincere friendship, which he has manifested for you on all occasions. I love him for this and a thou- sand other things, where he has proved himself an hon- est, hearty, candid, clever fellow.
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