USA > Rhode Island > The "Old Stone Bank" history of Rhode Island, Vol. II > Part 21
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Old Patience would have made a better character for a soothsayer than Silvia Tory as far as her general appearance was con- cerned. She was a wild-looking individual, a wanderer and pensioner, caustic of tongue
and wit, who drifted about the countryside at will, keeping aloof from most of her own people. For her "Cousin Is'bel," however, a servant in the household of Dr. George Hazard, of South Kingston, she had great respect. In the kitchen over which this cousin presided she would sit for hours at a time, huddled into the chimney corner and neither stirring or speaking unless spoken to. Those who poked fun at her knew the full force of her sharp tongue, but she was not always bitter-tempered. Under the influence of a bit of kindness she would become communicative and would talk of "Master Isaac," a former master whom she had tended as a child. This per- son was always hailed by the old woman as the very incarnation of virtue. With a group of interested girls for an audience she would launch into a splendid eulogy; and, although it is extremely doubtful whether any of them ever gave her any cause for such a statement, would usually end her free-flowing praise by saying,
"Now be a good girl, missy, and treat the old woman well, and maybe she'll speak a good work or two to Master Isaac."
"Cousin Is'bel" merited every bit of respect Old Patience gave her. Her real name was Isabella Remington, and she had been the slave of Edward Hull until she decided to continue in the service of Hull's daughter who married George Hazard. With this family she lived until her death, except for a short interlude which she spent in Newport.
She dressed neatly and well in a black gown, covered by a working smock of dark blue calico, and always wore a snow- white "mob-cap." She was an extremely capable person and regarded more as a friend than a servant. Cheerful, calm, and benevolent, she was loved by everyone, especially children, and was a highly- privileged member of the Hazard house- hold. Aunt Ibby was her name to all her friends and she had many.
She was a person whose simple charm and honest personality would be a credit to one of any race, and she held the deep confidence and respect of both whites and blacks throughout her life. In her old age her mistress gave her a separate home on the estate, and here she continued to receive her visitors, living peacefully and happily
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until her death. As a final token of the esteem in which she was held, she was bur- ied in the burial ground of the Ancient Friend's Meeting House of Narragansett.
These were all renowned characters of Old Narragansett, but there is yet one miss- ing. What sketch of this kind could fail to mention the most noted of all negro retain- ers - Gambia. That voluble and keenly- imaginative individual had been included in the paternal inheritance of Willett Car- penter of North Kingston, and was a free- man. He, too, was particularly beloved by children to whom his stories of the Guiana, from which he had come, were always fas- cinating. He claimed to be the last of a line of kings and would delight in describing his father's domain.
"Lived in a great palace, oh ever so big; and you go in at the silver door, up the gold-iron teppitones, and over the door was a pretty little gold-iron dog." Asked what he meant by "gold-iron" he would say,
"Oh better than iron and handsomer than gold, gold-iron was. Well, and when you go up the teppitones, and pound with the knocker the peart, sassy little dog, he bark!
And then you go through long, long entries till last you come to the gold-iron throne and the king sitting on it, beautifully dressed in white man's clothes. British cap- tains have made his father, oh such fine presents; Gambia don't know how many!"
But, like many of his race, Gambia would rather talk than work. He loved riddles and enjoyed his own stories as much as his hearers. When asked how churning was done in his own land he said, "Oh the king, my father, have great large round trench made and lined all with white shining stone. Then pour in cream and fill all up to top. Then the king's beautiful white horses -twenty trained horses they were-they just go down the steps and prance around a little and in three-five minutes butter come."
There were probably scores of other characters like Gambia, Aunt Libby, Poly- dore, and the others, but these were particu- larly outstanding in Old Narragansett. What ever else they did they certainly added something to the life of the day, more of that something which the present cannot quite seem to recapture.
A RHODE ISLAND MORMON
R HODE ISLAND has had a finger in all sorts of diverse enterprises and move- ments, both religious and secular, since its founding by that venerated free-thinker, Roger Williams. In the most obscure as well as the most prominent corners of the world, its name has occurred in connection with the careers and exploits of seamen, ex- plorers, artists, statesmen, merchants, in- ventors, and religious leaders. So many things have either had their birth or first impetus in this State, or, on the other hand, their last ratification, that in any discussion of them the name "Rhode Island" must play an important part. Yet, despite the fact that at some time or other Rhode Island has espoused nearly every known kind of reli- gion, the mention of Rhode Island and Mormonism in the same breath is rather startling. Perhaps, because Mormonism and Salt Lake City are almost synonymous, the
average Rhode Islander of today does not realize that, again, in this connection his State has played its part.
Of course, both of the two great leaders of Mormonism were sons of Vermont and came from strict old Puritan stock. The move westward to Salt Lake City was a very gradual one, although it was speeded up in 1846 when the Mormons were driven out of Ohio. The inhabitants of Brigham Young's native town, Whitingham, Windham County, Vermont, have always been among the foremost in denouncing both him and his principles, therein proving once more that the prophet is without honor in his own country. Yet, in many ways, such an atti- tude redounds only to the discredit of those who maintain it, and these very inhabitants, in not acknowledging the greatness of the man, regardless of his unconventional be- liefs, have simply "cut off their nose to spite their face."
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Joseph Smith had first conceived and preached the doctrines of Mormonism some nineteen years before Brigham Young even heard of the religion. The latter was born in 1801 into a very poor family. The father had moved his family from Vermont to New York when Brigham Young was a boy and here he was raised in an environment well-steeped in Methodism. Young grew up to be quite an agnostic, despite his environ- ment. He gradually learned considerable about all the religions which were prevalent not only in New York as a whole but throughout New England and found none of them to his liking. Finally he became a Methodist at the age of twenty-three merely to avoid disagreeable dissension within his own family. Seven years slipped by, and then Brigham Young came into possession of a copy of the book which the Mormons had published in 1830 and in which they set forth fully the doctrines upon which their religion was founded. For two years he studied the volume carefully and then, in 1832, became a convert. With him in this drastic step was his wife, Miriam Works, whom he had just married. Whether it was the influence of the book or the persuasion of his father and brothers who had become converts before him, which gained his con- version, or the more worldly idea of an opportunity to make money, is not known. But whatever the underlying reasons for his adoption of the new faith, he became its ardent disciple and missionary.
In the same year of his conversion his wife died, and he moved to Kirtland, Ohio, in company with the family of his closest friend. This town was the citadel of Joseph Smith, then the - self - heralded Mormon leader and prophet, and it was from this town that Brigham Young made many successful missionary pilgrimages back through the section of the country in which he had been reared. Perhaps he passed through Providence at that time, although there is no record to substantiate such an inference. It was in Providence, however, that his second legal wife-to-be was then living.
She was Mary Ann Angell, a descendant of a family which played a large part in the founding and later history of Provi- dence and Rhode Island. The home in which she was born in 1804 and in which
she lived as a girl and young woman is still standing at the foot of Fruit Hill on Smith Street at the junction of the so-called Old Road. Its exact number is 1240. The tiny, weather-beaten structure, painted a nonde- script yellow, has long been known as the "Brigham Young House," although his definite connection with it cannot be posi- tively determined. Small as it is, the struc- ture contains six rooms, ranged in two
floors about a massive center chimney. In the basement is a great brick oven. The little porch and the vines that clamber about the eaves have been luxurious addi- tions to the stark bareness of the house as it was originally built. About 1871, the third son of Mary Ann Angell and Brig- ham Young, John Willard Young, drove out from Providence in a hack to visit the birthplace of his mother, which she had previously described to him in detail. He told some of the curious neighbors that the elm tree which leans protectingly over the little house was planted by his mother when she was a girl. Since that time Mormons have visited the home annually, members of the faith coming every year from Utah to see the place which for them is in the nature of a shrine.
Mary Ann Angell was a Free Will Bap- tist before she married Brigham Young. She had spent most of her youth closely studying the scriptures and had come to the decision that she would never marry until she met a man of God. Contrary to an old belief, she did not meet Brigham Young in Providence and run away with him after the death of his first wife. She and her family had gone to Kirtland, Ohio, to ob- tain closer contact with the Mormon doc- trines, and it was there, in 1834, that she met Brigham Young and became his second legal wife. He, at the age of 32, was fol- lowing his trade of a painter and glazier in addition to his missionary activities, and she, two years younger, had evidently found him to be the man of God she sought. This marriage, it must be remembered, took place some eight years before the doc- trine of polygamy was introduced into the Mormon creed.
In 1837, Brigham Young visited Rhode Island as a missionary, and it is highly probable that he may then have stayed in the Angell farmhouse on Smith Street. At
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least, it is not at all improbable that he should have used the former home of his wife as a headquarters during his travels about New England.
In 1842, Joseph Smith began to preach the righteousness of polygamy, and Brig- ham Young was not slow to follow his leader in word and action. Of course, this new turn in the doctrines which she had ardently supported placed Mary Ann Young in a peculiar and rather embar- rassing position. She had been Brigham Young's only wife for eight years, yet she did not stand in the way of her husband's new beliefs. In capitulating to her husband in the matter of the adoption of polygamy, she was probably more influenced by her profound respect for Mormonism itself, than by any want of proper conjugal senti- ment. She was an unemotional woman, however, of Puritan stock and said to resemble Martha Washington in features. Yet, although she followed the belief of her husband, she did not lose her pride, and refused to live with the other wives which he chose in the succeeding years. Only one other wife, the last taken by the great Mor- mon, had the privilege of a house to her- self. The others, twenty-five in number, lived in two large homes built side by side, known as the Lion and the Bee Houses. But Mary Ann Young was always known to all Mormons up to the time of her death as "Mother Young." She seemed to hold the somewhat dubious position of "head" of Brigham Young's wives, but this was undoubtedly because of her own personal- ity and not solely because of her legal marriage to him. She bore him six of his 56 children.
The adoption of polygamy into the Mor- mon doctrine, regardess of the ethics of the policy, gave the enemies of the new faith a very vulnerable place to attack. And as the Mormons, under the lead of "Prophet" Smith, began to expand their families and take more wives, the enmity of those out- side the faith burst with a vengeance. By
1844, Smith had been assassinated. Brig- ham Young soon took his place as leader, but it was only two years later that the Mormons were driven out of Ohio and started their long journey to the West. If Mary Ann Young had any scruples about polygamy, she was soon obliged to realize that it was not a theory but an established fact. Her famous husband, and all the Mormons who followed his leadership, were taking wife after wife and building up huge families. She was worried only about her position in after life, wondering whether she or Miriam Works would be queen of her husband's family.
While the issue of poylgamy aroused the animosity of most of the country against the Mormons, resulting in their persecu- tion, the sending of troops against them, and the final passage of a law forbidding polygamy in 1862, it must never be forgot- ten that the Mormons led by Brigham Young were a group of the finest pioneers and builders the West has ever known. They were hard-working, thrifty, and pro- gressive people and lovers of their homes and families. They laid a solid foundation for later settlers, and kept the far West open during the most turbulent days in the history of the country. The city which they built is testimonial enough of their char- acter and ability.
The law against polygamy had little effect for many years. Fifteen years after Brigham Young's death it was still in exist- ence among the Mormons. The great leader died in 1877, beloved and honored by his own people, and respected by all others as a man of the highest ability and statesman- ship. His Rhode Island wife, Mary Ann Young, came to the funeral on the arm of Amelia Folsom, the last wife Brigham Young had married and the only other one for whom he had provided a separate home. To these two women he willed the joint ownership of Amelia Folsom's mansion, and it was there that the Mary Ann Angell, of Providence, passed her last days.
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THOMAS WILSON DORR
W HEN a man has been dead for over three quarters of a century and dis- interested persons, who have no direct knowledge of either the man himself or of his times, can appraise him coolly and esti- mate the true value and purport of his life, he will either be dismissed briefly as an unimportant individual or he will be recog- nized at last as having been a man of pro- phetic vision, a great personality which lived in advance of its time. There was too much emotion surrounding the life and times of Thomas Wilson Dorr for him to have been judged impartially by his contem- poraries. He is an especially fine example of a man who must lie for many decades in his grave while waiting to be exonerated and honored as he deserves.
What a confused affair the constitution issue in Rhode Island was! A few men on either side saw the facts clearly. But it is doubtful whether the bulk of adherents to either party understood the fundamental purposes and beliefs of their leaders. In addition, too many individuals were trying to reconcile cross purposes and conflicting opinions within their own minds to make their actions anything else but muddled. The result was much as might have been expected. The people's party of 1841 and 1842 was upon too insecure a footing, being an infant organization, to allow for any vacillation among its members. And it was its wavering which lost its righteous cause and brought bitter humiliation upon its un- compromising leader. There was a good deal of the same vacillation inherent among the supporters of the freehold government, but in that instance it did not matter as much. The long reign and the simple fact that, after all, it was the existing government gave it the necessary ounces of power which carried it through the crisis. If Dorr's fol- lowers could have seen his cause as we see it now, calmly and without excitement, they would have stood by him to a man, and their issue would have been easily realized.
Thomas Wilson Dorr was born in Provi- dence, November 3, 1805. He was a son of Sullivan Dorr, a prominent manufacturer,
and Lydia (Allen) Dorr. He could trace his ancestry back to Joseph Dorr, a Massa- chusetts Bay settler of 1660. His grand- father, Ebenezer Dorr, had been captured with Paul Revere upon the latter's famous ride. Thomas Dorr went to Phillips' Exeter Academy and thence to Harvard, graduating from the latter institution in 1823 and carry- ing off second honors in his class. After that he went to New York and studied law under Kent and McCoun, both recognized as great equity judges and jurists. He made considerable of a reputation for himself as a profound student of law, and was shortly admitted to the bar in New York. Kent, himself, recognized Dorr's abilities and val- ued his convictions highly, and in later edi- tions of his noted "Commentaries" incor- porated various suggestions and changes which his young disciple had made.
In about 1830, Dorr returned to Provi- dence to take up the practice of law. His progress in this city was slow, as is typical with all young lawyers, but particularly so in his case inasmuch as he was generally recognized as a student and not a practi- tioner in the profession. In 1833, he was elected a member of the lower house of the General Assembly from Providence. Thus was he started upon his tempestuous public career.
He had been a Federalist by birth and had grown up in a Federalist environment, but his principles quickly made of him an ar- dent Democrat. This was the first thing to throw him into disfavor among the ruling class of freeholders. In 1837, his career in the General Assembly came to an end for he had further estranged himself from the rul- ing faction by bringing to an end the "bank process" then established, which provided that a debtor's real estate should be attached, levied and sold on the same day that he failed to meet a note, thus excluding the claims of his other creditors in favor of the bank. But these were small milestones along this man's checkered course. His sympathy with those who were beginning to rise up against the existing government, which called itself republican but was nothing
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more than an oligarchy, threw him into everlasting disgrace with its "landed" ad- herents.
Yet he was not the first to assume the lead- ership of the suffrage party or espouse its principles. Rhode Island's General Assem- bly had passed an act way back in 1724 limiting the suffrage to landowners and their oldest sons. This continued as a part of the charter after the Revolution. Most of the other States, in fact all except Connecti- cut and Rhode Island, had drawn up consti- tutions approved by their people and giving full suffrage. The two New England States believed that their charters were as liberal and as useful articles of government as con- stitutions and did not bother to change. But the status of the people had been changing with the years. The growing industries in Providence, such as cotton spinning, were creating a new class of people, non-land- owners who made up the bulk of the popu- lation. Thus those actually in power, ac- cording to the old land act, were really the small minority. And, even in 1797, some saw the upheaval that lay ahead. George R. Burrill, in that year, made a Fourth-of-July oration in which he spoke of the necessity of a State constitution. He said that, unless a change was brought about, Rhode Island would display the paradox of a "free, sover- eign and independent people desirous of changing their form of government without the power to do it." He believed there was no remedy but in ignoring the General As- sembly completely and proceeding to form a new constitution independently.
In 1821, 1822, and 1824, attempts were made to call a convention to draw up a con- stitution but they all failed. The land hold- ers were still too powerful. In 1829, peti- tions for an extension of the suffrage were met with contempt by the privileged class in the General Assembly. Five years later a convention to consider ways and means of establishing a constitution was held in Prov- idence, being attended by delegates from all the Rhode Island towns. Dorr was a dele- gate from Providence. When he made his report on the assembly, he attacked the exist- ing charter vigorously, although stoutly maintaining his allegiance to the State and its founders. He believed, (and he was right in so doing) that at the close of the Revolu-
tion the charter was dissolved as an article of government, that the sovereignty of the King of England did not pass to the Gov- ernor and Assembly but rather to the people who had fought the battles of the Revolution and their descendants, and that the people of Rhode Island had the inherent right to establish a constitution (in their original capacity) . His report showed that all other States, even Connecticut, had adopted con- stitutions. This report showed Dorr to be one of the ablest men in the State, a man to be feared by the landowners.
What happened in the swift years that followed is widely known. The General Assembly passed an act in 1834 requesting the freemen of the State to vote for general officers to choose delegates for a constitu- tional convention. But inasmuch as any ex- tension of the franchise would be vetoed by this body, such a step had no importance, and the convention amounted to nothing. The Rhode Island Suffrage Association was organized in 1840 to agitate for a constitu- tion. Petitions kept coming in for an en- largement of the suffrage. The General Assembly, in 1841, proposed a re-appor- tionment of delegates to its numbers on the basis of population, but this did not allevi- ate the approaching crisis.
A great parade, in April of 1841, inaugu- rated the Dorr movement, and many banners carried by the marchers had inscriptions which forecast the ominous future. Affairs moved swiftly from then on, and we find a People's Constitution drawn up by the Dor- rites in December, 1841. A short three months later, the General Assembly author- ized a similar constitution and drew up a constitution which granted suffrage. It was defeated because many of the landowners voted against it and because Dorr had not urged his followers to vote for it and they were under the impression that they could not do so. Had they done so they would have come into power and been able to set up a new order of government, and the Dorr War would have been avoided. As it was the General Assembly, waking up to the danger of the moment, passed an act mak- ing the officers in the Dorr movement guilty of treason and all their meetings illegal. But the act was not enforced, and the Dor- rites increased in power. When the regular
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elections came under the charter, the two governments were at bay, and the conse- quent failures of the Dorrites at the arsenal and their fort in Chepachet, the collapse of the whole movement, and Dorr's trial and imprisonment were soon over.
Dorr was a great benefactor and reformer of Rhode Island. His principles were abso- lutely right, but his failure to seize the psy-
chological moments of action and his too- great sense of logic caused his downfall. Though he erred in judgment and seemed to fail entirely, dying, in 1854, a broken man, his firm stand for the right had its influence and resulted in many of the privileges which Rhode Island citizens have today; and he, himself, must be listed high among Rhode Island's honored great.
DOWN THE BAY
E LIJAH ORMSBEE's invention, in 1794, of a steamboat which would actually run, may have been the cause of considerable astonishment among the masters of the many sloop-rigged packets, that came to anchor in Narragansett Bay, but it certainly did not cause them to worry. They would have laughed at the mere suggestion that any vessels propelled by steam could ever supplant them and their time-honored sailing ships. Yet, the day was fast ap- proaching when they would have to take the situation seriously, and see their trim ves- sels outdistanced and outdated.
The opening date of the era of steam- boats, was 1817, an era which has lasted up to the present day. In that year the ugly little steamer, "Firefly," made her first ap- pearance in Rhode Island waters when she steamed from New York to Newport in about twenty-eight hours. To those accus- tomed to seeing the slim and graceful sail- ing ships, this tiny vessel with awkward lines and black smoke was a bitter disap- pointment. Puffing and wheezing, she con- tinued to Providence, where huge crowds of interested spectators were at the dock to catch a first glimpse of her. Among these who were not only disappointed in the ap- pearance of the new invention, but also had other reasons for dissatisfaction, were the captains of the packets. However, it was a month later, when the "Firefly" went down the Bay to Newport to get President Mon- roe and bring him to Providence, that their active opposition began. A bitter rivalry arose between these packet-captains and the officers of the "Firefly," the former
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