Pettaquamscutt Historical Society

Colonel Washington’s Wakefield Ride,  February, 1756

     What a boost for Rhode Island tourism if we had another “Washington Slept Here” site.  Maybe we do.

     There’s no document, but there are many who believe that Colonel George Washington, with his Captains Mercer and Stewart and servants John Alton and William Bishop slept on Sugar Loaf Hill, outside Wakefield, at a hostelry later known as “Ye Olde Tavern” in 1756.  The five were headed for the Narragansett Ferries, at URI’s Bay Campus.  Editors at the University of Virginia, have long assumed the five men, headed for Boston, sailed from New London to Newport, through the infamous “Race”, and around Point Judith, challenging waters indeed..

     “Why, we wouldn’t take a horse out in your weather”, Beverly Runge politely demurred.  Horses were left with Thomas Chew, New London’s postmaster, whose letter received by Washington in Boston, the University of Virginia editors published in 1976.   I suggested, “you don’t know our waters, or the “Race” off Long Island and the perils awaiting at Point Judith”.  More likely, the five men, led by the “finest horse-man in Virginia” took fresh mounts from Chew and continued up to Westerly, up to Sugar Loaf Hill, and on to Jamestown and Newport. 

     My friends in Virginia have no document, “it was simply too long ago,” Mrs. Ringe wrote.  Washing-ton’s own three-page budget proves the young Colonel grandly visited Philadelphia and New York.  In Newport, the officers were elegantly entertained by Geoffrey Malbone.  The budget records, “by Cash to Mr. Malone’s servant, to a bowel broke: eight pounds in Virginia currency”.   Fare is next recorded for progress on a “British man-of-war”. 

      “Every officer on horseback, except mr. Washington, was killed or wounded”, Justice John Marshall, reports in his Life of Washington, in 1804.  This was “Braddock’s Defeat”, the July, 1755 ambush of the English troops out in Pennsylvania, at a fort later named for Lord Pitt.  The French and their Indians demolished the British force of 1,300.  “The general himself, after losing three horses, received a mortal wound, and his regulars fled in utmost terror and confusion”.  Washington buried General Braddock between the tracks of their cannon, preserving his corpse from marauders.

     In January, Washington was sent from Williamsburg to Boston to convince Governor-General Shirley that Pennsylvania must be retrieved.   Joshua Hempsted, New London’s diarist records his return on March 8, “Col. Washington in town.  He hath been to Boston to advise or be directed by the governor”.  Shirley’s letter that preceded his return to Williamsburg proves that he “directed”.  The men of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania armed again.  Out they went, that second summer, to find the French stronghold deserted, the French returned to Quebec. 

    But what of the Wakefield stop?  A change of horses from New London may well happened on  Samuel Ward’s Westerly farm.  Ward had Narragansett Pacers: his mare, Betsy was immediately bought out of his estate in March of 1776. The horses were small, but sure, and chosen despite Washington’s size.  Ward was a Newporter, son of a Governor, who settled over “on the mainland” around 1745, having married a Block Islander with dowry-land ashore.

      Up the old Queen’s High Way the five men rode.  At last the hostelry stood out, on Sugar Loaf Hill.  The largest building for many miles, it was a central gathering place.  We might assume that settlers rallied there that night in the ample upstairs hall, to hail the hero of Pennsylvania.

     The proud old building appears as the “Willard Hazard place” up to 1910 in the South Kings-town deeds.  Thomas O’Neill Gordon. was born there, he told me, in its front room., in 1917.  His mother and her sisters maintained the place as “Ye Olde Tavern” up to its demise in 1958.  Despite State preservation recording, down it went.  The 11/25/57 document states, “Washington slept here” But, we must remember, there is no document.

     “There wasn’t a fall when we didn’t have a chimney fire in the Old Tavern,” I gathered from Leona Kelley, social worker, teacher and long-time legislator.     Mr. Gordon, in his nearby house where he lived with his eldest son, anxiously showed me a brass plaque, an eagle.   “Do you think this was on their uniforms?”  How much I wished I could assure him, but the Roman eagle was no British emblem in 1756.  Mr. Gordon died that fall of ’93.  He had been sent a letter from the Ladies of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, keepers of the home of Washington, thanking him for his care of the story.  It was on his couch, ready to show to all, the last time I visited him.  

     Mr. Gordon described the June day the beloved old site went down.  “It was put together without a nail . . it just wouldn’t go down, it was that strong.  It was taken down, not torn”.  Its great oak timbers were taken away; some flooring was installed nearby, across from Wakefield’s Larchwood Inn.  Wooden pegs were saved, some given to Neil Mahoney, with the promise that there”would be a place for Tom” in the nursing home the Mahoneys had recently established. 

     Friends with a chain-fall saw that the great granite lintel, nine feet by four and one-half, eighteen inches high, was reset in the new house built for Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, not far away.

            In 1960 a house went up on the triangular plot.  It’s still lived in by the original owner who encouraged the mounting, on her land, of a granite fence post from the tavern, also removed that hot June day to the Gordons’ new home.  Funds from the Washington Trust Company enabled the South County Tourism Council to emplace it.  Its bronze plaque saves the story.  A patriotic Wakefielder sees that its Stars and Stripes is renewed each year.   

           “Will you go with me to the banks of the Monongahela, to see your youthful Washington, supporting, in the dismal hour the ill-fated Braddock; and saving by his judgment and his valor, the remains of a defeated army?”  So asked Henry Lee, memorializing his friend and cousin in his “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen” speech to Congress.  We celebrated here that young Colonel here, on Sugar Loaf Hill, and the scholars in Virginia, admitting no document, were pleased.

                                                *          *          *          *          *

       Compiled by Tempus Fugit as a souvenir of the “Washington Rides” originated by the South County Tourism Council and the Washington Trust, and then carried on by NewportFED in 1996, 1999 and 2002.  Was offered to South Kingstown schools but, except for a 1994 presentation at Wakefield Elementary, never adopted. 

       Posted 12-22-2009

An Article for Wellesley, on their President Caroline Hazard, 1899-1910,

          of Rhode Island 

      A century ago, President Hazard retired.  She was a fine student, a canny businesswoman and a romantic.  

     Your Chapel’s iridescent marble relief by Daniel Chester French commemorates Alice Freeman Palmer, “in the heart of the college she loved” upon her death in 1902.    President Palmer brought Miss Hazard to Wellesley; she cherished the love that required Miss Freeman’s retirement. 

    President Angell of Michigan supplied Henry Durant excellent graduates for his faculty.  In 1879, Miss Freeman arrived, only twenty-four years old, to teach history. 

     Angell was the closest of college friends of Rowland Hazard, whose father established the first American woolen manufactury.  His daughter Caroline, born in 1856, was stringently educated. German was spoken in her nursery; she attended Providence’s best “classes”.  At fifteen, was taken en famille on a glorious four-month tour of Europe, crossing to Liverpool on the Scotia, the last ocean-going side-wheeler.  In Florence, a winter of piano teachers, a singing coach for her brothers and lectures amongst the galleries, palaces and museums awaited.

      In Providence, Mrs. Hazard arranged for Caroline and her friends to be tutored by J. Lewis Diman, Brown’s distinguished professor of history. He died, mid-career. Such was Caroline’s grief, that Mrs. Hazard suggested she com-pose his biography.  Horace Scudder (whose wife taught at Wellesley) published the memoir for Houghton Mifflin, and then brought out her Rhode Island history and ballads. Soon, she was established in Boston intellectual circles.  President Freeman invited her to join a visiting committee.      

     In 1887, Alice Freeman resigned to marry a Harvard professor of Greek, George Herbert Palmer. Despite weak health, she travelled widely, as a senior academic. Upon Julia Irvine’s 1899 resignation, she and her husband nominated Miss Hazard, and courted her (and Rowland, her business-man brother) for months, bringing success. 

     Miss Hazard dedicated ten buildings in ten years. Some have, of course, gone, among them the Hemenway Gymnasium, so much ahead of its time.  The   four Elizabethan dormitories of your “Hazard Quadrangle”; your white marble library; and “Oakwoods”, an outright gift as the president’s house, recently converted for admissions use stand.  The library graces “Rhododendron Hollow”, enhanced by President Hazard, whose estate in Rhode Island boasted a species, early introduced to America.

     Miss Hazard treasured your landscape.  She contracted with Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and “when the time came”, according to your fine survey, The Landscape and Architecture of Wellesley College, “she sent her personal check”.   She led the buildings and grounds committee into the 1920s.

    Her friendships, with George Herbert Palmer who presented rare books to Wellesley upon each anniversary of his wife’s death and with Katherine Lee Bates, with whom she shared her 1906 sabbatical in the Holy Land, enrich Wellesley today.

       Her introduction to An Academic Romance, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1940 pairs the Palmers’ letters with the Brownings’.  Caroline Hazard bought those, including the “caskets in which they were kept” on the New York market in 1930, for your college.  

     Other treasures arrived: a Florentine manuscript, bearing its book-sellers stamp, indicating it was bought by President’s mother on that glorious family venture is one.  The royal-white caparisoned ceramic elephant, reputed to be one of four minister’s seats in the court of Cathy stood guard in the foyer of her Santa Barbara home, “Mission Hill”.    

     Miss Hazard’s pilgrim’s scallop shell of St. James of Compestela appears on the cornerstone of her library and in her quadrangle.  It formerly graced the mantel in the president’s house.  The faith she had in Wellesley, sustained by Alice and George Herbert Palmer’s lives and of all the college scholars she admired enriches us now.  

                                                                                                October 1, 2009

Helen Farrell Allen, Principal, Tempus Fugit

     supported by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities

            By Helen Farrell Allen, Principal, Tempus Fugit

     A granite block supporting a bronze tablet stands before a Victorian house outside Westerly, where Langworthy and Shore Roads meet. It hails Samuel Ward, Jr., Lieutenant-Colonel of the Continental Army.  I’ve long wondered why the father, not the son, is hailed.

     Samuel Ward, Sr. governed Rhode Island during the Stamp Act controversy, but his resolutions for Rhode Island’s Committee of Correspondence and his leadership in both Continental Congresses are almost forgotten.  He died “at his meridian”, as his admirers wrote.  Smallpox took him, in Philadelphia in March of 1776.  He would have “Signed”.

      Ward was born in Newport, son of Richard Ward, Rhode Island governor in the 1740’s.  He followed his father to that post in 1762-3 and 1765-7.  He was a delegate to both Continental Congresses, that of September, 1773 and the Second, following the conflict at Lexington and Concord: “April the Eighteenth of ‘75”.  He died, as it is carved on his grave in Newport, “on station” in Philadelphia, March 26, 1776.

      At twenty-five, Ward married Anna Ray of Block Island, daughter of Simon Ray a leading proprietor of the Island.  They settled on her dowry land, some six hundred acres called by the Ninigret Indians Tushcottock, in Westerly.  Ward frequently wrote to Anna as his “better half”, and that she was, sharing the business tasks of the farm with him.  In 1765, 2,000 pounds of cheese were shipped to Boston.

     Anna died, perhaps of cancer, in 1770.  Of their eleven children, all lived to adulthood except Hannah, their second daughter.  She joined her mother in the graveyard on September 8, 1774, shortly before Ward’s return from the First Continental Congress.  A long and sad ride that must have been, accompanied only by Cudjoe, one of three family slaves. 

 A night for George Washington?     I maintain that Colonel Washington stayed at Tushcottock en route to Boston in late February, 1756.  He travelled, with four men, on a matter of Lord Braddock’s “Dismal Tragedy”, his defeat in the Pennsylvania forests, via Newport.  Geoffrey Malbone, the resplendent Virginian, Newport’s leading merchant, awaited them.  A Westerly stop following a New London night with Post Master Joseph Chew verified in The Letters of George Washington would be logical.  Dr. Joshua Babcock, Franklin’s correspondent would have recommended Ward, for fresh horses would be on his farm, ready for the next stop, “Sugar Loaf Hill”, (later Wakefield) and the Narragansett Ferries beyond.  Dr. Babcock’s house stands today, the pride of Westerly, on US 1, the old Post Road.

     In the morning, Washington might well have been introduced to Rhode Island’s own Narragansett pacer, small but smooth-riding for the long uphill journey to the Bay.  We know he bought a “golden Narragansett” in 1799, the year he died and that Ward was well-known for breeding them.   

     As taxes grew and threats to their rights as Englishmen developed, Ward was among the first, in 1773 to propose Committees of Correspondence among the colonies.  Resolutions were respectfully addressed to the Ministry, not the Monarch. The closing of the Port of Boston in 1774, however, triggered the First Continental Congress.  From each Colony, the men hastened to Philadelphia.  Ward quickly impressed his fellow delegates.  They named him Chairman of the Committee of the Whole that met in camera and controlled agendas.  The Congress closed in late October; Ward and Cudjoe negotiated the long return to Westerly, with the dismal realization of his daughter’s death.

      The Second Congress was called, with greatest alarm, after the events at Lexington and Concord.   Ward was made chair of the “secret committee” immediately charged with obtaining munitions from France, the Caribbean or anywhere else.  Franklin, Robert Morris and Silas Deane joined him in that enterprise.

     In June Ward’s committee proposed Colonel George Washington of Virginia as Continental Commander.   He alone could moderate Yankee, Quaker and plantation interests.  Granted, he was the only delegate in uniform (mothballed from the Braddock campaign), but other qualities quickly became apparent.

     Ward’s elder sons, Charles and Samuel had joined the forces in front of Boston in March of ’75.  His namesake was captured on the disastrous Quebec expedition that saw the death of General Montgomery, a young leader of such promise.  Samuel Ward was taken and held prisoner until August of 1776.

     Two daughters had husbands under Rhode Island’s James Varnum, defending Boston:  Christopher Greene, brother of General Nathanael Greene and Captain Ethan Clarke of Westerly.  Imagine keeping Ward’s farm going.  The younger children were left in the charge of a Newport cousin.  Governor Ward’s letters from Philadelphia parallel those from Washington to Mount Vernon.

A Philadelphia widow intervenes before tragedy strikes.    Mrs. Mary House, a well-to-do Philadelphia widow let rooms in her Lodge Street house to delegates to the Congress.  Ward, most fortunately, was one of her boarders, for both of the meetings.  He became more than a boarder, it appears.  Silas Deane wrote Mrs. Deane on December 12, “Governor Ward has, in a formal manner laid siege to Mrs. House, and I am apt to think the fortress will surrender on the first serious summons”.

     Nathanael Green, from Rhode Island’s camp in front of Boston wrote Catherine Ward Greene, the Governor’s eldest daughter on January 13, 1776, “I hear (your Daddy) is paying his addresses to a very Rich Widow worth Ten thousand Pounds Sterling. How does it (sit) with you?  Mother in Law (editor’s note:  stepmother was a parallel term) has an ill sound, but a father’s happiness doubtless will qualify the Evil.”

     Smallpox arrived in Philadelphia in the winter of ’76 and held the frozen city captive.  Ward, berudging time from Congress, refused inoculation, at that time a danger in itself.  Lister’s cow-pox serum was years away.  “There never was a sick person more assiduously attended in any part of the World than Mr. Ward”, writes Thomas Young, one of the five doctors that attended him. 

     “Besides the tender and affectionate Mrs. Mary House with whom he lodged,” Doctor Young reports, “he had constant attendance every night by some or other of the most respectable persons in town.”

      Congress mourned him for a month, “with crepe upon the arm.”  Young continues, “One at least of the mighty advocates for American Independency is fallen in Mr. Ward, to the great grief of the Protopatriot, Samuel Adams.

     The bereaved Mrs. House sent a letter to Mary Ward Clarke, packed in her father’s trunk that Cudjo brought north in April.  “Permit me in the most affectionate manner to Sympathize with you in the loss of your tender and truly respectable father . . . the sorrow in which he has left his surviving Relations, friends and Country can only find relief and consolation in a pious Reflection upon the Example he has set and how much he lived and died the Christian.”

     John Adams wrote to Abigail on March 29, “We have this week lost a very valuable friend of the Colonies. . .”  In 1821, Adams responded to a letter from his son, Samuel, Jr., the thriving founder of the Bank of New York,  “When he was seized with the smallpox, he said that if his vote and voice were necessary to support the cause of the Country he would live, if not, he would die.”

     Ward now lies in Newport’s Common Burial Ground, moved there from Philadelphia by the State of Rhode Island in 1860.  The marble table monument flanks his fathers.  Governor Richard Ward’s plaque boasts his family’s arms and Tudor roses.  No heraldry for the son: his American record stands as Governor and as delegate to the Congresses, “on station at the General Assembly.”

     Not far away in the crowded cemetery stands the tomb of William Ellery, Esq.  He was called to Philadelphia upon Ward’s death.  He and Stephen Hopkins signed for Rhode Island.  Ellery’s grave is surrounded by an iron fence, secure and grand.  It is opened only on the Fourth of July when, with the glory of the Newport Artillery and the Sons of the American Revolution in attendance.  Ribbons and flowers shine. 

      Squinting through the iron pickets, one can make out the grave of a daughter.  Her name is Philadelphia.  The family thus marked its glory.  But nearby, in the earliest part of the cemetery lies Samuel Ward, known to the few today who know his letters.  No biography exists; a few letters were published in 1952.  He deserves more, and perhaps more is to come, dear reader as we conclude his story.

Credits:  Mrs. Houses’s letter is held by the Rhode Island Historical Society

     Dr. Young’s letter and the Silas Deane and John Adams quotes are in The Correspondence of Governor Samuel Ward, May 1775-March 1776, Bernhard Knollenberg, editor, Providence Rhode Island Historical society.

     Nathanael Greene’s quote is in The Papers of General Nathanael Greene, Vol. 1, Richard K. Showman, Editor, University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

This article appeared in Rhode Island Home, Living and Design

Volume 5, Issue 2.

(Date of this posting: September 29, 2009)

Whence the Names of the Towns in Washington County?

In the introduction to the Vital Records of Rhode Island 1636-1850, James Arnold provides an interesting sketch about the origin of the town names in Washington County, originally known as the Narragansett Country. The choice of several town names reflects southern Rhode Island’s strong ties to England, most especially to King Charles II. During the early intercolonial conflict over the jurisdiction of southern Rhode Island, the region was named Kings Province by the king’s commissioners in 1665. It was changed to Kings County in 1729 and changed again in 1781 to Washington County. As the population grew and population centers shifted, the two original towns of Kingstown and Westerly divided and subdivided into the towns we know today.

What follows is an updated version of Arnold’s synopsis. However, he does not explain the name changes of 1686. When King Charles died in 1685, his chosen successor was his younger brother James, as none of his fourteen illegitimate children could lawfully inherit the Crown. After receiving complaints of high misdemeanors against the Governor and Company of the colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut, King James revoked their Royal Charters by issuing writs of Quo Warranto (By What Authority?). The colonies were placed under the administration of Governor Sir Edmond Andros of New York and the town names were changed. For example, in Kent County the name of the town of Greenwich was changed to Dedford. The Dominion of New England, as it was known, was short lived. When King James was deposed in 1688, Andros was arrested in Boston and sent to England for trial. Soon after, the original names of the towns were restored.

North Kingstown, incorporated October 28, 1674 as Kings Towne, so named because it was the town given the colony through the pleasure of the king. Original name Aquidnessett. First English settlement in 1641. Under authority of Connecticut, the town was incorporated as the Plantation of Wickford in 1663. Name changed to Rochester, June 23, 1686, but restored in 1689.

South Kingstown, separated from North Kingstown, February 26, 1723, which provided that North Kingstown should be the older town. South Kingstown called by the proprietors Pettaquamscutt after the Pettaquamscutt Purchase of 1658. It was the largest town in the state until the 20^th century.

Westerly, incorporated May 14, 1669. Original name Misquamicutt. Called Haversham, June 23, 1686. Restored as Westerly in 1689. Called Westerly because it was the westernmost town in the colony.

Charlestown, incorporated August 22, 1728. Original name Shannock. Separated from Westerly. Named “to the honor of King Charles II, who granted us our charter.”

Exeter, incorporated March 8, 1743. Original name Yawgoo. Separated from North Kingstown. Called by the proprietors Newberry in honor of Walter Newberry, treasurer of the company. Called Exeter after the English town of that name.

Richmond, incorporated August 18, 1747. Separated from Charlestown. Named in honor of William Richmond, Rhode Island’s longest serving assistant to the Governor.

Hopkinton, incorporated March 19, 1757. Separated from Westerly. Named in honor of Gov. Stephen Hopkins, who was later one of Rhode Island’s two signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Narragansett, set off from South Kingstown as a separate district in 1888 as the population of Narragansett Pier exploded and demand for town services increased. While there was a village called Narragansett on Boston Neck, the town name appears to be an abbreviation of Narragansett Pier, as the agricultural districts of Boston Neck and Point Judith were reluctant to join if their taxes were raised. The original pier at Narragansett was built by John Robinson about 1780. Finally incorporated as a township March 28, 1901.           

- A. Craig Anthony

Posted 2007

The View from Little Rest Hill

Ever want to climb the stairs up to the cupola of the Old Washington County Courthouse and take a look around? For many years I wanted to but the pigeons had turned it into a hazardous waste site prohibiting such a venture. A few years ago it underwent a major cleanup and restoration. Recently, with the kind permission of the Kingston Free Library branch librarian, Pam Mead, I was finally able to make the journey inspired by the words of Jonathan Helme in his Recollections of South Kingstown written about 1870:

[We shall next] go up to the Court House. This belongs to the State; is a large and substantial wooden building, standing on the apex of Little Rest Hill. Looking out of the windows perhaps the most extensive view of the country round about can be obtained, including the great Atlantic Ocean; and I am not sure since we have California, but the Pacific can be discerned. If the reader will take the trouble to ascend and look out of these windows, he can with the naked eye, in a westerly direction, see many of the farm houses, barns, &c., in the State of Connecticut; and Hopkinton, Richmond, and Westerly, in this State, together with Watch Hill Light House and the light house at Greensport, Long Island. Northerly, Exeter, North Kingstown, Nooseneck Hill, West Greenwich Court House, East Greenwich, and [the] light house at Warwick appear. Easterly, Jamestown, Newport, Portsmouth, Little Compton, and with a good spy-glass, Fall River are discernable. Southerly, Charlestown, and the Island in the Atlantic, New Shoreham, is plainly seen. After viewing all these places, what a splendid view is to be seen of our own town, with its many villages, ponds, rivulets, hills and valleys. There is Peace Dale, Rocky Brook, Wakefield, and passing down to Narragansett Pier, which will of late astonish all of the old settlers of this village when they come this way and the traveler will notice three of those old fashioned houses, belonging to Christopher, Benjamin, and James Robinson, (the latter now owned by Senator Sprague has been entirely remodeled) and each of them very pleasant residences. The old stock has been dead many years. Instead of turning to the left in order to gain the Pier, we keep right on south, and being up against Point Judith Light-house, which faces the broad Atlantic, the place dreaded by mariners, and where the raging waves of the sea ‘foam out their own shame.’  Besides the light-houses I have mentioned, Dutch Island, Beaver tail, and two or three others of which I have forgotten, are distinctly visible. Thus it will be seen, that from this lookout, no less than fifteen towns with some of their prominent buildings, together with scenes in three different states come to view.

Traveling up the stairs I was greeted with ancient graffiti – the most prominent reading: “John Ladd Nov. 10, 1945 Kingston Rhode Island Yank.”  Then it was up the ladder to open the trapdoor and climb past the old bell and its wooden pulley making their last stand against the weather. A lot has happened in the past  century or so, mainly trees. In 1524 Verrazzano wrote of his visit to Rhode Island, “Many times we were from five to six leagues inland, which we found as pleasing as it can be to narrate, adapted to every kind of cultivation—grain, wine, oil. Because in that place the fields are from 25 to 30 leagues wide, and devoid of every impediment of trees, of such fertility that any seed in them would produce the best crops.” 

In the PHS photograph collection there are many views of this largely treeless agricultural landscape in the in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  I regret to report that much like the Hannah Robinson Tower the view from atop the Old Courthouse is now unfortunately obscured by trees for approximately 270 degrees, excepting, “in a westerly direction (towards) the State of Connecticut; and Hopkinton, Richmond, and Westerly.”

View to the West

--  A. Craig Anthony

The Mystery Safe

Did you ever wonder about the Old County Records Office that stands next to the Kingston Free Library, formerly known as the Old King’s County Court House? The small, one-story, granite block building was built in 1857 to store court records of the first King’s County Court House built in 1752, originally across the street on the south side of Kingstown Road. The Records Office was reportedly the first totally fireproof building in the United States. The Court House was rebuilt at its present location in 1775 and was in use until 1891. A new Washington County Court House was built in West Kingston in 1894. Soon after, the contents of the Old County Records Office were relocated as well.

In the ensuing years the building served a variety of uses. At one time it was a carpenter’s shop for the local youth. In 1954, the Kingston Free Library Association converted it into the Little Rest Museum and later it also served as a repository for local history and genealogical resources, called the Little Rest Archives. In 1974 and 1995, the majority of the building’s collections were transferred to the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society.

In the summer of 2004, an opportunity arose to visit the Old County Records Office. Inside, a central entry is flanked by two windows in the gable end that faces the road. The back of the building is divided into two vaults with steel doors and two windows. Between the entrance to the two doors is a large safe called the “mystery safe,” as no one knows the combination to the lock or what might be in it.

Some artifacts and papers from the Little Rest Museum were still left behind, including a bass drum from the Kingston Cornet Band, several large wall maps, George Rose’s 1865 account book, a printed color roster for Company H, 4^th Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers, and other miscellaneous papers. Branch librarian Pam Mead recommended to the library board that these remaining items be transferred across the street to PHS for safekeeping. With the help of eager volunteers, these items were reunited with the Little Rest Museum and Archives collections, as well as 140 boxes of The Narragansett Times, a near complete run!

But what was in the Mystery Safe and would we ever know? I recently came across a small file box filled with typewritten index cards, which appears to be the original catalog for the Little Rest Museum and Archives. In reviewing the cards I noticed a few with the words, “Filed: Safe in Little Rest Archives,” written on the bottom. After going through the whole box of cards, here is the list of what may or may not still be in the Mystery Safe:

1.    A manila envelope with notes and reports on the Kingston Free Library 1936-1945 and a newsprint photograph of the Old Reading Room.

2.   The financial records of the Kingston Congregational Church, May 1939-December 1948.

3.   Reports of the Every Tuesday Club.

4.   The Act of Incorporation for The Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, June 26, 1959.

5.   And last, some old sulphur matches.

Not exactly a bar of gold, but at least the mystery is solved. If anyone knows of a good locksmith or a safecracker who would like a challenge, perhaps it would be worth retrieving these items.

There is yet one more mystery safe in Kingston, the one from the Old Kingston Post Office . . . .

-A. Craig Anthony