*****
(Excerpts from "Fragments of
Time in Pawtuxet" by Hazel Wade Kennedy.)
Winder's Cove, Pawtuxet,
Cranston was the site in 1792 where Elijah
Ormsbee of Providence invented, built and operated a steamboat thirteen
years before Fulton 'invented' the steamboat. Elijah's was the first
boat propelled by steam to ply the waters of Narragansett Bay. This
year, [1992] during August, the Pawtucket Preservation Society
celebrated 200 years of steamboating, and gave an Ormsbee - Wilkinson
trophy at the Captains Dinner. Wilkinson was from Pawtucket and was the
person who cast and bore the cylinders for Ormsbee's steamboat.
*****
In 1769 when a ship was entering Pawtuxet Cove after a sea voyage,
Barlow Arnold, age 20, your author's uncle (6th generation), fell from
the mast and died. The woman known as the Pawtuxet Witch had prophesied
Barlow would never see his home again! He and other Pawtuxet lads
annoyed her and the last time this happened, she recognized Barlow and
put the curse on him.
*****
Right: "Old Sea Captain's
House, Foot of Peck Lane, Pawtuxet, Rhode Island" by Whitman Bailey
1937.
Once upon a time, an elderly woman, slight of frame with white hair,
lived with her husband in a little red house on Peck Lane. c1928.
During the last years of her life, she became a burden to her husband.
Whenever she disappeared from home, he went looking for her. She became
very religious and believed no matter what she did the Lord would take
care of her. Every day she would stand on the corner of Narragansett
Parkway and Peck Lane preaching the gospel. Several times she walked in
the middle of today' s Post Road with cars going around her. But, her
fatal day came! Her husband found her in the water at the foot of Peck
Lane trying to walk on the water. She was crying, "The Lord will take
care of me." Her husband could not get to her in time and she drowned.
*****
Random
Notes from Hazel:
During the 1700's and into the early 1800's the cove was still a busy
harbor with square-rigged sailing ships moored to a line of wharves
along the shore. Seamen were engaged in loading freight bound for
ports along the Atlantic coast and to the islands of the Caribbean Sea,
while others were unloading freight that had arrived to be transported
overland to towns and villages inland. There were warehouses along the
shoreline for storage of farm products and manufactured goods. At the
Customs House in Providence in 1805 at least 30 fright carrying vessels
were registered, claiming Pawtuxet as their home port. In these
days sloops carrying 80 to 100 tons were the leading vessels.
The small coastal village had small and large box-like houses lining
the streets. The rooms were large and usually each one had a
fireplace that served the householders for cooking and heating.
In the yards were beautiful flowers, vegetables, herb gardens, and
arbors covered with delicious Concord grapes. Fresh air blew in
from the Bay and meadowlands. People are clams and oysters from
the clean salt water and everywhere it was pleasantly quiet and serene.
PAWTUXET BRIDGE. The
earliest
bridge across the Pawtuxet River was a rope bridge used in the
seventeenth century. The first small wooden bridge was built
around
1711 and was located close to the falls where its abutments got the
full force of the river as well as the tide in the Pawtuxet Cove.
It
frequently required repairs and was carried away in the spring floods
of 1771 and 1784. In 1810 a new stone bridge was built and in
1884 a
twin arch span was erected of stone. In March 1886 the river
overflowed
its
banks and the force and volume of water that poured over the dam filled
the arches, built of stone and moved the Warwick end slightly on its
abutments. In the early twentieth century Pawtuxet Bridge and the rocks
in the Pawtuxet Falls were frequently the target for graffiti
artists.
To counteract this, the Pawtuxet Old Home and Improvement Association
planted quick-growing vines to grow over the rocks and walls on each
side of the falls. The bridge was widened in 1932 with reinforced
concrete construction faced with stone masonry. Repairs to the
bridge
are the joint responsibility of the Cities of Cranston and Warwick, and
it marks the unity of the two sections of Pawtuxet Village.
Vignettes from Other Sources:
Right: "Foot of Bridge Street, Pawtuxet, RI",
by Whitman Bailey, 1937
By
1935 Pawtuxet was in the middle of the
great
depression---the community was an assemblage of run down houses &
few people were of the old moneyed class. The channel had silted in not
allowing any deep draft vessels to enter-----no fish processing plants,
no factories---well, no nothing---a village of Swedes & old
Yankee's stock who were employed in Providence in factories or
domestics.
Totowamscut was the Narragansett Indian term for "bridge" and was
applied to the rock crossing that existed just above Pawtuxet Falls
before white settlers came to inhabit the place in 1636
.
An older wooden dam was replaced with a concrete spillway in the
1920s.
Cranston City Council members at the time of the construction of the
present Pawtuxet Bridge were Amasa Sprague, James Budlong, Charles
Bloomer, Henry Tucker, Charles Pate, Alonzo Stanley and Phineas
Conley. The bridge was constructed by Garvey Brothers and H.G.
Macomber.
The engineer for the bridge was Joseph Latham, whose final plans led to
what we now know as the “Pawtuxet River Bridge.”
Eddy Street in Providence had its origin
in the form of a toll road or turnpike to the Village of
Pawtuxet. Built in the year 1825, it began at Eddy's Point near
to what is now the junction of Ship and Dyer Streets and continued to
Berwick Lane within a half mile of Pawtuxet Bridge. The franchise
called for "one toll gate not to be within two miles of the State
House." At the time, the State House was located on North Main
Street, Providence. In the year 1853, a company was formed to
build and operate a Plank Road from Providence to Pawtuxet. A
charter and franchise was granted but the project was abandoned without
explanation.
Horse drawn and, later, electric, trolley cars were
the main modes of
transportation to and from Pawtuxet Village in the late 19th and early
20th Centuries. The Union Railroad Company operated both the Broad
Street Line from Providence south into Pawtuxet, and the "Bumble-Bee"
trolley from Pawtuxet west into the Lakewood neighborhood. During the
summer, open air "Bloomer cars" were employed that we speculate got
their name by transporting workers to and from Pawtuxet Village to work
in the C. G. Bloomer's Sons jewelry factory located on Commercial
Street.
The USS Pawtuxet was built at the
Portsmouth (NH) Naval Shipyard in 1864 as a "Double Ender" and a "Side
Wheel Steamer. She served in the Union blockade
of southern ports, and bombarded Confederate forts in Delaware and
North Carolina. After the Civil War ended, the Pawtuxet
was decommissioned in June 1865, and
sold off in October 1867. This ship was also listed in the Register of
Ships of the US Navy under the misspelling of Pontoosuc.
For those confused with the name of Pawtuxet
and the similar names of two other Rhode Island locations, Pawtucket and Pawcatuck, check out the amusing
discussion at http://www.whipple.org/docs/paws.html
Books about
Pawtuxet Village:
- Second Nature, Blooming in Pawtuxet Village,
by J.H. Hartman & S. N. Hartman
- Pawtuxet Village:
National Historic
District ~ The Cranston Side, by Janet Hudon Hartman, 2008
- Fragments of Time in Pawtuxet, by Hazel Wade
Kennedy, 1986
- Images of America: Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, by Henry
A.
L.
Brown
& Don D'Amato, 1997
Left:
Pawtuxet Village Subscribers Business Directory 1870
map. Click
map to access high
resolution original image
Also check out
these 1870 D. G. Beers Maps courtesy
of RIGenWeb:
Cranston-Pawtuxet/Edgewood
Warwick-Pawtuxet/Conimicut
Right: "Old Fish Hill Landing, Pawtuxet Cove, Rhode Island" by Whitman Bailey, 1935. We're not exactly sure of this location within Pawtuxet Village, and we have no specific reference to it except that at one time, Ed Johnson and Civil War veteran Samuel Greene both ran fish markets at the foot of Aborn Street. The artist, Whitman Bailey, was color-blind, and his black-and-white sketches first appeared in The Stamford Advocate (CT) in 1924. Avid readers watched for his weekly sketches of area locations. He was most likely descended from Jacob Whitman Bailey, a noted 19th century naturalist, artist, and professor at Brown University.
Left: "House on Old Elm Street, Pawtuxet, Rhode Island" by Whitman Bailey, 1937. It turns out that Pawtuxet Village really did have an Elm Street as found in old maps c1895. The location was from the present foot of Post Road through the center of what is now Pawtuxet Park between Emmons and East View Street.
Horse drawn and, later, electric, trolley cars were
the main modes of
transportation to and from Pawtuxet Village in the late 19th and early
20th Centuries. The Union Railroad Company operated both the Broad
Street Line from Providence south into Pawtuxet, and the "Bumble-Bee"
trolley from Pawtuxet west into the Lakewood neighborhood. During the
summer, open air "Bloomer cars" were employed that we speculate got
their name by transporting workers to and from Pawtuxet Village to work
in the C. G. Bloomer's Sons jewelry factory located on Commercial
Street. 
