History Of South Kingstown

Narragansetts & Niantics
As history dawned, Narragansett and Niantic Indians fished, farmed, hunted and defended the fields, forests, wetlands, and fresh and salt water ponds that defined their territory lining the coasts of the ocean and bay. Descended from aboriginal people variously reputed to have arrived in Rhode Island as early as 30,000 years ago, or, more likely as the last glacier retreated, a tribal population estimated at about 7,000, resided in kin-based villages consisting of winter long houses in the forests and summer camps scattered among the dunes.

The first recorded ‘contact’ between the Tribes and European explorers occurred in 1524 when Giovanni de Verrazano visited Narragansett Bay and bequeathed the name Rhode Island to the area. About a century later, in 1614, John Smith from Virginia sailed the coast and named it ‘New England’. That same year, Dutchman Adrian Block, visited an off-shore island and, immodestly, named it after himself. Otherwise all remained as it had always been and the Tribes continued to hunt, fish and farm as they had for millennia.

Settlers & Free-Thinkers
History got underway officially in 1635 when Roger Williams, a dissident churchman expelled from Massachusetts, first negotiated settlement rights from Narragansett Tribal Sachems and began leading groups of English settlers to the Providence area. Many of the settlers were free-thinkers fleeing church dominated settlements in surrounding Colonies and their numbers continued to swell. Twenty-two years later, in 1657, negotiations for the Pettaquamscutt Purchase opened South Kingstown and other portions of Washington County to European settlement. That same year, the village of Wakefield was established - reputedly named by Rowland Hazard in honor of a homestead in England. Seventeen years later, in 1674, with the arrival of additional settlers, Wakefield and surrounding villages were incorporated into the new town of KingsTowne, joining South Kingstown with Charlestown, North Kingstown, and Narragansett.

After forty years of settlement, strife between the Tribes and the English led to the outbreak of King Philip’s War. In South Kingstown the war was marked by the 1675 Great Swamp Massacre perpetrated on the western banks of Worden’s Pond on a frozen December night during which 300 braves and 400 Tribal women, children and elders were killed. The Narragansett Indian Tribe was largely decimated. Survivors were sold into slavery to local plantations or throughout the Caribbean. A remaining few retreated deep into nearby swamplands - where now a federally recognized Tribal Reservation serves as headquarters for today’s 2,400-member Narragansett Indian Tribe.

European settlement continued unabated and in 1723 the towns of North Kingstown and Charlestown were separately incorporated as was South Kingstown though still adjoined to Narragansett, which did not separate as an independently incorporated town until 1882. The populations of these early towns were remarkably diverse, containing many dissident denominations, Quakers, Baptists, Huguenots, Catholics, Jews and others - all assured of religious toleration guaranteed by Rhode Island’s Royal Charter negotiated and granted by Charles II in 1663. This charter contained the first guarantee of ‘freedom of religion’ in America. It was the most liberal charter to be issued by an English King during the entire Colonial era.

Planters & Pacers
South Kingstown’s magical mix of ocean, pond and meadow bathed by balmy breezes, warmed by the Gulf Stream, soon attracted a special breed of settler who created a ‘Southern Plantation Culture’ based on dairy and livestock production for export to the British West Indies and other ports-of-call on the Triangle Trade. The 17th and 18th centuries saw vast plantations extend across fertile coastal flats from Wickford to Westerly. Cattle, horses, sheep and pigs and the grains to fatten them brought unimagined wealth to the colony. The names of major South County Planters included Hazard, Robinson, Rodman, Perry, Congdon, Updike, Smith, Carpenter and Casey - familiar names one still encounters today throughout the area.

A signature product of the “Narragansett Planters” was the “Narragansett Pacer”, a light-footed saddle horse reputed to have been first introduced by South Kingstown’s Rowland Robinson. Bred from Andalusian and native stock, Pacers are considered the ancestor of all easy gaited horses in America. Small, sorrel, hardy, sure-footed and easy moving, they were first bred as carriage horses for export to southern sea coast and Caribbean colonies. Later they were also bred for speed! When a passion for horse racing swept 18th Century England, Rhode Island found itself the only New England Colony to permit horse racing - due largely to guarantees of religious tolerance and a tradition of separation of church and state. So for much of the century, South Kingstown’s race track at Sandy Neck Beach, saw many a Pacer win fabulous purses for their owners. Sadly the purses were not enough to avert pending economic collapse and eventually - although a Narragansett Pacer had been General George Washington’s favorite mount and Paul Revere rode a Pacer on his midnight ride - the breed became extinct as bankruptcies wiped out the early aristocrats of South County.

Slaves & Silversmiths
Slavery, both cause and effect of the wealth of the planters, distinguished South Kingstown as reporting the highest percentage of slaves of all the towns recorded in New England’s first census. Slaves, imported by Narragansett Planters or taken as booty in Indian wars, labored on the plantations as pictured in Hamlin Bacon’s mural, recently re-installed at the Old Washington County Jail by Kingston’s Pettaquamscutt Historical Society and titled, “Labors of the Narragansett Planters”.

The prominence of slavery on South Kingstown plantations eventually gave rise to abolitionist activities by several leading townsmen. Rhode Island’s first legislation in 1652 outlawing slavery in the Colony faced very little compliance and even less enforcement. More than a century later, in 1774, Rhode Island became the first Colony to prohibit the importation of slaves - but slavery itself persisted. It was not until 1843 that unambiguous legislation prohibiting slavery in Rhode Island became law and the last of the slaves became free.

The wealth of the planters also served as a magnet to ambitious artisans throughout the Colony. When six silversmiths set up business in Little Rest, today called Kingston Village, they crafted the first renowned artwork of the area while performing much as do bankers of today - in so far as they were entrusted to enhance the value of their prosperous clients’ liquid assets.

It was a sad day when South Kingstown learned John Casey, most famous of the six silversmiths and scion of prominent North Kingstown planters, had turned to counterfeiting Spanish coin with silver pilfered from his patrons. South Kingstown suffered its first scandal. Long eluding the law with the help of family and friends, the courts finally brought Casey before the law – overcoming the reluctance of two sitting juries to convict. But sadly, justice could not be served as Casey was broken free by his cronies in a sensational break from the Washington County jail and was last seen galloping out of town, headed west, never to be heard from again.

As the 17th and 18th centuries drew to a close, the era of the South Kingstown Planters drew to a close. The rise of mercantilist cities – Newport, Bristol, Providence whose wealth was in currency sounded the knell.

Pirates & Privateers
Not to be overlooked as further factors in bringing down the Planters were pirates and privateers plying the trade routes to the Caribbean, the Orient, India, Arabia, Africa, Europe and England throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. These marauders not only jeopardized both imports and exports of plantation wares they discouraged other lucrative mercantilist activity dependent upon the Triangle Trade. That trade featured rum, slaves, and molasses as well as the East Indian trade for silks and spices, or the Arabian Trade for trinkets bound for Muslim harems.

Revolutionaries 1763-1790
Rhode Island was reputed to be a leader in the American Revolutionary movement. Because it had the greatest degree of self-rule of all the original 13 colonies, Rhode Island had the most to lose from the efforts of England to increase her control over her American colonies. South Kingstown, with the rest of Rhode Island, had a long tradition of evading the poorly enforced navigation acts and smuggling was commonplace. Revolutionary fervor rose throughout Rhode Island as act after act restraining American freedoms were enacted by the English Parliament.

In April 1775, a week after the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, the colonial legislature in Kingston authorized raising a 1,500-man ''army of observation'' with Nathanael Greene as its commander. On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first colony to renounce allegiance to King George III. Ten weeks later, on July 18, the Assembly ratified the Declaration of Independence.

During the Revolutionary War itself, South Kingstown and Rhode Island furnished men, ships, and money to the cause of independence. Many Negro and Indian slaves from South Kingstown gained distinction as the "Black Regiment," a detachment of the First Rhode Island Regiment. Rhode Islander Nathanael Greene of the Kentish Guards became Washington's second-in-command and chief of the Continental army in the South and Rhode Islanders helped create the Continental navy and supplied its first commander in chief.

The Articles of Confederation, with its weak central government was ratified by Rhode Island in 1778, but several years later, when a political faction, led by South Kingstown's Jonathan Hazard, was suspicious of movements to strengthen that government, Rhode Island declined to dispatch delegates to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, which drafted the United States Constitution. And when that document was presented to the states for ratification Rhode Island balked. Hazard's faction delayed Rhode Island's approval of the U.S. Constitution. The state's individualism, its democratic localism, and its tradition of autonomy caused it to resist the centralizing tendencies of the federal Constitution.

In the period between September 1787 and January 1790, the rural-dominated General Assembly, meeting in Kingston, rejected no fewer than eleven attempts by the representatives from the mercantile communities to convene a state ratifying convention. Not until mid-January 1790, more than eight months after George Washington's inauguration as first president of the United States, did Rhode Island reluctantly call the required convention, but it took two separate sessions -- one in South Kingstown (March 1-6) and the second in Newport (May 24-29) - before approval was obtained. Most of Rhode Island’s residents feared the encroachment on local autonomy by a central government, whether located in London, Philadelphia, or Washington.

Rhode Island's course during this turbulent era -- first in war and last in peace -- is attributable in part to its tradition of individualism, self-reliance, and dissent.

Manufacturers and Mill Workers
With the demise of the plantation economy at the close of the 18th Century, many of the grand families of South Kingstown turned their sights to industry and applied revolutionary new means of manufacturing based on water power, a newly mobilized source of energy. Early gristmills owned by the Carpenters in Perryville and the Kenyons in Usquepaug, although still in existence, were overshadowed during the 19th century by the town’s three textile mills owned by the Robinson, Rodman and Hazard families.

Beginning as a cotton weaving operation in 1802, the Hazard’s Peace Dale mill (which is the best recorded of the three), moved to wool manufacturing - enjoying peak markets supplying woolen blankets to the Union Army during the Civil War and khakis to the U.S. Army in World War I. Between wars the mill produced high quality cashmere shawls and other luxury weavings. The vast wealth produced by the mills supported many other Hazard investments highlighted by the Kingston - Narragansett Pier Railroad as well as most major town amenities of the time. The Peace Dale mill was sold in 1918 to out-of-towners and in 1951 the Peace Dale mill was finally closed and sold to a southern firm. The Palisades Mill of today has invited the town to join it in planning for the future of the Mill. The Mill Reuse Feasibility Study and the Peace Dale Revitalization Committee both promise that the best thinking will guide this village into its bright new bicentennial in the 21st century.

The lot of mill workers in Peace Dale was enviable. Neighborhood amenities abounded - the Peace Dale Library, the Neighborhood Guild, the first ‘kindergarden’ in America – were all established for the well-being of the mill workers. Because so many mill workers were new immigrants from Southern or Central Europe or from French Canada, efforts were targeted at easing their assimilation. Mill workers houses were specially designed with unusually ample windows to benefit spinners and weavers performing piece work at home - they can still be seen on village streets, lending a special feeling to Peace Dale. In 1878, the Peace Dale Mill introduced a new experimental plan to share a portion of the mill profits with its employees in support of the Hazards' belief that “Capital and labor are interdependent. Their interests are identical”. Sadly the experiment did not long prevail against the turn-of-the-century decline of the New England mill economy.

Intellectuals
Just as mill-based manufacturing was entering its final days, South Kingstown turned to a new, exciting direction. In 1892 an agricultural school was established at the 140-acre Oliver Watson Farm in Kingston It was officially founded as the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. It was renamed Rhode Island State College in 1909 and was later designated as a land grant college.

In 1951 the college became the University of Rhode Island. It was designated a sea grant institution in 1971 and an urban grant institution in 1995. Beginning with a graduating class of 17 at its first commencement, the University celebrated its one hundred and nineteenth commencement in May 2005. Now with an enrollment of 11,298 undergraduates, 2,979 graduate students and about 87,000 alumni, the University inhabits four campuses with eight college academic divisions and one Graduate School of Oceanography

Also influential is the quality of our public school system whose nine public schools (K-12) educate a student enrollment of 4,238 and whose renown for excellence is a major and abiding reason for the draw our town exerts over young couples seeking to settle down and build new lives amid stimulating surroundings.

Farmers & Fishermen
An agricultural settlement from the very beginning, South Kingstown has always flourished in the farming industry. Its first major crop was flax, soon expanding to include vegetables with potatoes taking the lead for many years, now turning to the production of turf in more recent years. Measured by net revenues, greenhouse and nursery products are the leading source of income for Rhode Island farmers. Milk is the second most important source of agricultural income followed by eggs, sweet corn, cattle & calves and potatoes.

Four new trends are sweeping the agricultural industry in which South Kingstown takes a lead. First is the fashion for organic farm produce. Farm income from the growing, processing and marketing of organic food and fiber products became one of the fastest growing segments of the United States during the 1990s. Second are new trends in Farmers Markets featuring sale of fresh and local produce. Third are State priorities supporting farm to school linkages and last are initiatives to enhance marketing of agricultural products on the Internet.

While New England’s coast has been legendary for fishing since the middle ages – if not earlier, and fishing up and down our rivers and ponds yielded a major source of food for Indians, settlers and citizens for centuries, not until 1930 did commercial fishing come to prominence in South County. The industry flourished, unlike other sectors of the economy suffering decline due to the depression. Commercial fishing continued to advance in importance with the construction of the Jerusalem breakwater in the mid 1930s, and expanded greatly after World War II when the Point Judith Fisherman’s Cooperative Association (the Co-op) was formed to include all inshore ground-fishers in the port of Galillee.

With the enactment of the 200-mile limit in 1976, fishing strategies diversified as lobster, shellfish and swordfish assumed greater prominence. By 1978, Point Judith landings make up 61% of the total catch of Rhode Island. Fishing for new, diversified produce, however, did not require the same precision knowledge of the fishing grounds as formerly and a new group of younger, non-Co-op members made lots of money at the expense of the Swamp-Yankees and other longtime local ground-fishers. In 1992, the total value of fish landed in Point Judith was $36.2 million. Such profits brought many changes to the industry. The Co-op tried to survive but collapsed in 1994. Another industry in troubled transition!

Swamp Yankees
Surprisingly there is widespread agreement on the type of person who can properly be called a Swamp Yankee. He has been variously described:

Described by a newspaperman - on deadline:
“He’s a Yankee from poor origins who had to really hack it out of nothing.”

According to a librarian- with leisure to compose her thoughts:
“He’s a person who lived in woodland swamps and who became fiercely independent, stubborn, obstinate and uninformed of what was going on on the outside.”

According to a genuinely authentic Swamp Yankee old-timer:
“He’s an Anglo Saxon farmer like me. We stayed here. We’re a crotchety, contrarian breed. But pride in the heritage is overwhelming.”