Providence Plantations, Continued
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GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 18TH-CENTURY PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS, CONTINUED “So long as the past and present are outside one another, knowledge of the past is not of much use in the problems of the present. But suppose the past lives on in the present: suppose, though encapsulated in it, and at first sight hidden beneath the present’s contradictory and more prominent features, it is still alive and active; then the historian may very well be related to the non-historian as the trained woodsman is to the ignorant traveller.” — R.G. Collingwood, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939, page 100 “I go the way that Providence dictates with all the assurance of a sleepwalker.” —Adolf Hitler, 1936, München PROVIDENCE AT THE BEGINNING HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1750 Stephen Hopkins helped to found the 1st public library in Providence, Rhode Island.1 1751 18th of 10th month (New Style): Job Scott was born in the part of north Providence, Rhode Island that has since become Smithfield, to Friends John Scott and Lydia Scott. After a period of what has been said to be youthful folly he “requested the care, and became a member of the Monthly Meeting of Smithfield, then extending to Providence.” 1752 Near Providence, Rhode Island, Obadiah Brown opened a water-powered mill for the grinding of cocoa beans — so that locals would be able to enjoy this favorite beverage fresh without relying on grinders in Boston or New-York. The Reverend Doctor James MacSparran of Rhode Island completed his AMERICA DISSECTED. REV. DR. MACSPARRAN November 29, Wednesday (New Style): Woonsocket or Quinsnicket was the Smithfield Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends’s upper meetinghouse and Saylesville its lower meetinghouse. Its area, in the Revolutionary period, encompassed not only Providence, Rhode Island, which did not yet have its own meetinghouse, but all of central Massachusetts. Friend Jeremiah Wilkinson’s farm was across the Blackstone River from the Woonsocket upper meetinghouse in Cumberland, on a rise known as Cherry Hill north of Camp Swamp and south of Hunting Hill, about four miles from the Saylesville lower meetinghouse. On this day a baby girl was born, a “birthright” Friend named after one of Job’s daughters, Jemimah. She was probably the 8th surviving child of Friend Elizabeth Amey Whipple Wilkinson: • 1739 William Wilkinson • 1740 Patience Wilkinson • 1740 Amy Wilkinson • 1741 Jeremiah Wilkinson • 1743 Simon Wilkinson • 1745 Benjamin Wilkinson • 1750 Marcy Wilkinson 1. Please don’t presume that “public” here means available for the use of free citizens of color. 214 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM • 1752 Jemimah Wilkinson • 1755 Stephen Wilkinson • 1757 Jeptha Wilkinson • 1760 Elizabeth Wilkinson • 1764 Deborah Wilkinson At any rate, Friend Jemimah Wilkinson would be part of a farm family of eight sons and four daughters, and would be about 12 or 13 years of age at the death of her mother.2 WILKINSON FAMILY 1753 POOR JOB, 1753. AN ALMANACK FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1753 by Job Shepherd, Philom. Newport, Rhode Island: James Franklin. Benjamin West moved to Providence and opened a school. Unable to make enough money this way, he would open a dry-goods store and bookstore. 2. The HISTORY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, no author cited, issued by Albert J. Wright, Printer, Boston and Philadelphia, in 1878, gives the date of birth not as the 29th of November but the 19th. Another branch of the Quaker Wilkinson family in Rhode Island, headed by Oziel Wilkinson, presumably related to the ironworking Wilkinsons of Birmingham, England, moved to Pawtucket and became involved with Friend Moses Brown and with Samuel Slater in the creation of the 1st water-driven cotton-yarn mill in America, and thus had nothing to do with the disownment of Friend Jeremiah Wilkinson’s daughter Jemimah Wilkinson and those associated with her (although that family would get into trouble with the Quakers as well, when one of its daughters, Hannah, got married with Samuel Slater, a non-Friend). Oziel Wilkinson and Company would in 1794 begin a metal- working mill near the Pawtucket Falls and in 1810 would erect a 3 1/2-story mill made of rubblestone for the manufacture of cotton yarns. His son David Wilkinson, in the machine shop on the ground floor, would invent cotton-working machinery. In 1816, the ironmaster David Wilkinson and his nephew Samuel Greene would manufacture the “Scotch” loom designed by William Gilmore, Rhode Island’s first marketable power loom. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 215 HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM In the prospering Rhode Island colony, at the corner of Benefit and College Streets in Providence, an Athenaeum (private lending library) was initiated. This was the 4th such institution to be created along North America’s eastern coastline. Publication of the Reverend Doctor James MacSparran of Rhode Island’s AMERICA DISSECTED. AMERICA DISSECTED In London in about this year, a plan of the British dominions of New England in North America was engraved by Richard William Seale and hand colored and “Published by the executors of Dr. William Douglas of Boston in New England, from his original draught.” Dr. William Douglass (1700-1752) was a Scottish physician practicing in Boston who had studied in Edinburgh, Leyden, and Paris. Here is a detail from that map: 216 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1754 John Checkley died in Providence, Rhode Island. The inventory of his estate listed no war club or other valuable historical Metacom artifacts; in fact it indicates only some “Indian toys.” The inhabitants of Providence, Rhode Island were petitioning their authorities toward obtaining a “large water engine.” Passing through Providence, Patuxet near Warwick, and Warwick, Rhode Island, the Reverend Jacob Bailey recorded his impressions of these locales. “JUST PASSING THROUGH” June 14, Friday (New Style): Portions of the town of Cranston were annexed to the city of Providence, Rhode Island. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 217 HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1755 The population of Providence, Rhode Island amounted to, in the categories of the day: 747 men, 741 women, 655 boys, 754 girls, 262 blacks, 275 men able to bear arms, and 406 enlisted soldiers. John Green’s Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England was based largely upon the previously published map by Dr. William Douglass. Dr. Douglass (1700-1752) had been a Scottish physician practicing in Boston who had studied in Edinburgh, Leyden, and Paris. Here are two details from his earlier map: 218 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM EAST GREENWICH RI MOUNT HOPE PORTSMOUTH TIVERTON WARWICK RI REHOBOTH BRISTOL WARREN SWANSEA “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 219 HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM CONCORD (In the lower right corner of this new 1855 offering we are offered the First Comers at Plymouth — being met on the shore by an Indian holding a pole with a liberty cap atop it!) CARTOGRAPHY Also in this year, a map by Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville: 220 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 221 HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM Also in this year, a map by Thomas Kitchin: 1756 The new Back Street in Providence, Rhode Island, that ran along the face of the hill to the east of and parallel to the city’s Towne or Main Street, was complete, but only as a narrow and twisty way, running along pre- existing plot lines and avoiding pre-existing private backyard graves, nor did it go all the way to connect at its north end with North Main Street. The town would still need to seek the “benefit” of a straightening of this back street, by relocating a number of family graves to the common burial ground, and by making a connection between the two streets at their northern end. (The straightened and connected back street would come eventually to be known as “Benefit Street.”) 222 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX PROVIDENCE RHODE ISLAND GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1758 In Providence, Rhode Island, along a footpath meandering through the gardens and orchards of the original Roger-Williamish strips of house lots that had extended indefinitely back from Town Street (Main Street), a narrow winding “Back Street” had been carved out. However, initially there had been no connection, at its northern end, with North Main Street. In this year that northern-end connection was put in, but at the same time, a gate was put across this entrance “to pacify all objectors and to insure the quiet of the neighborhood.” Evidently only local residents with keys would be allowed, for the following half a century, to make use of this connection between Back Street and North Main Street! (To straighten and widen this street it would eventually be necessary to relocate some graves from family burial plots to the Main Burial Ground. Upon this straightening and widening, “Back Street” would in 1772 be renamed Benefit Street, in gratitude to these dead folks whose slumbers had been disturbed for “the common benefit of all.”) The county house on Meeting Street in Providence, Rhode Island, that had been erected in 1730, burned down.