The water near the landing is part of an estuary, which means that salt water moving in from Buzzard’s Bay meets fresh water washing down the river. It’s a unique and beautiful natural space. At the time of King Philip’s War, in the late 1670s, the west branch of the Westport River (then called the Acoaxet River) was inhabited by a branch of the Sakonnet people led by Mamanuah, whose stepmother was Awashonks, sachem of the Sakonnets who inhabited the west side of Little Compton. The English at that time considered the entire area to be part of Plymouth Colony, whose leaders refused to acknowledge the dual leadership of the Sakonnet people. They preferred to deal solely with Mamanuah, whose land holdings were more extensive than Awashonks’. To reward Mamanuah and his people for their assistance in fighting King Philip, the English granted them deeds to some of their ancestral lands on the Acoaxet River including the area around Adamsville Landing. These deeds became a source of power for the native inhabitants, who sold their land in piecemeal to the English settlers in ways that were “troublesome and costly” to the purchasers. With this land as leverage, Mamanuah’s people were more able to resist the indentured servitude and displacement experienced by Awashonks’ people. However, in the sixty years that followed King Philp’s War, the Adamsville area gradually became English property as a result of systemic colonization, coercion, and indebtedness. An 1861 census report of native peoples in Massachusetts indicated that the west side of the Westport River remained the “most numerous settlement” of the descendants of the Sakonnets, although they no longer held deeds to the land. Official documents can’t tell the whole story of the land. Information included in historical timelines—and in historical tours—is limited, carefully worded and selected, and never neutral. We should always be asking more questions. How did ideas of land ownership differ between the English and the Sakonnets? What role did the threat of violence play in the dealings between these cultures? Today, Adamsville Landing is a common destination for kayakers and canoers on scenic day trips. Maybe, today, as you take this tour, that’s what you’re doing. What does it mean to be paddling here? Who does this land belong to, and what does it mean to own a river? A salt marsh? A forest? Who else has paddled here, and when, and why? How can you engage more deeply and critically with the many, many histories of the land around you?

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This pond and its link to the West Branch of the Westport River are the primary reasons for Adamsville's existence. These natural resources created an ideal spot for both a gristmill and a sawmill. Early settlers were quick to realize the area’s potential and dammed the pond to maximize its waterpower. Mills were essential to survival and villages grew up around them. Colonists needed their grain ground into meal and lumber to build their homes.

Over the years the pond has also provided the community with both the ice to preserve their food before the advent of refrigerators and a wintertime recreation area perfect for skating. Harvesting pond ice was big business from the 1800s to mid-1900s, although skaters were very unhappy when ice harvesting interrupted their wintertime fun on the pond. Many village men and boys would take part in ice harvesting to earn extra money. They would store the ice in numerous ice houses around the pond, where, packed in layers of straw, it would last all summer. The ice was moved to the ice houses on the far side of the road via a chute that blocked traffic. Vehicles could be detoured along an old road in back of the ice houses (now an office building) called “Ice Avenue,” and parts of this road are still visible today.

A recent pond clean-up led by owner Ralph Guild was a major two-state project that returned herring to the pond and preserved wildlife habitats.

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Designated the “Oldest Continuously Operating Store in the United States” in 2007 by Rhode Island officials, Gray’s Store was forced to close after the unexpected death of its owner Grayton Waite in 2012. The store was first established by Samuel Church in 1788, and the Gray Family purchased it in 1879. Grayton Waite was the sixth generation of that family to own and operate the store. His son Jonah is now the seventh-generation owner of the store and he hopes to reopen the business in a way that will benefit the community.

Gray’s Store was also the site of the first post office in all of Little Compton. It remained the only post office from 1804 until a second office was established on the Commons in 1830. Both Manchester’s Store and Gray’s Store had post offices inside them, with the official post office rotating between the stores depending on which political party was in power and had the ability to appoint a new postmaster.

Mary Moniz ran the third Adamsville Post Office from a small building on Crandall Road built on family land. The fourth post office, pictured here and still in use today on Crandall Road, was built in the 1950s by George Carr, the Postmaster at the time.

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Little Compton was once full of Odd Fellows. That’s no insult. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows is a fraternal and philanthropic organization established in seventeenth-century England. It arrived on American shores in 1819, and in 1875, Seaconnet Lodge #39 of the Odd Fellows was formed in Little Compton.

According to one possible explanation for the origin of the name “Odd Fellows,” groups formed for charitable purposes in seventeenth-century England were unusual, and their members might have been considered "odd fellows." Initially, the organization restricted membership to Protestant men, but in 1851 the Odd Fellows formed a women’s auxiliary group, whose members were called Magnolia Rebekahs.

In Little Compton, Odd Fellows membership quickly exceeded the capacity of Seaconnet Lodge. On March 1, 1877, some members departed to found Electra Lodge #41 in nearby Adamsville. Despite the physical separation of the two lodges, Odd Fellows member Walter Elwell remembered, “The Seaconnet and Electra were back and forth visiting. Not every meeting but I would say fifty percent of the meetings.”

The two lodges also produced a young girl’s group, called the Theta Roses, and another branch of the Odd Fellows called the Encampment. During the peak of involvement in Little Compton, Odd Fellows meetings drew up to sixty people every week.

However, the group declined quickly. In 1967, the Electra Lodge closed due to inactivity and its remaining members rejoined the Seaconnet Lodge. According to Walter Elwell, “Like every fraternal organization, they’re in trouble.” The former Electra Lodge hall first became a pottery shop called Stone Bridge Dishes, and later became a private residence.

Despite these setbacks, memories of the Odd Fellows remain strong within Little Compton and Adamsville. Boy Scouts troops met at the Electra Lodge, people were married there, and the space was great for dancing. James Brady credits his existence to a USO dance held at the Electra Lodge: “Every time I drive by the Odd Fellows Hall, I say, 'My God, that’s the place where my mom and dad met. And if they hadn’t met, well, for the last sixty-six years, I wouldn’t be here.'"

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“Young man, if you don’t get out you’re going to end up with a little round hole in the middle of your forehead.”

The words were polite and calm, but ominous, spoken to a youthful group of summer people during a late night visit to Briggs Beach during Prohibition, according to local resident Howard Huntoon.

Little Compton’s fourteen beautiful miles of coastline have long attracted tourists and sun bathers, but during Prohibition, the beaches also provided a convenient route to smuggle illegal alcohol. “Rum running” became an important way for locals to earn money, especially during the early years of the Great Depression.

Although the rum runners broke the law, their friends and neighbors usually looked the other way and even lied to local enforcement agencies to protect this income stream. Seasonal residents returning for the summer sometimes found cash in their mailboxes, payment for the use of their empty barns and land as hiding places for illegal booze.

Prohibition banned alcoholic drinks from 1920 until 1933, the result of the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Most residents of Little Compton didn’t support Prohibition, and some took advantage of the demand for liquor to earn much-needed money for their families. Eleanor Simons, the daughter of Little Compton farmer John Flores, remembered her father’s secret rum running:

“I think people didn’t want anybody to know but I think they survived better because of it. Dad’s farm wasn’t as profitable to carry us through.”

The potential profits also enticed businessmen from other areas of the East Coast to set up shop. Manuel Avila came to Little Compton after Prohibition closed his bar in New Bedford, looking for a place with less of the competition and violence that was associated with the illegal liquor trade. In Little Compton he became a central figure in rum running.

Avila kept a safe house on Amesbury Lane where his trusted runners could eat, wash, and rest. In 1927, he bought the old Cornell farmhouse on Adamsville Hill. The house became the center of operations for his “gravel business,” a cover for his rum running. Located uphill from the Westport River, the house allowed for secret liquor deliveries at night and there were numerous places where the booze could be quickly hidden on the farm.

Today, the rum runners are often portrayed as exciting figures—cowboys on boats—but rum running required rough edges and desperate deeds, more than the romantic stories indicate. Rum runners faced the constant threat of being arrested or shot, either by the Coast Guard or by their rivals. Smuggling liquor during Prohibition was a dangerous, illegal business in an economically desperate time.

Many people also remember the Little Compton rum runners as farmers and fishermen, husbands and brothers. Manny Avila was known as a strong family man. His godson, Barry Federman, remembered Manny and his wife Nettie as “very fine, generous people, some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet.”

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Imagine a stereotypical small farm with a few chickens pecking around the yard, the sun shining on their bright red feathers. This image is close to the reality in Little Compton today, but for a few decades the town was the center of an international poultry industry built upon a local chicken known as the Rhode Island Red.

The qualities that made this bird so popular didn’t occur by accident. Little Compton farmers bred the Rhode Island Red in response to a need for a meatier bird with more reliable egg laying capacities. Their success was the result of effective crossbreeding and innovations in hen-raising.

The story begins far from Little Compton in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Local farmer William Tripp bought Chittagong chickens from a New Bedford sailor to breed with his own stock. These Asian chickens had the brilliant feathers and reliable egg laying for which the Rhode Island Red would become famous. This early form of the famous chicken developed a reputation among local farmers, and Isaac Wilbour, of Prospect Hill Farm, stopped by to see what all the fuss was about.

Wilbour bought a few of Tripp’s marvelous hens and cross-bred them with local roosters, resulting in healthy, meaty hens with a prodigious egg-laying capacity. By the 1890s, Wilbour’s farm became the first large-scale poultry business in the world, exporting 150,000 dozen (1.8 million) eggs per year. To understand the scale of this operation, most other farmers at the time had fewer than 500 hens, compared to Wilbour’s 5,000. Other Little Compton farmers soon followed suit, and the town became the international poultry capital.

In 1898, Wilbour also had the honor of naming the breed during a visit to his farm by two professors from the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station - now the University of Rhode Island.

This dominance did not last. By the early twentieth century, New England poultry farming, unable to compete with other areas of the country where feed and transport costs were lower, began to decline in favor of dairy farming. However, the Rhode Island Red and the techniques used to raise it continue to have a beneficial impact on New England farming. Today, most eggs with brown shells are produced by descendants of Little Compton’s Rhode Island Reds.

In 1925, the Rhode Island Red Club erected this monument, anchoring an internationally important chicken to the town where it was developed. However, some controversy over its placement exists. The monument is in Adamsville on land donated by Deborah Manchester, nowhere near the Tripp or Wilbour farms in Little Compton. The monument has more to do with a culture of poultry fancying in the area than with the farmers who bred the chickens.

In 1954, the same year that the Rhode Island legislature voted the Rhode Island Red the state bird, the Rhode Island Red Club and local residents installed a plaque at the location where William Tripp raised his famous chickens. You can still see the plaque, at the intersection of William Sisson Road and Long Highway.

Both monuments are fitting testimony to an international poultry sensation whose chicks and eggs were shipped all over the world from Little Compton.

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Built in 1905, the Spite Tower’s history is clouded by legend. Dr. John Hathaway and his second wife, Claudia Church, built this unique structure for reasons that have been debated for decades.

Late in the eighteenth century, the Church brothers—Samuel, Ebenezer, and Nathaniel—came to Adamsville to open a store and saltworks. The brothers became successful pillars of the community, and their children carried on the Church name.

In 1905, Thaddeus Church bequeathed Samuel’s eighteenth century home to his great-niece, Claudia, and her husband, Dr. Hathaway. This new edition of an old Adamsville family, made comfortable though personal and inherited success, moved into the Church house and built what is now called the Spite Tower.

In perhaps the most common version of the story, John Hathaway and his good friend Abraham Manchester became embroiled in an unknown dispute. Abraham, as a responsible proprietor, chose to sleep in his store as he had since youth. His sisters, Deborah and Lizzie, placed in a window of their home a white cloth or napkin whose fluttering signaled to Abraham that meals were ready. Legend says that Hathaway built the tower in the line of sight between the Manchester store and home to “spite” his former friend and spoil his dinner.

In another version of the story, Dr. Hathaway and Abraham Manchester fought over money. In his will, Thaddeus Church gave $25,000 to Deborah Manchester, which led to rumors of unrequited love between Thaddeus and Deborah. However, Dr. Hathaway had little reason to feel that his wife was slighted by Thaddeus, since she received the family home.

Perhaps the most we can say of these legends is that they make good stories.

The final version of the story of the Spite Tower is the simplest and most likely: John Hathaway chose this location for his tower because that’s where the well was. This is supported by the building itself, which is in fact a water tower. It has three stories, from top to bottom: the well house, a water tank, and living quarters for the Hathaways’ chauffeur.

As a recent owner of the Spite Tower explained, it was “nothing more than a problem of hydraulics. The well was deep and they had to make the tower tall in order to get the water out.”

Some people might be disappointed to learn that the tower was not built for love, money, or spite. But this elaborate well tower retains its name, in spite of history.

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The border between Adamsville and Westport was changed in 1747 from the west bank of the Westport River (which is just to the East of Brayton's Garage) to this location in the middle of the mill pond. The new border cut though established lots creating private properties that were half in RI and half in MA. Though more than two centuries old, the "new" border continues to cause difficulties for dual-state homeowners today.

More importantly, Little Compton lost its claim on the "Acoaxet" triangle, one of Massachusetts' loveliest seaside communities.

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The Plymouth Court established Adamsville as part of "Sakonnet" in the seventeenth century. The settlement adopted the name "Little Compton" in 1683 (check). Although Adamsville village had no official name at that time, many people referred to it as "Taber's Mills." What is now Westport, Massachusetts was also called "Dartmouth" during this period.

The original border between Little Compton and Dartmouth was the west bank of what is known today as the Westport River. That approximate location is marked by this pin. At that time, all of Little Compton, including Adamsville, was part of first Plymouth Colony and then later Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In 1747, by decree of King George II, and to the delight of Rhode Islanders, Little Compton, Tiverton and three other Massachusetts border towns officially became part of Rhode Island. The king had the RI/MA border redrawn as a series of straight lines connecting several points exactly three miles in from the eastern bank of the Sakonnet River. This new, straight border ignored the natural contours of the Westport River and split Adamsville in two. The grist mill that was the catalyst for the formation of the village was now in a different state.

Today, the Adamsville/Westport border, established in 1747 by those straight lines, can be found in the middle of the dam (road) between Gray's Grist Mill and the pond. It is marked by a granite post.

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Adamsville had its very own library in the early 1920s. It was housed in the north room of Hattie and Eugene Shurtleff's house at the corner of Colebrook and Stone Church Roads. The Shurtleff's daughter Venetta (Nettie) ran the library. According to Nettie's niece, Helen Shurtleff Collins, the books in the library were Nettie's own volumes and there was no charge to borrow them. When Nettie married and moved out of town, the library closed. Mrs. Collins believes that the books were sent to the town library in the Town Clerk's office on the Little Compton Commons. Mrs. Collins remembers that her father Malcolm, the Principal of Josephine F. Wilbur School, catalogued all the books in the town library in his spare time.

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Jane Tobes, possibly an enslaved woman, admitted that she brought rum to the men working in the fields, enticing them to neglect their work and get drunk. So, on July 7, 1772, the judge of the Tiverton Court, Job Almy, laid down the law: “I do sentence her to be whipt ten lashes on her Naked back well laid on.”

Shortly after Almy’s pronouncement, the crack of a whip sounded as a man lashed Tobes’ back while she stood topless, tied to the stone whipping post that stood in what is now a parking lot.

By 1838, Rhode Island had replaced corporal punishment like whipping with a plan for its first state prison. But according to local lore, the scourging of women ceased in Tiverton decades before, when a group of the town’s women engaged in civil disobedience to save one of their own from sharing the painful fate of Jane Tobes.

There are a couple of versions of the story, but both of them involve Isaac Wilbour, a Quaker from Little Compton. Wilbour is still the only person from Sakonnet to serve as Rhode Island’s governor, from 1806 to 1807, which allows us to date the supposed events.

In one version of the story, Governor Wilbour was on his way home to Little Compton when he happened upon the scene of “a woman, her back bared, tied to the whipping post,” while a sheriff read the sentence. In another version, it was Wilbour who read the court’s decision that “the condemned prisoner shall be tied to an upright post and flogged.”

In both versions, a mob of enraged women surrounded the condemned, demanding she be set free without being whipped. Wilbour pondered a moment, and then judiciously said, “But ladies, if it happened there should be no ‘upright post’ then how could the law be carried out?” Taking his hint, the women worked together to pull down the whipping post, leaving it lying in the dirt.

If the story is true, we might hope that the whipping post and it intended purpose disappeared forever, but a 1957 photograph shows it standing here, against the clapboard shingles of the John Almy House, which bore a plaque reading, “Whipping Post 1719—1812.” In 1957, Almy’s house was razed for the parking lot of the new Gray’s Ice Cream, and the whipping post disappeared.

Don’t be fooled by the granite obelisk across the street that looks something like the genuine article. Some local people believe that a history-minded person rescued the real whipping post from oblivion as a landscaping stone, wrapped it in burlap, and buried it near Four Corners. When word of the hiding place got around, the people who wished to preserve the post dug it up and hid it elsewhere.

Maybe the whipping post will reappear one day, perhaps in the corn crib at the Chace-Cory House, or leaning against the wall at Gray’s, as if waiting in the long line to place an order. Or maybe the people who preserved it will present themselves for the credit they deserve. Perhaps Jane Tobes would prefer that it remain hidden, just as she hid the scars on her back.

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