According to local legend, in 1776 militia from the Head of Westport broke ranks with the remainder of their contingent to eat bread and cheese and to drink from the brook. The brook could also have been named after simple meals eaten on its banks by picnickers, farm and mill workers, and lovers of nature. As its importance to the residents of Westport evolved, Bread and Cheese Brook’s ambiguous name continued to reflect its practical and recreational uses. In the 18th century, the land that forms the Brookside Conservation Area held farms and homes of prominent Westport families including the Babcocks and the Giffords. Bread and Cheese Brook was central to this early agricultural economy, its water important to livestock and its banks a popular spot to dine on produce from fields and pastures In addition to his farm, George Gifford built a grain mill powered by the flow of the brook’s waters. In keeping with Westport’s colorful place names, locals referred to Gifford’s enterprise as Mouse Mill, since it supposedly processed only enough grain to feed a mouse. As Westport’s economy expanded and technology improved, the Giffords converted the Mouse Mill into a shingle and wagon spoke factory. A bit further downstream, where the brook joins the Noquochoke River, more powerful currents powered larger mills in the 19th century. Perhaps mill workers joined farmhands eating a quick lunch beside the brook. In the 20th century, lunch at the brook moved indoors to the Brookside restaurant where diners enjoyed the view through windows. By 2009, the restaurant stood abandoned and Westport voters approved expenditure from the Community Preservation Fund to protect the socially and environmentally important area and to provide public access. Today, the Brookside Conservation Area is managed by the Westport Land Conservation Trust for the benefit of residents and visitors. Although people today might be more likely to bring peanut butter and jelly to the brook rather than bread and cheese, lunching on its banks is still an important part of the brook’s identity along with fishing, hiking, and enjoying the picturesque remains of the century-old Granite Bridge. Although Westport’s economy no longer depends on Bread and Cheese Brook, the health of the Westport River Watershed and the town’s aquifer still rely on this small portion of the river system. The Westport River Watershed Alliance works with the town of Westport to monitor the conditions of Bread and Cheese Brook to ensure its future enjoyment by picnickers, hikers, and nature lovers.

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Until the early 19th century, it was common for farms to include a family cemetery. Later, as industrialization took over and people moved into towns and cities, family cemeteries were supplanted by larger, centralized municipal cemeteries. The Pardon Gray cemetery, which dates to the 18th century, is an excellent example of a local family burying ground.

The cemetery was located behind the Gray family farmhouse, which disappeared long ago. Like many of Tiverton’s early cemeteries, the Pardon Gray cemetery is surrounded by fieldstone walls. Most of the graves include a headstone and a footstone, and they follow the common practice of laying graves east to west, with the footstone on the east and the headstone on the west. The older headstones are black slate, while later ones, from about 1820, are white marble.

The exact number of graves within these walls is unknown, since there may have been early, unmarked burials, and some stones may have toppled and been buried beneath soil and overgrowth. The earliest existing grave marker is for Tillinghast Gray, daughter of Pardon and Mary, who died in 1794 at the age of seven months. Nearby is Claracy Cook, the 15-month old daughter of Hannah Gray and Captain George Cook. Colonel Pardon Gray’s grave is in the southwest corner; his wife, Mary, lies beside him. Colonel Gray’s headstone is a modern replacement provided by the Division of Veterans Affairs.

A notable headstone (actually two headstones), marks the grave of Deacon Philip Gray who died in 1806. His original headstone is likely the black slate grave marker now leaning against the stone wall. The headstone that currently marks his grave is a later white marble replacement. Research by the Tiverton Land Trust indicates that Philip Gray’s stone was replaced to match his wife Susanna’s headstone. Susanna died much later than Philip, in 1839, and styles had changed.

The Pardon Gray cemetery looked very different at the time of acquisition of the property by the Tiverton Land Trust in 2000. It had been ignored for a very long time, and it was extremely overgrown and covered with brambles. The fieldstone walls were in serious disrepair. With support from the Tiverton Historical Cemeteries Commission and private donations, the overgrowth was cleared and the stone walls repaired.

In 2012, donations from descendants of Colonel Pardon Gray made it possible to restore the headstones and foot stones into their current configuration. One headstone, which was broken into two pieces, was “glued” together and placed in its proper location. Other headstones that had been buried were uncovered and placed upright in their proper location.

The Pardon Gray Cemetery was designated Tiverton Historical Cemetery #4 by the State of Rhode Island Division of Veterans Affairs during a project to locate and identify historical cemeteries throughout the state. A database of these cemeteries is available through the Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Commission.

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The 65-acre meadow alongside Main Road may be the most valuable wildlife habitat of Pardon Gray Preserve. Grasslands and open fields are disappearing in the Northeast due to the diminishing number of farms and expanding human development. This trend endangers the survival of eastern grassland nesting birds, along with the grasslands’ associated flora and fauna.

For thousands of years, open fields and scrublands were widespread across New England. Giovanni da Verrazano’s log from his 1524 exploration of Narragansett Bay described fields that “extend for 25 to 30 leagues; they are open and free of any obstacles or trees.” The 16th century landscape included a vast system of coastal salt marshes. Millions of beaver dams flooded woodlands to create “beaver meadows.” Native Americans burned woody vegetation surrounding their villages to create fields for farming, hunting, and wild berries. After European settlement, as much as two-thirds of New England forests were cleared for villages and farms, creating additional fields and meadows.

As development of Rhode Island expanded in the mid-1800s, this panorama of open fields began to disappear, and large grasslands are now scarce. Preserving the grassland at Pardon Gray Preserve is a primary goal of Tiverton Land Trust stewardship of the property. Two underlying conditions make meadows difficult to sustain. The first condition is natural: the default biome in New England is northern hardwood forest. Without beavers, haying, or pasturing, most land will eventually become forest.

The second condition is human-caused: the introduction of alien plant species that, in only a few years, can turn grassland into a thicket of plants foreign to our native ecosystems. Invasive species—because they didn’t evolve here—have few natural controls, and they disrupt the natural food web. The complex system of native plants and animals can break down and lead to disintegration of a natural community. The Tiverton Land Trust has worked hard to sustain the grassland habitat at Pardon Gray Preserve by planting native grasses and employing a late-season mowing regimen, after bird nesting.

An on-going experiment with a local beef farmer is also showing promising results. Pasturing livestock is a traditional activity that sustains grasslands and can coexist with ground nesting birds. However, normal grazing does little to stem the spread of alien plants because the animals avoid unfamiliar vegetation in favor of their usual forage. Restricting livestock to small grazing areas and using a daily “rotational” method causes grazing animals to be less selective. Each day the herd is moved to a different enclosure, and this creates a competitive urge to rush into the new area and graze aggressively, ahead of their herd mates. This “mob psychology” results in consumption of invasive plants, a more desirable control than herbicides. The hooved feet of grazing animals periodically trample the soil, keeping it from becoming compacted, and distribute nature’s best fertilizer.

Vast grasslands once stretched across the American Great Plains, with millions of acres of productive tall grass prairies. That ecosystem had its own rotational grazing—gigantic herds of American bison. While Pardon Gray’s operation is microscopic in comparison, the Tiverton Land Trust utilizes a similar natural method of sustaining its grassland, which supports local agriculture and helps preserve an important part of Tiverton’s farming history.

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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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The Chace-Cory House, built around 1730 by Benjamin or Abner Chace, witnessed the passing of many Tiverton generations by its front door. Once a lonely house, it has seen nearly 300 years of change at Four Corners. Its floorboards are well-worn by the pacing of more than 100 years of anxious wives, widowed by the sea, if only temporarily.

In 1816, Andrew Cory and his school teacher wife, Jane Gray Seabury, bought the house. Jane had lived here with her parents as a young woman, running a school in the “old chamber,” which extends intact over the kitchen pantry. Andrew Cory lived a life at sea, eventually taking command of the New Bedford Whaler Isaac Howland in 1845 at the age of fifty-five. Despite his time at sea, Andrew and Jane managed to have nine children, although only seven survived childhood.

Andrew and Jane’s eldest child, Edward, followed in his father’s wake. He shipped from New Bedford on whalers that took him as far as Australia where, in 1842, he met Mary Ann Bamford, an orphaned 19-year-old woman sent from England as a child upon the death of her parents. The two wed in Australia, shipping back to Tiverton where they raised a large family of their own. Edward inherited the house from his father in 1866.

Late in his career as a whaler, Edward Cory went missing during a planned two-year voyage. Three years passed with no word of him, then four and five. The orphaned Mary must have passed many anguished hours wondering about Edward’s fate, finally preparing for life as a widow.

But six years after sailing from New Bedford, Edward returned. While pursuing a whale, it dealt him a near-fatal injury, and Edward spent three years convalescing in China before regaining enough strength for the long voyage home.

Edward and Mary Ann’s eldest son, Edward Joseph Cory, inherited the house, and he too tried his hand at whaling, until the industry died out in the early twentieth-century. He turned to fishing the local waters, shipping his fresh catch from Newport to New York aboard the Fall River Line steamships.

In 1962, Edward Joseph Cory, Jr., sold the old house to another man of the sea, J. William Middendorf. A veteran of the United States Navy, Middendorf served as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1973 and Secretary of the Navy from 1974 to 1977. In 1964, Middendorf donated the house to the Tiverton Historical Society, which moved here from its original headquarters at Whitridge Hall.

Carlton Brownell, a Little Compton resident and history teacher in the Tiverton Public Schools, led the restoration effort. The grounds of the Chase-Cory House contain an unusual 19th-century washhouse, a corncrib reassembled here in 1976, original stonewalls, and a privy. Brownell, who dedicated his long life to the preservation of local history, died at age 95 in February 2013.

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