In 1891, American author Jane G. Austin (not to be confused with the better-known English writer, Jane Austen), wrote in the preface to her novel, Betty Alden: The First-Born Daughter of the Pilgrims, “He who would read for himself the story of this noble woman must seek it through ancient volumes and mouldering records, until at Little Compton in Rhode Island he finds upon her gravestone the last affectionate and honorable mention of Elizabeth, daughter of John and Priscilla Alden, and wife of William Pabodie.”

Elizabeth Pabodie (or Peabody), commonly known as Betty Alden, is famous for being the first white woman born in New England. It’s impossible to know if that’s the historical truth—and it took almost 200 years for her to be given that distinction.

Born in 1623 or 1624 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Betty Alden was the daughter of Mayflower pilgrims John and Priscilla Alden. She married William Pabodie in Duxbury, Massachusetts, around the age of twenty and gave birth to thirteen children. In her 60s, she, William, and two of their children moved to Little Compton.

Just like any other woman in her time and circumstances, Betty worked hard and raised her children, scratching out life in a new colony. There is no evidence to suggest that her death in 1717 received special tribute or acknowledgement. However, 175 years later, Betty Alden became memorialized in popular imagination because of the timing and location of her birth.

The life of Betty’s husband, William Pabodie, included several notable accomplishments—Little Compton founder, first town clerk, prayer service leader—but he is overshadowed by his wife’s legendary status, a historical reversal of fortune that might provoke some people to say, It’s about time.

Local reverence for Betty began in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it remains strong. During the period known as the Colonial Revival, Americans looked to an idealized—and sometimes fictional—past for comfort in the face of changing times that included waves of immigrants, rapid industrialization and new technology, and changing family dynamics and gender roles.

Despite the poems, novels, and Betty Alden folklore, it’s possible that she wasn’t actually the first white girl born in New England. Detractors claim it’s unlikely that no other white girls were born in the three-year period between the landing of the Mayflower and Betty’s birth, given the double-digit numbers of children common to families of the era.

But Betty is the one we continue to remember. Town historian Sarah Soule Wilbour started raising funds for the monument in 1847. In June of 1882, she noted in her diary, “We went to see the monument put up yesterday. It is a great satisfaction to me to know that the thing is done. I have had it on my mind for 35 years.” Betty Alden’s simple original grave marker is embedded into the west side of this memorial.

For more (including 5 images) view the original article

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.

For more (including 3 images & 1 audio file) view the original article

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.

For more view the original article

In the early 1900s, Tiverton was well-known for the stench of rotting fish. One local writer described the odor wafting from the menhaden factories along the Sakonnet River as “Rhode Island’s most famous smell. Even the strongest and bravest were known to wilt before it.”

Much of the stink emanated from the Menhaden Fishing Company across the river in Portsmouth, but Tiverton fishermen owned most of the steam boats that supplied that plant and others with millions of the fish, processed for fish oil and fertilizer. Menhaden—known locally as pogy—comes from the Narragansett word munnawhatteaug, and pogy from the word pauhagen. Both loosely translate to “fertilizer.” Pogies are likely the fish that Squanto taught the Pilgrims to bury alongside their corn seed.

In the days of sail, small pogy works consisting of a few iron boilers dotted the Tiverton shore from Stone Bridge to Fogland. Fishermen used seines—nets weighted at the bottom and buoyed at the top –to snag the menhaden feeding in Mount Hope Bay. One quadrant of Tiverton’s town seal shows a blue shield with a gold seine net stretched across it, evidence of the town’s past as a fishing village.

After the Civil War, the seven Church brothers dominated the menhaden trade. Two foundation holes at the northern edge of “The Gut,” where Sin and Flesh Brook flows into Nannaquaket Pond, mark the locations of the house where the brothers grew up and the “seine house” where they stashed their first nets for trapping pogy. The brothers banded together to charter a business in 1870, built the Menhaden Fishing Company plant in 1878, and for decades employed hundreds of workers processing menhaden and food fish shipped fresh via steamer to New York.

The town put the bridge in Bridgeport in 1883, when it built a wooden span to the northern tip of Nannaquaket Neck, where Nathaniel B. Church built a huge house that later served as a convent before being replaced with a modern mansion. Crews have replaced the bridge to the neck several times since, most recently pouring a concrete span atop granite pillars in 1958.

Some of the pogy fleet plying the bay at the turn of the 20th century tied up to the piers behind the “Bridgeport Block,” a ramshackle building sided in weather-beaten shingles that housed a half-dozen families and George Manchester’s general store. A sign outside the store read: “Old Trust is dead/Poor Pay killed him.” The Manchester family razed that building around 1900 and replaced it with a big shellfish processing plant that grew into Manchester Seafoods, where “Rhode Island’s most famous smell,” the scent of fish being processed, lingered into the 1980s.

Today, Menhaden have declined in numbers to as little as 10% of historic levels, a result of unrestricted industrial fishing. Plants process the fish into products from chicken feed to pet food. Locally, menhaden are popular bail for striped bass. The Manchester Seafood building hit the real estate market in 2012 with an asking price of $1.75 million. A realtor described the site as a “unique waterfront opportunity” with “approvals in hand for Inn and Spa.” Without a buyer soon for this abandoned building, it might also become endangered.

For more (including 6 images & 1 video) view the original article