When schoolteacher Josephine Field Wilbor returned to her hometown of Little Compton in 1910, she found one room schoolhouses with outhouse lavatories, classrooms without heat or electricity, and students of all ages crammed into the same space. Educated at one of the nation’s first “normal” schools for teachers (now Rhode Island College), Wilbor made it her life mission to improve public education in Little Compton.
The problems Wilbor encountered ran deeper than upgrade of the town’s school buildings. Previous reformers like Sarah Brownell met resistance from residents reluctant to spend money on improving the schools or change the existing system, even for health reasons. When Brownell closed the Union School on the Common in 1891 because of uninhabitable conditions, parents demanded that it be reopened.
Long-time resident Carlton Brownell recalled the conditions of the district #2 schoolhouse in 1925: “I don’t remember when they first decided we shouldn’t drink out of the dipper in the bucket anymore. They provided paper cups and they were like little envelopes, they were ridiculous. So everyone would hold ‘em and put their whole hand right in the water. So there’s your great effort at sanitation. … It was primitive.”
Increasing numbers of students also placed strain on the system. After dropping below one-thousand residents in the 1880s, Little Compton’s population, fed by Azorean and Portuguese immigrants, boomed by the time Wilbor returned to town. The cramped, run-down, and unsanitary schools were ill-equipped to provide a modern education to the town’s growing number of children.
After assuming her position as director of Union School, Wilbor campaigned to organize the schools by grade level, citing the difficulties of teaching a multitude of education levels in the same place. In response to teachers’ claims that it was difficult to teach and learn in non-graded, one-room schoolhouses, many residents echoed the sentiment, So what? Countless Little Compton children had gone through the same system and had made out just fine.
Future Little Compton school superintendent, Benjamin S. Tubman, summed up this sentiment in a 1928 article in the Providence Journal: “One never heard them extolling the superiority of their grandfather’s venerable oxcart over the family automobile as a means of traveling.”
Wilbor won a minor victory with partial grading of the schools, and from 1918 to 1921, Little Compton had its own high school on the second floor of town hall. In 1921, Wilbor ran for town treasurer and tax collector and became the first woman in Rhode Island to hold an elective position other than school committee member. Through these positions, she advocated for increased school spending.
But Wilbor had even bigger fish to fry: a modern central school building for all grade levels. She rallied the support of the school committee and the Rhode Island Commissioner of Education. A heated battle ensued between education reformers and residents who claimed a new school would break the town.
In the midst of this battle, at the age of 48, Josephine Wilbor succumbed to pneumonia, her strength broken under the pressure of her work, according to her obituary. The fight for education reform did not end with Wilbor’s death. Buoyed by increasing support from Little Compton residents, construction began in 1928 on the Common, and doors opened to students in fall of 1929.
In a salute to Wilbor’s tireless dedication, officials named the new facility Josephine F. Wilbur School. Although Wilbor’s name was apparently misspelled, her school continues to serve the educational needs of Little Compton’s children.
]]>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.
]]>In the Old Burial Ground is an odd grave maker. It reads, “In memory of Elizabeth, who Should have been the Wife of Mr. Simeon Palmer… died Augst 14th 1776 in the 64th year of her age.” A clue to the meaning of this inscription may lie in a 1901 account by a Little Compton resident of an eccentric belief held by local minister Richard Billings, who “firmly believed in cats as an article of diet, and fatted them for the purpose.”
Little Compton’s original proprietors set aside the land for the Burial Ground in 1678, and the oldest marker belongs to Mary Rouse Price, who died in 1698. Other stones mark the graves of children who died with alarming frequency in the early years of the town, victims of epidemics, and many of Little Compton’s most notable residents including Primus Collins and Betty Alden, whose stories are also available on Rhode Tour.
The story of Simeon and Elizabeth Palmer might be the Burial Ground’s most unusual. Lying next to the woman who “should have been the wife of Simeon Palmer” is the grave of Lidia Palmer, identified as the “Wife of Simeon Palmer.” According to one local legend, Simeon Palmer jilted Elizabeth during their courtship and married Lidia instead. In fact, Elizabeth actually was the wife of Simeon for 21 years. They married in 1755, after Simeon’s first wife, Lidia, died.
In 1901, Little Compton resident M.L.T. Alden offered another explanation for the perplexing stone. If his account is true, it is even more fascinating than the legend.
According to Alden, whose source was “the antiquarian of the village,” Simeon Palmer adopted Reverend Billings’ habit of including cat meat as part of his regular diet, perhaps because an attack of heat stroke left him “mildly insane.” Simeon attempted to force his wife and baby daughter to partake in his cat meat diet, but Elizabeth would not have it. She took their daughter and moved into her parents’ home.
Simeon and Elizabeth continued to maintain a semblance of a marriage. Simeon visited his wife and daughter on Sundays, and Elizabeth took care of her husband’s laundry and mending. But Simeon remained bitter about this arrangement, and when Elizabeth died he ordered her gravestone engraved with the unusual epitaph. The “should have been” referred to Elizabeth’s refusal to perform her duties as a wife by living with her husband.
Church records indicate that Simeon married a third time and moved to New York State. Whether he continued to eat cats is unknown.
]]>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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