The Moshassuck Cemetery can be found today in Central Falls, near its border with the City of Pawtucket. On December 31, 1870, Abraham Jacobs, who served as chazan, or cantor, for the newly organized Congregation Sons of David, purchased a plot of land in its northwest corner of the cemetery.  Four years later,  Congregation Sons of David merged with Congregation of the Sons of Israel under the corporate name Congregation of the Sons of Israel and David. The newly merged congregation then decided to use the consecrated space in Moshassuck Cemetery for the burial of non-members, relatives of members and for charitable cases – that is to say, not for congregation members. The congregation already had its own large cemetery in Providence for the use of members.  Many other groups would buy into Moshassuck Cemetery over the next 25 years. One of the tombstones there has an interesting and tragic story.  During the Great Depression there was a great deal of labor unrest. In 1934, some of the Labor Day strikes happening in Rhode Island were peaceful, but not at two mills belonging to the Manville Jenckes Co., a textile bleaching company, one of which was adjacent to Moshassuck Cemetery.  During the strike, the owners decided to bring in replacement workers across the picket lines, where it is said that thousands were gathered. When two of the strike breakers tried to push through the picket line, the union supporters would not let them; the Rhode Island State Guard attempted to move the strikers toward the cemetery, and a riot broke out. Strikers and soldiers ran into the cemetery, seeking cover and vantage points. Two men were hit by bullets and died.  In addition, the tombstone of Rabbi Yosef Shaul Rabinowit was hit by bullets during the strike. An article by National Park Service Ranger Mark Mello, “The Saylesville Massacre and the American Tradition,” offers these insights: “Two bullet holes are visible in the stone: a tangible reminder of the violence within the cemetery in September 1934. The engraving on the stone starts with a simple line from the Torah, ‘Stone shall cry from a wall!’ This most likely comes from a passage from the book of Habakkuk, which references the forced labor the Babylonians inflicted on the Jewish people in constructing buildings in their cities. Written millennia before the Saylesville massacre, this line offers a prophet’s damning criticism of a different political system. Across time, workers have cried out in pain when pushed too far. The lines in this stone, etched for posterity, bring these cries to life. The poetic, haunting line takes on new meaning with knowledge of the massacre…  When considering the conditions experienced by Jewish people across the world in the 1930s and what was to come in the 1940s, two bullet holes piercing this already painful plea is ironic. Also, the plight of those protestors, many of whom were laborers in the textile industry, as they dove behind the stones evading messengers of death, is chilling. Perhaps this stone does wail—not just in memory of Rabbi Yosef and the plight of the Jewish people through the ages, but also to the memory of Goroynski and Blackwood, whose lives were lost during the Saylesville Massacre.”  While the mill closed in the 1960s, Rabbi Rabinowit’s tombstone stands as a palpable reminder of this social action and communities impacted by this chapter in Rhode Island’s history.

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Jews can have religious services any place, but you need hallowed ground for a burial. Although the Newport cemetery was established in 1677, Touro Synagogue was consecrated in 1763.

Touro is the oldest Jewish cemetery in Rhode Island, established by the Sephardic Jewish immigrants originally from Spain and Portugal, who, fleeing the Inquisition, had next gone to Amsterdam and London, then to Brazil and finally Barbados. Arriving in Newport, they set up businesses dealing with shipping and commerce. Finally settled, they needed to buy land for a cemetery. While their congregation, Nephuse Israel (Scattered of Israel), did not have a building, they are considered the second oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Land was bought by Mordechai Campanal and Moses Pacheco at the corner of what is now Kay and Touro Streets.

Who is buried in the cemetery? Almost all of those early settlers had Hispanic names: Alvares, Levy, Lopez, Rivera, Rodriguez, Seixas, Touro, and, interestingly enough, Hayes (see Longfellow’s poem below). Some of them died at a young age: Jacob Lopez (1755 - 1764), while others far exceeded the life expectancy of their era: Mrs. Judith Levy (1700 - 1788). In total, there are 44 burials, with the most recent being Edwin Rosenstein (1866). As a specifically Jewish cemetery, only Jews were buried there.

A fence was put around the plot, for which Judah Touro, Abraham’s brother, donated $11,000 in 1842. However, by 1850 the cemetery was rarely being used, as the Jewish population of Newport had fallen. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the site and wrote a melancholy poem, The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, about how deserted it was;

The very names recorded here are strange,

Of foreign accent, and of different climes;

Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

And the dead nations never rise again.

In contrast to this view, Emma Lazarus, the famous Jewish poet who wrote the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, wrote a rebuttal of Longfellow, In the Jewish Cemetery at Newport, with a feeling of hope at the end:

For youth and happiness have followed age,

And green grass lieth gently over all.

Nathless the sacred shrine is holy yet,

With its lone floors where reverent feet once trod.

Take off your shoes as by the burning bush,

Before the mystery of death and God.

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On August 28, 1863, the 1st battalion of the 14th R.I. Heavy Artillery (Colored) under Colonel Nelson Viall paraded through Providence on their way to an island in Narragansett Bay. Jamestowners felt the effects of the Civil War, even though battlefields were far away. Confederate cruisers were causing havoc on commerce in the unprotected West Passage of Narragansett Bay. Dutch Island, which commands the western entrance to the bay, was where the 1st Battalion headed to from their training in Providence. They were to assist in the construction of a camp and anti-Conferderate fortifications.

On November 19th, with the fortifications nearly complete, Governor James Y. Smith, the RI legislature, and other distinguished guests presented the standard to Colonel Viall at the newly-formed Camp Bailey.

"It affords me much pleasure to present to your regiment, our Fourteenth Corps d'Afrique, this flag, and I feel confident that it will be entrusted to as brave men as ever enter the service in our defense of our country and its liberties."

Although there was much fanfare at the dedication of Camp Bailey, it's not surprising that Black soldiers faced many forms of discrimination during their service in the Union Army. Most apparent was that Black units were commanded by White officers and had little opportunity for promotion. The issue of pay was also divisive. Initially, enlisted Black men thought that they would receive equal pay, but later found they would receive less per month than White soldiers.

Documents show that financial incentives, known as "bounty," used to increase enlistment, were rampant with fraud. Racist attitudes, coupled with illiteracy among many Black recruits, led to exploitative documents being "willingly" signed by Black soldiers. Most cases of deceit involved the deduction of expenses for worthless items and bounty never being paid. This corrupt behavior by recruiting officers wasn't rectified until testimonies of soldiers, including those of Privates Calvin Bailey, George Gordon, and John Dorsey from Camp Bailey, were given in a hearing to the House of Representatives in 1864.

In the winter of 1863-1864, units from Camp Bailey began to leave for Texas and Louisiana. The Providence Journal specifically named three of the Black soldiers: Charles Freeman, Peter Freeman, and Jeremiah Noka. Only Peter Freeman survived.

Although the 14th R.I. Heavy Artillery was mustered out on October 2, 1865, Dutch Island, almost deserted, remained an official outpost until 1897. At the time, an ambitious round of coastal defense construction had already begun at Ft. Greble.

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Stephen Hopkins was born on March 7, 1707, the second of nine children of William and Ruth (Wilkinson) Hopkins. Hopkins later married Sarah Scott, and together they had seven children. Unfortunately, only five of them survived to adulthood. Despite being self-educated, Hopkins served as justice of the peace at the age of only 23. He went on to win election as town solicitor in Scituate and served in the Rhode Island General Assembly as a Scituate representative in the 1730s. His colleagues elected him speaker of the House of Representatives seven times; he served nine terms as governor, and eleven years as chief justice. He was also the representative for Rhode Island at the Albany Congress in 1754, where he supported Benjamin Franklin’s plan for colonial union.

Stephen Hopkins built his family a beautiful home on Towne Street (now South Main Street), which stands today on Hopkins Street, in 1742. The following year, after the Hopkins family moved from Scituate to Providence, Sarah Hopkins and two of the young sons passed away. On January 2, 1755, Hopkins married his second wife, Anne Smith, and she and her two children joined Hopkins in his Providence home.

In 1764, the British parliament passed the Sugar Act, and Governor Hopkins wrote a revolutionary pamphlet, “The Rights of the Colonies Examined,” which was distributed throughout the colonies. In 1772, when Providence residents attacked and burned the British vessel Gaspee, Justice Hopkins refused to sign the court order to arrest those responsible. As the American Revolution approached, Hopkins was appointed the chairman of the Continental Congress's Naval Committee; his experience as a shipping merchant was ideal for building the new American navy. His brother Esek became the Navy's first admiral.

In 1776, at the age of seventy and suffering from palsy, Stephen Hopkins signed the Declaration of Independence as Rhode Island’s delegate. After signing the Declaration he said, “My hand trembles but my heart does not.” Sadly, Hopkins died in July 1785 and was buried in North Burial Ground. “A vast assemblage of persons, consisting of judges of the courts, the president, professors and students of the college, together with the citizens of the town, and inhabitants of the state, followed the remains of this eminent man to his resting place in the grave."

On Hopkins Street, the 8-room, dark-red home of Stephen Hopkins still stands and is now a historic house museum with guided-tours for visitors.

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Born in 1738, Moses Brown was the youngest of the five brothers born into the prominent Brown family. He became an abolitionist, and manumitted his slaves in 1773; he did this although other members of the Brown family were slave traders. He was also a merchant, working for his uncle Obadiah at Obadiah Brown & Co., later Nicholas Brown & Co. and run by Moses and his brothers Nicholas, John, and Joseph. Moses was also a reformer, serving as a deputy in the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1764 to 1771, and actively opposing the Stamp Act in 1765.

He joined the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in 1774 after the death of his first wife, Anna. Six years later, in 1780, Moses donated $575 to the Friends of New England for the establishment of a school (for both Quaker and non-Quaker children) in Rhode Island. He had a keen interest in the school from the start.

In 1784, the Friends’ Yearly Meeting School opened in Portsmouth, only to close after another four years due to low enrollment and budget concerns. More than thirty years would pass before the school’s reemergence. Still believing in the importance of an education built upon the ethical values of the Friends Society, in 1814 Brown donated forty-three acres of land in Providence for the reestablishment of the school. From 1819 to 1902 the school was known as the Friends’ Meeting School, before being renamed the Moses Brown School, in honor of its most important benefactor, in the 1920s.

Designed by renowned Providence architect John Holden Greene, the new school opened its doors on January 1, 1819. Initially, non-Quaker children paid higher tuition and had to agree to conform to specific standards before they could be admitted to the school. With an average yearly attendance of 125 over the first decade, the new iteration of the Friends’ School was considered an instant success. In 1822 Moses Brown’s only son, Obadiah passed away, and in his will he gifted a total of $100,000 for the building and furnishings, and an additional $650 worth of books and maps. The donation allowed the school to expand as its popularity increased.

During the first century of operation, boys and girls were accepted to the school. At the turn of the twentieth century, co-ed schools were becoming increasingly controversial, and in 1925 the Moses Brown School became a boys-only institution, sending female students to the nearby Lincoln School. Only in the 1970s did the school again admit female students. Today the school continues as an elite private Friends’ school on Providence’s east side.

In 2015 the Moses Brown School gained internet fame when Head of School Matt Glendinning parodied the hit Disney song, “Let it Go” on YouTube. His snow day announcement, “School is Closed” raked in over 4.1 million views and was featured on NBC’s Today Show.

Notable alumni of the school include Jesse Williams, political activist and actor on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, and Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., the 32nd and 34th Mayor of Providence.

Moses Brown died on September 6, 1836. He rests in the North Burial Ground’s Quaker cemetery, a parcel of land that Moses Brown formerly owned.

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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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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.

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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.

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“In Memory of Duchess Quamino, A free black of distinguished excellence: Intelligent, Industrious, Affectionate, Honest, and of Exemplary Piety, Who deceased June 4, 1804, aged 65.”

Quamino’s weather-worn marker, along with nearly 300 others, comprise a section of Newport’s Common Burial Ground known as “God’s Little Acre,” one of the oldest and largest colonial African burial grounds in the United States. Dating from the late 1600s, “God’s Little Acre” offers insight into the lives of enslaved and free Africans such as Quamino through the commemorative words and images etched into stone.

Although described as a “free black” on her marker, Quamino was enslaved in the home of William Channing until she bought her freedom. Quamino also lived in her master’s house, which was customary in urban seaports where slaves worked in trades and crafts rather than on plantations. Many of the slaves brought to Newport were young children who worked alongside their masters to learn skills like rum making, rope braiding, stone carving, candle making, and chocolate grinding. Quamino used her culinary skills to run a catering business out of her master’s house. Her entrepreneurial success allowed her to purchase her freedom and earned her the title “Pastry Queen of Rhode Island.”

Quamino’s inscription praises her “Exemplary Piety” and includes a hymnal verse: “Blessed thy slumbers in this house of clay, And bright thy rising to eternal day.” With these words, William Ellery Channing, the founder of the Unitarian Church and the author of the epitaph, recognized Quamino’s involvement in the religious community of Newport. Quamino’s husband John was also a devout Christian. After gaining his freedom, he studied alongside a minister at Princeton in preparation for missionary work in Africa, but their plans dissolved when John was killed aboard a privateer ship during the American Revolution.

Like many slaves in colonial Newport, the Quaminos experienced the wave of Christian revival known as the Great Awakening during which Protestant America sought to convert the African population. In Newport, some slaves were provided religious education, converted to their master’s religion, and worshipped with the family in the home and at church. The burial ground reflects the breadth of religious diversity present in the city through carvings of angels, Biblical verses, and acknowledgements of those who lived with virtue and piousness.

The markers also tell about the origins of the deceased through the traditions of names. The prevalence of Anglicized or phonetically spelled versions of names from the African Gold Coast revealed the homeland of many Newport slaves to be Ghana. Upholding the naming tradition of the Akan people, the Africans often had names that identified the day of the week and order in which they were born. The name “Quamino” is given to boys born on a Saturday. In Duchess’ case, “Quamino” was her married name after her husband.

Walking through “God’s Little Acre,” the leaning, faded colonial stones are joined by the new markers of their descendants, a tribute to the resilience and preservation of African heritage in Rhode Island.

In November 2025, Duchess Quamino played a prominent role in “Life After Life,” a live performance developed through research and performed by 50 community members in Newport Common Burying Ground in November 2025. Actress Rebekah Acquah embodied Duchess, a transformative experience that gave her profound insight into Duchess’s character: “[This play] allowed me to honor not just [who the characters] were in the books, but also who the person was. It gave me the ability to give life to the dead.” As Rebekah noted, Duchess sparked opportunities for generations to come through her entrepreneurship, determination, and drive: “[Duchess] purchased her freedom and her children’s freedom and then bought a home next to the people who enslaved her. That’s a boss…If it wasn’t for someone like Duchess Quamino and so many others, I wouldn’t have been free to express [myself], to be sitting in this room right now.” You can see Rebekah portray Duchess in the Image Gallery below, and can learn more about “Life After Life” here: centeraquidneck.com/life-after-life-about

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