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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When 20,000 textile workers went on strike in the 1928 New Bedford Textile Workers Strike, 18-year-old factory worker Eulalia “Eula” Mendes (1910-2004) became a leader in her mill and community by encouraging Portuguese industrial migrant workers to participate in the strike. Later, she traveled nationwide to support other fights for justice and equality.

Eula left Portugal with her working-class family in 1912 and settled in New Bedford, a textile city with a large Portuguese-speaking community. At the young age of 14, Eula became her family’s primary breadwinner as a bobbin worker in a textile factory. In 1928, when the city’s textile workers went on strike in opposition to a 10% wage cut planned by the factory owners, Eula began attending meetings run by regional and national labor organizers.

She became a leader at her mill and in her community by promoting Portuguese worker participation in the strike. Eula translated the speeches of labor leaders into Portuguese and gave speeches herself. She became an organizer for the communist-influenced Textile Mill Committee (TMC), which demanded a wage increase, a 40-hour workweek, and an end to child labor. Eventually, Eula became a member of the TMC’s executive committee serving in a leadership role as secretary.

The TMC organized thousands of workers into pickets, rallies, and parades that attracted the attention of law enforcement and city officials. The National Guard and local police used force and arrested many strikers, including Eula. She noted that she “was arrested a number of times... We sometimes stayed [in jail] for just a few hours, sometimes overnight or sometimes even days or weeks, but we were usually let out on bail. And a few days later maybe we were arrested again.”

After six months, the strikers accepted a smaller pay cut and returned to work. For Eula, the 1928 strike sparked a life of union organizing. She traveled nationwide with the International Ladies Garment Workers and other unions to support other uprisings in the fight for justice and equality. Eula’s activism continued with her Communist Party affiliation in New Bedford and the region, and she refused to sign a Loyalty Pledge to promise that she was not a Communist.

The strike did not accomplish all the goals the TMC hoped for, but it did change the relationship between textile workers and mill owners in the city and New England for decades to come. After years of being ignored by the established mill craft unions, ethnic communities found a voice through the TMC and developed a new interest in unions, which encouraged them to come together to advocate for greater representation.

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Built in 1822, the Allendale Mill on Woonasquatucket Avenue currently serves as apartment housing for the North Providence community. Although the building’s existing structure provides hints of its historic past, most simply ignore it as just another defunct mill, unaware that both its design and operation served as a model for later textile mills.

The man behind its construction was Providence luminary and civic leader, Zachariah Allen, born 1795. He was a founder of the Providence Athenaeum and the Rhode Island Historical Society, as well as a trustee of Butler Hospital. A successful legal professional and respected author, Allen constructed Allendale Mill out of a desire to return to his family’s roots in manufacturing woolen textiles.

Allen was as much innovator and inventor as academic and businessman. Learning from the failures and deficiencies of past and present textile mills, Allen’s design for Allendale was way ahead of its time.

The entire structure was designed from the ground up around a single key element: fire safety. Allendale’s double-thick floors, complex staggered-framing, general floorplan and original slate shingles all contributed to the plan for the “slow-burning mill,” a term attributed to Allendale and later applied to other mills that used such a design.

In addition to its safer construction, Allendale was at the forefront in terms of practical and accessible fire protection for workers. Among Allendale’s signature hallmarks was its own hydrant and sprinkler system, which complemented industrial-grade pumps and water-hoses situated at ‘hot-spot’ locations throughout the mill.

Allen believed that his commitment to providing a safer work environment would constitute lower insurance premiums for his mills, but his insurers disagreed. Thus, Allen decided he would need to form his own insurance company. Together with other like-minded business owners, Allen collaborated with the Boston Mutual Insurance Company to form the Allendale Insurance Company. This new firm would deal only with manufacturers that held their facilities to the highest standards in construction, maintenance, and quality, and would use the Mill at Allendale as a benchmark for further industry standards that would help to shape the development of modern workplace fire codes and regulations that continue to safeguard workers today.

Allen’s insurance enterprise continues to operate as FM Global, headquartered in Johnston, RI.

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Between 1860 and 1880, Providence’s population doubled in size. With this flood of newcomers seeking employment in rapidly expanding industrial and manufacturing sectors came the high demand for housing. Areas to the the west and northwest of the city center were bought and opened up for development, close to employment bases like Brown and Sharpe, Nicholson File Company, and American Locomotive Works. On October 1, 1883, the Providence Journal wrote on the proliferation of construction of new homes in the Smith Hill area: “The 10th Ward continues to grow more rapidly than any other ward in the city…for both the amount invested and the number of buildings erected.” It was around this time that a major developer and investor Andrew Dickhaut completed several groups of small, “cookie-cutter” cottages as rental investment properties in Smith Hill on Fillmore, Bath, Lydia, and Duke Streets. Upon their building, the cottages on each of these streets represented an important alternative to multi-family housing common to their time period -- the cottages were small, but private, single family homes. Today, the homes on Bath Street make up the largest surviving group of small workers’ dwellings in Providence. The Dickhaut Cottages that line the east side of Bath Street off of Orms Street occupied approximately half of a long block, about 1.25 acres. Typical of such late nineteenth-century residential development, these houses are built close together on narrow lots, and are at the sidewalk line. The houses built by Dickhaut and his heirs fall into two categories.  The ones on Bath Street, all made of wood, are “Type A” clapboard-sheathed with a three bay façade, hooded entrance, side hall plan, and a pair of windows in the gable end.  “Type B,” built in 1891 on Duke Street, had more elaborate features like decorative shingle panels and turned-spindle porches. According to the 1892 Directory of Providence, when the houses were organized by street address, several tenants appear to be employed at local mills and factories as machinists and laborers. Early occupants represent a typical immigrant neighborhood for the time: Irish, Armenian, Scandinavian, and Jewish. We can deduce that these original occupants were successful enough to rent single family homes within a rapidly growing neighborhood, rather than sharing closer accommodations with others -- either other families or their own extended ones. These houses were modest and usually built with only the basic amenities. While the early tenants did not own the properties in which they dwelled, which was a clear sign of upward mobility, these occupants were able to afford a small bit of rented land with a modicum of privacy.

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When Alfred Augustus Reed of Providence formed the Oriental Mills Manufacturing Company for the production of cotton sheet goods, he and his associates also formed the Oriental Print Works, located in Warwick, RI.  Although the printworks failed during the Depression of 1873, production at the parent mill lasted until the Depression of 1893 when Oriental went out of business.  The mill property was purchased by J.P. Campbell & Co., which continued cotton production until 1907.  The following year, the mill property was purchased by Edgar J. Lowenstein and reborn as the American Silk Spinning Co. Despite its name, American Silk eventually would branch out into weaving synthetic fibers with considerable success until 1962.  Union Industries of Providence then purchased the mill complex, transforming it into a production facility for packaging materials. Originally known as Union Paper, the firm now calls itself Admiral Packaging Division of Union Industries. Today, the original mill serves as a showroom and corporate offices, with remaining spaces rented to other firms, while production continues in the more modern parts of the complex. The mill complex is located on the northeastern edge of Smith Hill at the southern end of what was the West River industrial district.  Originally part of North Providence, this area began to develop as a factory corridor following construction of the Providence and Worcester Railroad in 1848. Noted Providence architect Niles B. Schubarth designed the original three-story production loft which is mostly visible today, although obscured by later single-story weave sheds on the west (Whipple St.) side and by other buildings to the east and south.  Additionally, the original complex contained a smaller three-story loft as well as a power house, of which only the brick chimney remains. The main building is a classic “New England Mill” design, long and narrow to accommodate line-shaft mechanical power and copiously endowed with arched windows to allow for maximum natural lighting.  The most distinctive architectural features of the site are the twin external stair towers on the east and west sides, originally crowned with helm roofs (one was lost years ago and not replaced). Despite twentieth-century modifications to windows and doorways and infilling of the site with more modern structures, the basic architectural integrity of the complex remains. Construction of this mill and its neighboring industrial facilities spurred rapid residential development in both Smith Hill and West River for the simple reason that factory employees needed easy pedestrian access to their places of employment. The City of Providence annexed this area by 1874, and urban amenities such as schools, churches, public safety installations and public transit gradually followed.  Very little of this development remains today, the result of highway construction, urban renewal, and the de-industrialization of the city. The West River residential neighborhood to the north has entirely disappeared along with most of its factories.  Railroad roundhouses and storage tracks to the east likewise are gone. The extensive Chad Brown/Admiral Terrace housing project on the west side dates only from the 1940s. Thus, the old mill seemingly stands alone, without historical context save for remnants of old Smith Hill to the south.

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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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In 1764, Thomas Olney established one of the first mill privileges along the Woonasquatucket River. Through the rise and fall of industries and technologies, we now have the Rising Sun Mills . The complex is named for the paper mill Olney’s son built and operated until the early 1800s when it was sold and converted into a textile mill.

Although Rhode Island’s textile industries had originally been based on cotton manufacturing, by the mid 19th century, woolen production dominated. The blockade of southern ports during the Civil War cut the supply of cotton to New England’s textile mills, pushing many local manufacturers to produce yarns and cloths from local and imported wool. Soon there was a new market for worsted wool. Coats, suits, and cloaks made of worsted cloth had a smooth texture and sheen, a look that the public took to with gusto. Worsted fabrics were also highly desirable for military uniforms. Capitalizing on the trend, Providence became the largest producer of worsted goods in the country by the 1880s.

Jumping into the growing industry, Charles Fletcher bought the property in 1875 and converted the old paper mill building into a bustling yarn factory named the Providence Worsted Mill. In the volatile boom-and-bust business climate of the late 19th century, the textile industry consolidated to stay competitive. In the mid 1890s, the Providence Worsted Mill merged with the National Woolen Company to become the American Woolen Company. As Fletcher continued to add buildings to his yarn-making complex, his business expanded to produce a range of fabrics, not only woolens. Eventually, Fletcher incorporated his woolen and cotton textile factories to form the National and Providence Worsted Mills. At its height the company employed 750 workers, produced 900,000 yards of worsted goods yearly, and became the largest single consumer of wool in the United States.

The mill closed in the 1950s, along with many New England textile factories, as the industry moved south in search of a non-unionized work force. Oversized, distinctive mill complexes like Rising Sun stood empty and underused as Providence’s once mighty industrial base of textile and machine-tool production dispersed. Fortunately, mills like Rising Sun have more recently become beacons of innovation and adaptive reuse. Rising Sun, for example, is now home to 135 residential lofts, 120,000 square feet of corporate and professional office space, and houses architects, designers, software and pharmaceutical firms, and a yoga studio.

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The Woonasquatucket River, with its generous drops and fast moving streams, was lined with textile factories in the early 19th century. Once textiles were made, they required dyeing and bleaching to be transformed into usable fabrics. In turn, a growing market emerged for vendors capable of taking in yarn or cloth for washing, bleaching, printing, or dyeing to the specifications of the customer. This process required large vats to hold chemical dyes and vast amounts of water to flush them off fibers. The Woonasquatucket became home to such textile finishing companies and the recipient of their toxic run-off.

In 1810, Dr. Benjamin Dyer of Cranston established the Providence Dye House Company on Sabin Street in downtown Providence. Dyer had an eye for innovation. He purchased rights to the differential calendering machine, a new technology that imparted different finishes to cloth by squeezing it under tension through rollers moving at varying speeds. His new machine, which could put down a more complex pattern, was eventually powered by a 20 HP “Colombian” steam engine, a small-sized high-pressure steam engine. Dyer's eye for innovation proved extremely successful for his company, reputed to be the first steam-driven textile finishing plant in the country.

In 1842, the company renamed itself the Providence Dyeing, Bleaching & Calendering Company and purchased the old Brown George Paper Mill building on the Woonasquatucket River in Olneyville. The property was strategic for a number of reasons: it came with the water privilege established first by Christopher Olney in 1773; it could take advantage of the newly completed New York Providence and Boston Railroad (finished in 1837); and it could service the cotton and worsted mills that shared the river–Lymnsville, Manton, Dyerville, Merino and Union Mills upstream–and the Valley Worsted Mill downstream. By 1850, PDB&C processed 13,500 yards of bleached goods annually and employed 200 workers. By 1880, the river corridor was the industrial centerpiece of Providence’s textile world, Olneyville buzzed with mills, and the river ran in multiple colors, reeking with foul odors.

A new sewage system installed in Providence in 1877 proved unable to mitigate the full environmental effects of manufacturing along the river. Eventually, the stench from the river drove concerned citizens to fund a study in 1905 to figure out how to clean up the river and a commission was formed. Businesses cooperated, adopting the commission’s suggestions to limit the amount of chemical waste they poured directly into the water. The efforts were somewhat successful.

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The modest sign remaining on Kinsley Avenue does not do justice to this former industrial behemoth. The contribution of machines, and the parts and tools needed to run them, can sometimes be lost on the consumer who purchases the end product.

Nicholson File is a toolmaker that today’s consumers might not appreciate or even notice. Yet if you had opened any newspaper from any region of the US at the turn of the 20th century, chances are you would see an ad for a Nicholson File. Nicholson File Company was the world’s first commercially successful manufacturer of machine-made files (rather than hand sharpened). Founded at the end of the Civil War in 1864 by William T. Nicholson, the company dominated the file market for a century. The company occupied these buildings for 90 years.

William T. Nicholson was born in Pawtucket, RI in 1834. His coming of age story reads like a journey across Providence’s major industrial giants. At age 14 he joined his father and learned the machinist’s trade (shaping, cutting and forming of metal) and at 17 worked in the manufacture of screw machines for Eagle Screw Company in Providence. In 1852 Nicholson worked for Joseph Brown (founder of Brown and Sharpe) in the manufacture of surveyors’ instruments, watches, clocks, rules and gauges for precision measurement. By 1858 he formed a partnership with Isaac Brownell to manufacture jeweler’s tools and light machinery. He took over the company in 1859.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Nicholson got into the arms business, making parts for the Springfield rifle, the standard infantry weapon for the Union Army. At the end of the war, he started making files to be used in machine tool production. By 1886 his company manufactured 1500 files a day that ranged in size from 10 pounds to featherweight files used by watchmakers.

Ever vigilant of the market, and following a trend in American manufacturing at the time for horizontal integration, Nicholson began acquiring file manufacturers around the country in the 1890s. By 1909 the various Nicholson plants produced 120,000 files a day, employed 2,500 people, and comprised 80% of the national market for files.

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This 25-acre parcel and 12-building campus along the Woonasquatucket River was once home to one of Providence’s premier companies, Brown and Sharpe.

In 1833 David Brown and his son opened a shop in Providence for the making and repair of watches and clocks and other precision mechanical work. Lucien Sharpe joined the business as an apprentice in 1848 and became a full partner in 1853. While Brown concentrated on mechanical problems, Sharpe provided business acumen. Together they made Brown and Sharpe into a nationally recognized machine tool producer.

Brown and Sharpe’s products were the day-to-day tools of machinists and allowed them to produce the individual parts of complex manufacturing machines. Machinists, and the products they make, constitute the foundation of precision manufacturing.

The 1850s marked the beginning of the company’s spectacular rise. Brown devoted his career to raising the standard of accuracy in machine shop operations: he built an automatic linear dividing engine so fundamentally correct in design and workmanship that it has remained in continuous service. His pocket vernier caliper (a linear measuring instrument) of 1851 has been called "the first practical tool for exact measurement which could be sold in any country at a price within the reach of the ordinary machinist." In 1861, in perhaps his most important contribution, Brown invented the modern universal milling machine for cutting spirals. This machine helped advance mass production of cheap, interchangeable, and standard, parts.

After Brown's death in 1876, Oscar J. Beale became the company's genius in the field of mechanical design. He developed a measuring machine that enabled the company to make and sell its gauges with a guarantee of accuracy to within one ten-thousandth of an inch. In 1880, he invented an automatic screw machine.

Brown and Sharpe’s success depended on and helped to advance the mechanization of daily life in the 19th century. The machine tools the company produced proved instrumental to countless automotive, aeronautic, commercial, and domestic products. Brown and Sharpe's skilled workforce contributed to the development of the automobile and aviation industries and to the emergence of the United States as a global leader in manufacturing.

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The US Rubber Company Mill has a complex history of ownership and use that stretches over 80 years. From its inception as the Joseph Banigan Rubber Company (1896-1910), through its acquisition and expansion as a regional plant of the US Rubber Company (1910-1975), to its current use as the Waterfire Arts Center and other industrial, commercial, and residential uses, this complex is representative of the reinvention and reuse of industrial buildings throughout New England.

The story of the complex begins with Joseph Banigan, Rhode Island’s first Irish-Catholic millionaire. Born in Ireland in 1839, he fled the ravages of the Irish potato famine as a child and came to Providence, where he joined nearly 16,000 of his fellow Irish immigrants. As a young man Banigan apprenticed at the Providence Rubber Company where he learned the industry. In 1889, at the age of 50, Banigan established his own company in Woonsocket. The Alice Factory, named for his mother, was the largest rubber factory in the world.

After a few years, Banigan returned to Providence to find that the city’s industrial base had changed; machine tool manufacturing now surpassed textile production. With the rechanneling of the Woonasquatucket River, the introduction of rail service along the city’s expanding industrial corridor, and the availability of process water (water that is no longer clean enough to drink but can be used in a factory), a number of new manufacturing firms moved to the banks of the river. Banigan purchased a building owned by the Saxon Worsted Company and constructed a number of new buildings to house the production of rubber shoes and boots.

While building his rubber empire, Banigan did not forget his Irish heritage and humble beginnings. He donated generously to the city’s orphanages, the Lying In Hospital (now Women & Infants Hospital), the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Home for the Aged, and St. Maria’s Home for Working Girls. After Banigan’s death, his business was sold to US Rubber Company, which shifted its production from footwear to rubber tires and rubber thread.

US Rubber doubled down on Providence in what the Providence Journal described as “one of the largest real estate transactions that has ever been recorded in this city.” The company expanded, purchasing the idle ALCO buildings in 1918 and began outfitting them for the manufacture of solid and pneumatic tires. In its adaptation of pre-existing buildings for new uses, the US Rubber Company was typical of expanding manufacturers of the period.

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In 2009, a group of volunteers stepped into the Woonasquatucket River at Donigian Park wearing waist-high heavy rubber boots and sturdy gloves to protect against the river’s pollution. Donigian Park in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence had once been a major destination for thousands of Providence residents who, in the 1880s, visited both Donigian and Merino Parks to enjoy a swim, a picnic, and the greenery. But by 2009, the park had become a defacto dump. On that single clean-up day, volunteers pulled out 150 shopping carts and two tons of automobile tires from the river.

Even in the 1880s the city should have warned residents against swimming in the Woonasquatucket. While mills, factories, and other industries used the Woonasquatucket River as a power source to engine their factories, they also used it to remove garbage and other waste from their buildings. Trace amounts of metals like zinc and cadmium, used to set dyes on fabrics, and pesticides containing mercury and arsenic, used to prevent insect damage to wool and cotton, made their way into the waters. But the biggest source of trace metals came from the production of the machinery used in these water-powered factories. Tin, iron, copper, and pewter used to make tools and parts regularly escaped into the air, soil, and water or were buried as a simplistic means of waste disposal. Most of these facilities used some type of volatile or semi-volatile organic compound to clean machinery and tools such as trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, known carcinogens. Many of these pollutants can still be found in river sediments today, more than 100 years after they were released.

Specific attempts to reduce the emission of at least some metals began in the 1950s and 1960s, but legislative requirements for industrial pretreatment of wastewaters did not come until the 1972 Clean Water Act. As more activist environmental movements took hold in the 1980s, concern for the status of the river and its importance to the city and the surrounding neighborhoods grew. In 1998, the federal government designated the Woonasquatucket River as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers, commemorating its role in the nation’s industrial history.

Shortly after, The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council formed to improve the environmental, recreational, and economic assets of the river and its watershed. Thanks to their efforts, Donigian Park is once again a beautiful urban refuge.

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The Woonasquatucket River (woon-AHS-kwa-tuk-it) has been at the center of Rhode Island’s uniquely layered history of invention, innovation and multiculturalism.

The Narragansett and Wampanoag tribes who first settled the region called the river “where the salt water ends.” The river flows approximately 19 miles from the headwaters northwest of Providence, 300 feet above sea level, and flows steeply downward before joining with the Moshassuck River to form the Providence River, which in turn flows into Narragansett Bay. The lower part of the river closest to the Bay is tidal. The rich wildlife drew Native Americans here to forage for berries, to fish and to hunt small game. The lush wooded river valley made it home to fox, coyote, rabbits, white tail deer, otters, and raccoons, along with occasional bear and moose. Trout, salmon, herring, eels, bluegills, pumpkinseeds, catfish, turtles, swans, mallards and hooded mergansers lived in and on the river.

In 1636 a treaty gave the land between the Moshassuck and the Woonasquatucket to Roger Williams. Shortly thereafter, European settlers started to manage the river to profit from its riches. The river's swift drop made it particularly easy to utilize. Farmers used waterwheels to grind their grains, to saw timber, and to power other small industries. After Samuel Slater harnessed the Blackstone River in 1790 to run his textile mill, other businessmen built along the Woonasquatucket. More and more factories followed suit until nearly every foot of the river’s drop was used to turn a factory water wheel. The heavy dependency of factories on the river’s flowing water made dry summer months particularly challenging.

In January 1824 the Rhode Island General Assembly issued a charter to the newly established Woonasquatucket River Company, formed by leading merchants to construct reservoirs along the Woonaskquatucket River to collect spring rains and to hold a supply of water during dry months. The founders pooled their capital and constructed four reservoirs: Slack’s, Sprague Lower, Waterman, and Stillwater. This experiment proved so successful that it became a model for industrial rivers around the world.

Stillwater Pond (now Woonasquatucket Pond) is the largest reservoir on the river itself. Improvements in waterpower management spurred technological and business innovations, including the first power loom and the first mutual system of insurance originated by Zachariah Allen at his Allendale Mill. The river has a total of 18 dams, testimonies to the interaction between the river and the industries it supported.

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Prominent textile manufacturer Henry Lippitt, his wife and six children lived in this opulent Italian Renaissance Revival house, a testament to the burgeoning wealth of industrial Providence. Lippitt’s business ventures and investments proved so successful that he could afford to begin construction on the house in 1863, at height of the Civil War.

Henry Lippitt’s proclivity for the intricate processes of textile manufacturing lent itself to other areas, as well. He designed innovative systems for heating and plumbing for his new home on Hope Street that had never been used before in non-commercial buildings. Perhaps concerned that his heating system would not function as well as he imagined, Lippitt included a financial penalty in his contract with the construction company in case the heating did not work when the family took up residence in the winter of 1865.

Henry Lippitt was not the only innovator in the Lippitt family. His wife, Mary Ann (Balch) Lippitt, promoted the oralism (lip-reading) method in the education of deaf children. The Lippitt’s daughter, Jeanie, had lost her hearing at the age of four due to a bout with scarlet fever. Mary Ann Lippitt advocated high-quality education not only for Jeanie but for deaf children across the state: she founded the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, still in operation today.

The Lippitt House remained in the family for 114 years. Preserve Rhode Island now operates this National Historic Landmark as a museum.

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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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P: ¿Porque hay tantos Colombianos en una ciudad tan pequeña?

Todo comenzó en el principio de los años 60, cuando Jay Giuttari, el hijo del dueño de una fábrica en Central Falls, estudiaba en el Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts, donde se hizo amistades con el hijo del dueño Colombiano de una fábrica. Después de graduarse, Jay consiguió empleo en Colombia por un tiempo. El descubrió que los tejedores locales usaban maquinaria idéntica a las de la fábrica de su padre, y que eran expertos en reparar las tejedoras viejas. Mientras tanto en Central Falls, su padre se encontraba en dificultades reemplazando a sus empleados retirados; cuyos hijos ahora se integraban a la universidad, convirtiéndose en maestros, abogados y doctores en vez de trabajar en la fábrica.

La solución de Giuttari: dar empleo a los Colombianos, y los primeros tres llegaron en un dia frio del mes de Marzo en el 1965. Lyon Fabrics cerró las puertas en los años 90, pero por más de 20 años la fábrica contrató Colombianos expertos en tejer que trabajaban las maquinarias. Ellos se convirtieron en el componente principal de la comunidad Colombiana de Central Falls.

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