“The heavens were open’d And She saw too Archangels descending from the east, with golden crowns upon there [sic] heads, clothed in long white Robes, down to the feet; Bringing a sealed Pardon from the living God.” In a note found in the Friend’s Bible titled “A Memorandum of the Introduction of the Fatal Fever,” Public Universal Friend described the vision they experienced that altered their life.  The Public Universal Friend was a Quaker born as Jemima Wilkinson in 1752 in Cumberland, Rhode Island. In 1776, after suffering a fever, the Jemima Wilkinson claimed to have “died” and been reborn as the Public Universal Friend (the Friend). Through this vision, the Friend believed they were called to preach as God’s mouthpiece. The Friend immediately began spreading the word of their rebirth in their hometown and throughout towns in New England. Their powerful oration and stances on women’s equality and the prohibition of slavery created a small following, known as the Society of Universal Friends.  While their beliefs were primarily standard Quaker doctrine, many onlookers were more focused on their androgynous appearance. After their rebirth, the Friend refused to respond to their old name, dressed themselves in androgynous preachers’ clothes, and forbade their followers from referring to them using gendered pronouns. One description of their clothing in 1787 describes them wearing: “…light cloth Cloke with a Cape like a Man’s–Purple Gown, long sleeves to Wristbands–Mans shirt down to the Hands with Neckband–purple handkerchief or Neckcloth tied around the neck like a man’s–No Cap–Hair combed turned over & not long–wear a Watch–Man’s Hat.” In addition, their tone and confidence were also considered “masculine.” Their manner of speech deeply compelled and sometimes confused their audience, who often speculated as to whether the Friend was truly a man or a woman. One onlooker wrote: “What she said, or of the subject matter, nothing is remembered; but her person, dress and manner is as palpable… as though she thus looked and spake but yesterday.” Of the detractors of their following, the Friend said: “They hate us without a cause, and thus evilly entreat us in the darkness of their minds, and in the ignorance and hardness of their hearts, for which my soul doth pity them, and even entreat thee for them, that if possible their eyes may be yet opened.“ The Society of Universal Friends grew in Rhode Island and slowly spread throughout New England, as the Friend traveled constantly. Eventually the Friend expanded their reach to Pennsylvania, shifting the group’s headquarters to Worcester, Pennsylvania, in 1787 and permanently leaving New England in 1789. During their short time in Pennsylvania, the Friend was planning to establish a settlement in rural New York, which they founded in 1790. They named it Jerusalem. With frequent land disputes and attempts to arrest the Friend for blasphemy–both stemming from the Friend’s former followers– the Friend persisted in Jerusalem but struggled to bring in new recruits. The Friend eventually passed away in 1819 at the age of 66. The legacy of the Friend is complex, with some portraying them as a manipulative con artist, and others praising their progressive stances. While the language of non-binary gender identity did not exist then in the same way it does today, the Public Universal Friend is often pointed to as one of the first self-described non-binary people in colonial America.

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This brick structure, with pedimented portico supported by four columns, was built in 1954 as the home of Congregation Beth David, a Conservative Jewish congregation founded in 1892 that previously worshipped on nearby Chalkstone Boulevard. The building was designed by Thomas Russillo, an architect of some repute responsible for many Rhode Island institutional buildings and private homes, and is sited in a residential neighborhood whose large, substantially built three-decker houses are typical of the Smith Hill area. Jewish immigrants began arriving in Providence in the late 1860s, first from Germany and then from eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Lithuania and Russia. Providence was prosperous in that period and jobs were plentiful. They settled in Smith Hill, one of Providence’s most affordable areas, living peacefully among the Irish immigrants already there. Members of both groups became shopkeepers, tailors, bakers, machinists, and soon lawyers and doctors, as well as workers in the textile, jewelry and rubber industries, drivers of Providence’s then-flourishing economy.   In 1970 the Beth David congregation merged with Anshei Kovno Congregation (founded at the turn of the century by immigrants from Kovno, Lithuania). The merged congregation, called Beth David-Anshei Kovno congregation, left Providence in 1980 to join with the Beth Am congregation in Warwick. This building was then first rented and ultimately purchased by a new church, the Gospel Tabernacle Outreach Ministries (GTOM), whose home it remains today. GTOM’s missions and ministries respond to the area’s current population, largely African American and Hispanic. GTOM sponsors a Hispanic Heritage Month and works to promote education in the community with a scholarship fund and recognition awards for successful students. The organization also offers instruction in life skills such as literacy, financial responsibility, employment, and entrepreneurship. They also host a Men’s Ministry, and they run a food pantry and a food kitchen open to all. In many ways, the spirit of the original Congregation Beth David as a place of worship for new immigrants lives on in GTOM.

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As the population of the East Side grew in the 18th century, residences sprang up quickly along Benefit Street. Intended for “the common benefit of all,” Benefit Street encouraged the construction of homes higher on the ridge of modern-day College Hill while still remaining within existing property limits. This was possible because of the very narrow, but long, plots that Roger Williams designated for the new community of Providence in 1636. These plots began at the edge of the Great Salt River and Cove, and extended up the hill. Colonists typically used the higher land to plant fruit orchards and graze livestock. Unlike many other New England towns, the Providence settlement faced the waterway, rather than surrounding a meeting house. The emphasis on religious liberty explains this choice: since colonial authorities in Rhode Island could not force men and women to worship, the Church did not serve as the center of the community, literally or figuratively.

This unique orientation of the settlement did not mean, however, that Providence townspeople did not worship. Most did so, and they first used private homes before a meeting house was constructed to better serve the religious needs of the community. Roger Williams founded the first Baptist congregation in the U.S. in 1638. In 1775, while Providence enjoyed economic success, the Baptists made a new and bold move in erecting this magnificent building, the First Baptist Church. The largest surviving wooden structure from Colonial America, it combines the simple hall of a traditional New England meeting house with the most fashionable English architectural features, such as the steeple, modeled after a version of the one at St. Martin in the Fields (1724), on Trafalgar Square in London, by architect James Gibbs. Brown University, founded as a Baptist college, has held its annual commencement in the church every year since 1776.

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Providence’s exquisite jewel box of a French neo-classical temple, the Bell Street Chapel, was built in 1875 for art dealer and engraver James Eddy after a design by storied Providence architect William R. Walker. Eddy dedicated his church “to God, to Truth, and to all that ennobles Humanity.” Eddy was a radical progressive for the time, participating in the causes of temperance, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. He rejected the organized religions of his day, but could find no one to lead a congregation according to his vision. The church remained empty until after his death in 1888. The first service was Eddy’s memorial, featuring reformer and activist Anna Garlin Spencer, who organized an independent church in accord with Eddy’s thoughts and was Rhode Island’s first female ordained minister. Spencer fought against misogyny, racism, and poverty. Among her friends were history’s greatest fighters, including Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. Spencer was a groundbreaker. Today’s Unitarian Universalist congregation continues the fight for social justice with Reverend Margaret Weis at its helm.

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Completed in 1892 to serve the wealthy Episcopalians of Broadway, and home for ten years to the African-American Church of the Savior, this Alpheus C. Morse-designed Romanesque Revival church has been Sts. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church since 1940. Armenians found refuge in the United States after being driven from their homeland by the Ottoman Turkish brutal pogroms in the 1890s and Armenian Genocide of 1915. The immigrant arrivals called their new home in Providence the “Citadel” (mitchnapert) for the community’s strength and activism. The congregation donated their labor to build new altars, a new baptismal font, new pews, and to replace floors. The rich, timber-trussed hammerbeam ceiling over the nave resembles a protective ark. The commitment to faith and service remains as strong today as when they first arrived, representative of their history as the first nation to accept Christianity as its national religion in 301AD. This community gives aid and support to those in need at home, as well as to Armenians across the globe facing conflict and persecution.

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In 1885, there were fewer than 500 Italian-born in Providence; within a generation, over twenty-thousand. In Italy in 1889, Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini’s society sent missionaries to Providence and formed the Holy Ghost parish to serve the spiritual and physical needs of this growing community. Plans for this Italian Romanesque church were made in 1901 and completed in 1909. Father Flaminio Parenti, the “Shepherd of Federal Hill,” led the flock here from 1922 to 1964 and continued the beautification of the church. The work of the Scalabrinian missionaries continues today as a lay organization, the Scalabrini Dukcevich Center, which provides support and services to all those in need. At Holy Ghost, there are masses in English, Italian and Spanish. Communities of Colombians and Guatemalans have joined the congregation, breathing new life into the old traditions. Holy Ghost remains the “Mother Church” of the Italian diaspora in Rhode Island and a beautiful testament to the faith and fortitude of the community.

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La Iglesia Bautista el Calvario ha servido en la Ciudad de Providence por más de 150 años. En el año 1902, la iglesia abrió sus puertas a la comunidad en un tiempo severo de insuficiencia de carbón. Pero sus servicios continúan: Una puede entrar a la iglesia cualquier domingo y escuchar voces cantando y rezando, algunas veces en inglés y algunas veces en español; los servicios son alegres y permanecen por más tiempo del horario fijo. El edificio de estilo neogótico de la iglesia da la bienvenida a una congregación extremadamente diverso, con miembros procedentes de Ghana, Haití, Costa de Marfil (Ivory Coast), Jamaica, Laos, Liberia y que asisten a los servicios de idiomas en inglés, mientras que los latinos tienen sus propios servicios en español. A veces todos se combinan en la adoración.

Ya existían dos Congregaciones Pentecostales Hispanas en Providence en el principio de los años 70 y los Bautistas americanos estaban ansiosos por no quedarse atrás. El Reverendo Pedro Ortiz, un Bautista Cubano con mucha energía, exploró el área y encontró un domicilio en la Iglesia Bautista El Calvario, quien abrió sus puertas a los congregantes hispanos en el año 1974. El Reverendo J. Francisco Litardo, de Ecuador, se convirtió en un sacerdote por tiempo complete en marzo del año 1974, aunque la Iglesia Metodista Unida pagaba parte de su salario. Una segunda Iglesia Bautista Hispana abrió en la ciudad de Pawtucket en el 1977. Y ahora hay docenas de iglesias.

El Reverendo Litardo recuerda “Cuando estaba aquí, algunas veces éramos 200, 250, algunas veces 150, 180 porque la gente va y viene, especialmente en Rhode Island porque es muy pequeño…”

La congregación de Litardo abarcaba a guatemaltecos, dominicanos y puertorriqueños, y él trataba de unirlos en una familia  por medio de un fuerte sentido de la cultura latina y la organización de servicios dinámicos y emocionantes.

Así como los periódicos y la comida nativa ayudaba a los nuevos inmigrantes de Rhode Island, los servicios religiosos conducidos en español también los ayudaban sentirse en casa, pero en una forma espiritual. El Reverendo Juan Francisco Jr. de la Iglesia Puerta de Refugio, o the Door of Refuge Church, en la calle Valley en Providence, visualiza las iglesias hispanas cumpliendo dos metas; ellos son “el punto de asimilación y el mantenimiento de la identidad”.

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There was a time when, if a bride wanted to walk up the aisle at the Old Stone Baptist Church, she had to hoist herself, gown and all, through one of the church’s back windows.

Most churches place the pulpit and the main entrance at opposite ends of their building, allowing for formal processions up a center aisle. When it was built in 1752, however, the two entrances to the Old Stone Church stood behind the pulpit, making for an awkward and subdued entrance for the bride. The solution? A ladder, a window, and a congregation willing to keep their eyes averted while the bride fixed her dress.

In the late 1950s, the church added an entrance hall opposite the pulpit. Brides at the Old Stone Church no longer climb through a window in order to make a grand entrance, but for many congregants, it’s a fond memory of one of the church’s more interesting customs.

The Old Stone Church was also known for its annual Rhode Island clambake. The church held the first clambake in 1864, and by 1875, an astonishing 4,000 people attended the event. The clambake served as a fundraiser for the church, drawing people from neighboring communities regardless of religious affiliation.

In the morning, cooks placed heaping mounds of Rhode Island clams and quahogs, along with locally-grown potatoes, onions, and corn, into a pit lined with a bed of hot rocks. The cooks alternated layers of food with moist rockweed, slowly steaming the feast for hours. The Manchester family of Little Compton were for many years a critical part of the clambake: Abe managed the event, Debbie collected tickets, and Lizzie cooked the chowder.

Crowds gathered southeast of the church behind the Pleasant View Cemetery and sat at long tables. The Old Stone Church clambake was always the social event of the season. People dressed in their finest clothes and munched on iced watermelon to cool off in the summer heat. Many local stores closed and gave employees the day off. The popular event halted during World War II due to rationing, but in recent years, the church has begun to revive the delicious tradition.

During the years that the clambakes weren't held, the church grounds became the site of an annual bazaar. Farmers bought and sold livestock, demonstrated crafts and skills, and held an antique auction on the church lawn. Reverend Bob Hollis remembers a toy table that Millie Waite arranged where a nickel would buy children the bag of their choice, with a surprise toy inside. The atmosphere was festive and exciting, with people spending days putting up booths and preparing for the festival.

Even though the church isn’t technically in Adamsville—it’s just over the line in Tiverton—for Adamsville residents, it has played a long and important role in the religious and social life of the village. After all, if your congregation is willing to put up with climbing through a window to get married, it’s clearly something special.

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Calvary Baptist has served South Providence for over 150 years. In 1902, the church opened its doors to the community at a time of severe coal shortage. Their service continues: walk into the church any Sunday and you will hear voices singing and praying, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish; the services are joyful and loud and often go on longer than the scheduled hour. The church’s Late Gothic Revival-style building welcomes an extremely diverse congregation, with members from Ghana, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Laos, and Liberia attending the English language services, while the Latinos have their own. Sometimes they combine in worship.  Already in the early 1970s there were two Hispanic Pentecostal congregations in Providence, and the American Baptists were anxious to not be left out.  An energetic Cuban Baptist, the Rev. Pedro Ortiz, scouted the area and found a welcoming home at Calvary Baptist Church, which opened its doors to Spanish-speaking congregants in 1974. Rev. J. Francisco Litardo, from Ecuador, became the full-time pastor of Iglesia Hispana “El Calvario” in March 1974, though the United Methodist Church paid part of his salary. A second Latino Baptist church opened in Pawtucket in 1977. Now there are dozens.  The Rev. Litardo recalled "When I was here sometimes we were 200, 250, sometimes 150, 180, because people are coming and leaving, especially in Rhode Island because it's small…"  Litardo's congregation included Guatemalans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, and he tried to bring them all together in one family by instilling a strong sense of Latino culture and organizing dynamic and exciting services.  Just as home-town newspapers and familiar food helped the new immigrants feel at home in Rhode Island, so did Spanish language services of worship help them to feel spiritually at home. The Rev. Juan Francisco Jr. of the Iglesia Puerta de Refugio, or Door of Refuge Church, on Valley Street in Providence, sees Hispanic churches as serving two important goals; “they are a point of assimilation and of keeping identity."  

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This site, the former Whitridge Hall, served as the launching pad for a memorable show business career. In the 1950s, a summer theater troupe called this building home. The troupe hired an 18-year-old actor named Charles Nelson Reilly, who made his professional debut here as the detective in a play called “Broken Dishes.” Reilly became a show business star who regularly appeared on TV in the 1960s and 70s, but he never forgot his acting debut at Whitridge Hall.

In the 1870s, a group of Tiverton residents chartered Whitridge Hall “for the purposes of religious, charitable and literary culture, and the promotion of liberal religious thought.” According to an anonymous writer in 1884, “The hall is of unusual beauty and capacity for the purpose for which it is intended and used, viz., lectures, concerts, social parties, &c., and has a fine piano.”

The hall drew its name from philanthropist Thomas Whitridge, who grew up in the William Whitridge Estate, a 1770s house that still stands on Stone Church Road in Tiverton.

Whitridge’s father served as town doctor, and three of his brothers followed their father into medicine. Thomas moved to Baltimore, where he built a fleet of ships and became one of the nation’s largest importers of coffee, amassing the fortune that he used to endow Whitridge Hall in his hometown.

Three denominations used the hall’s Bowen Chapel for services. Episcopalians and Catholics used it as temporary space while building nearby churches, and Unitarians regularly held services here into the early 1900s.

Two famous New Englanders delivered sermons here: Julia Ward Howe and Edward Everett Hale. Howe, on a visit to Washington, D.C., woke on a gray November morning in 1861 and quickly scratched out the words that were forming in her head, and earned instant fame as the lyricist for the Civil War standard, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Hale, a prominent Unitarian minister and theologian, is best known today for his 1863 short story, “The Man Without a Country,” whose protagonist is sentenced to lifetime exile aboard U.S. naval vessels for shouting, "Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!" during the treason trial of Aaron Burr. Hale’s story was adapted to film several times, most recently as a 1973 made-for-TV movie. Hale’s Matunuck, Rhode Island, home is now a museum.

The town’s first public library blossomed inside Whitridge Hall, growing in just 20 years from a few donated books in 1881 to 4,000 volumes. Local service groups such as the Grange and the nascent Tiverton Historical Society met often in Whitridge Hall, and the building briefly became a dance hall in the 1960s.

Eventually, many of the groups and churches Whitridge Hall once hosted found space of their own. The library moved to a fieldstone building on Highland Avenue bequeathed by a former school teacher, Lydia Essex; and the Historical Society moved its headquarters to the 1730s Chase-Cory House, freeing Whitridge Hall for conversion into the apartment house you see today.

The pulse of Tiverton beat through this building for nearly 90 years, and the town still struggles to replace its function as a center for the community.

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More than 100 years after its founding, the Feast still begins and ends at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church. Though in recent years the religious aspects of the Feast have taken a backseat to its many secular offerings, the Feast’s four Madeiran founders held the first event at the church in 1915.

The Diocese of Fall River founded Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church in 1909 to serve New Bedford’s growing Portuguese community in the North End of the city. The ethnic church offers Portuguese and English masses, and parishioners relish its Portuguese traditions. Immaculate Conception Church was the third of the city’s three Portuguese churches. It followed Saint John the Baptist Church, the oldest Portuguese Church in North America, established in 1871 in the center of the city, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, established in 1902 on Bonney Street in the South End. The first Festas were simple gatherings on the church grounds that took place on a Sunday afternoon. Families gathered around temporary barraccas, or stands, to eat and socialize. Religious and cultural traditions from the Portuguese island of Madeira were at the heart of their celebrations. In recent years the Feast has grown into a four-day event. On its first day, a Thursday, feast organizers, or Festeiros, venerate, or worship, the Blessed Sacrament displayed in an elaborate monstrance (pedestaled case) on the altar. The Blessed Sacrament is the consecrated communion host that Catholics believe to be the real body of Jesus Christ. Afterwards, the congregation moves to the Feast grounds on nearby Madeira Field for the Benediction, or blessing, that officially opens the event.  On Sunday, the final day of the Feast, the Festeiros, their wives, and the other Club Madeirense S. S. Sacramento members gather at the Feast Grounds to march in formation to the church for a special High Mass at 10:00 AM. There the celebrant blesses them for their efforts on behalf of the Feast and for their respect for the Feast’s religious traditions.   Father Daniel Reis regrets the Feast’s change in focus over the years from religious to secular, according to the Anchor, a newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. What was once a religious procession is now just a parade without the statues of saints and other reminders of the feast’s origins. Father Reis still marches in the parade and enjoys the traditional foods the Feast has to offer, but he hopes for more. 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the Feast. There was talk of bringing back the traditional religious procession, but it did not happen. Immaculate Conception Church’s congregation is shrinking, like many Catholic churches in America. The recent closures of other churches in New Bedford is alarming, and parishioners of Immaculate Conception Church hope and pray the same does not happen to them. They are proud that they celebrate other Portuguese religious feasts in traditional ways including the Feast of Senhor da Pedra (Jesus of the Rock) and the Holy Ghost Feast, and hope to continue for many years to come.  

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New Bedford was a city of smokestacks. The coal-fired boilers that powered the textile mills left a layer of gritty soot that seemed to cover everything. This legacy of industrialization is still visible on the darkened redstone exterior of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, which has served the North End’s French Canadian and immigrant populations since 1912. By 1900, first- and second-generation immigrants made up 70% of New Bedford’s population, and 33% of the city’s foreign-born residents were French Canadian. In 1912 alone, more than 12,241 French Canadian immigrants moved to New Bedford, helping to swell the city’s population to more than 96,000 people. In the late 19th century, most French-speaking Catholics attended Sacred Heart Church, a considerable distance from the North End where many French Canadians worked in textile mills and lived in three-decker tenements. In 1895, the newly-formed parish of St. Anthony of Padua met in North Union Hall, a block away from the current location of the church. The following year, the parish built a new wood-frame church, a three-story brick rectory, and a grammar school, followed two years later by a convent to house the school’s ordained teachers. Simultaneously, the parish began to raise funds for a substantial stone cathedral, and construction began in 1903. On the afternoon of September 20, 1904, a loud rumble and cloud of dust filled the air at the building site.  A fifty-foot high masonry wall had collapsed, killing two workers, Gilbert Tremblay and Joseph Rondeau, and injuring five others. The architect, Joseph Venne of Montreal, arrived two days later to inspect the damage, but was unable to determine a cause of the failure. Construction continued under the supervision of Fall River architect and French Canadian immigrant Louis G. Destremps, and the church was dedicated in November 1912. When parishioners passed through the massive front doors, they left behind the soot of the city and entered a sanctuary of divine beauty. 5,500 electric light bulbs—still a novelty in 1912—illuminated a 65-foot high vaulted ceiling. The rows of pews could accommodate 1,840 worshippers, watched over by thirty-two sculpted angels by Italian artist Giovanni Castagnoli. The Great Vision of Saint Anthony, a grouping of sculptures by Castagnoli, soars sixty feet behind the main altar, and 117 stained glass windows surround worshippers, including a triptych window of 370 square feet. Outside, the main steeple rises 256 feet and is visible from most parts of the city. Reflecting the demographics of its parishioners, St. Anthony’s first three pastors were born in Quebec, and the first six were of French Canadian descent. Today, St. Anthony’s offers a weekly mass in Spanish, serving its parishioners from Central America, the most recent group of immigrants seeking a better life in New Bedford.

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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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In the summers, Providence residents waded into Mashapaug Pond to get clean – or, more precisely, for spiritual cleansing. "The choir would sing and the Word was preached before the candidate entered the water to have his sins washed away," recalled Ralph Simmons, a member of the Pond Street Baptist Church in the 1930s. The polluted pond is no longer used for baptisms, but Mashapaug Pond remains connected to organized worship, spiritual practice, and faith-based communities. These activities, and the sites where they occur, have changed over the years as places of worship follow their congregations’ movement around the city.

Today, one of the oldest visible sites near the pond is the Congregation of the Sons of Israel and David Cemetery on Reservoir Avenue, dating back to 1856, and now associated with Temple Beth-El. Needing a burial ground where family and friends could come to remember their loved ones, Providence’s small Jewish community purchased property near Mashapaug Pond. At the time, the new cemetery was far removed from the city’s urban core. Now, the cemetery sits wedged between busy roads and shopping sites.

As the neighborhoods near Mashapaug Pond have changed, other religious congregations have come and gone, sometimes leaving no trace. Pond Street Baptist Church, frequented by many African American and Native American families who once lived in West Elmwood, has moved several times before settling in its current location in south Providence.

On the western side of the pond, a small brown-shingled building at the corner of Balch and Calhoun Avenues once housed a mission of the Roger Williams Cranston Street Baptist Church. The mission ministered to the spiritual and humanitarian needs of the West Elmwood community by providing food and clothing as well as special activities for neighborhood children.  When the city bulldozed the area to construct the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park, the mission was forced to close.

Some buildings have served multiple congregations over the years. In 1901, the Westminster Congregational Society constructed a small, rubblestone, gothic revival chapel on 126 Adelaide Avenue to serve its worshippers. By 1959, the church had been repurposed by the Friendship United Methodist Church, a Swedish group founded in South Providence. Most recently operated as the Hood Memorial Church (A.M.E), the building now stands vacant, reflecting the continuing changes in neighborhood demographics.

Some congregations have recently moved into the area, converting existing spaces for religious use in order to welcome local residents.  In 2009, the Renaissance Church relocated to the Mashapaug Commons shopping center – the former site of the Gorham Manufacturing Company. The church now resides in a storefront that once housed Hollywood Video. The congregation feels strongly about establishing connections with the local community, and the church is regularly used for community meetings, including those organized by the Urban Pond Procession and Alvarez High School students. Across the pond, the New Dimension Church occupies a spacious building at the edge of the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park.  For both parishes, large parking lots nearby make it easy for members to drive in from homes throughout the metro area.

Still in use as an active burying ground, the Sons of Israel and David Cemetery is an enduring site of identity for a Jewish community that has grown and moved over time. Temple Beth-El relocated to Providence’s East Side but the congregation tries to stay connected to their cemetery.  Each spring, the congregation makes a pilgrimage to the cemetery for a service to remember the dead.  Kenneth Orenstein, the chairman of the Cemetery Management Committee and a member of the Beth-El congregation, also arranges clean up days when children and their parents can care for the cemetery and learn about its history by looking at headstones and monuments.  These activities make the cemetery a place where generations can come together to understand and honor their shared heritage.

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