Rhode Tour

Paul Cuffe Memorial

2017-11-06T14:55:58+00:00

On a cold blustery day in the winter of 1795, Captain Paul Cuffe docked his schooner Ranger in Vienna, Maryland, where he hoped to buy a load of corn.

When Cuffe–a man of color, born to a Wampanoag woman and a freed slave–and his crew–all Black or Native men–disembarked, they were met with “astonishment and alarm” by the townsfolk. Locals ran to the docks and urged the Customs officials not to give his ship a landing permit. All his papers proved to be in order, so the permit was issued. It took three weeks for Cuffe to successfully complete his business. By the time of his departure, the people of Vienna looked at him differently. His “candor, modesty, and firmness” had swayed them. He and his crew sailed home, triumphant. From a small plot of land on the banks of the Westport River that spanned less than a half-acre in total, Cuffe operated a steady and successful shipping business of common goods between Westport, New Bedford, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. The boats on his wharf grew larger and more numerous over time. The 18-ton Box Iron gave way to the larger Sun Fish, which grew into the 40 ton Mary, and finally, Cuffe’s favorite ships, the 268-ton Alpha and the 109-ton Traveller, docked alongside the Cuffe homestead. This shipping endeavor turned Paul Cuffe into the richest Black man of his time in America. At each new port, Cuffe and his crew faced the racist reactions of white Americans. At home in Westport, Paul and John Cuffe fought against racism on the local and state level. As freed black men, they were unable to vote, but were still taxed as any other man. The brothers refused to pay their taxes, claiming taxation without representation, and were thrown in jail. They appealed to the Massachusetts courts, and a law was passed requiring taxation of freed black men, but giving them the same rights as their white counterparts. In addition to his family homestead, Cuffe owned or leased extensive landholdings in Westport where he operated businesses like a gristmill and a West Indies goods store. He helped family members acquire property by purchasing land and passing it on under favorable terms. He also provided land to support local widows and as collateral to assist others in starting business ventures. Many of Cuffe’s land transactions helped other people to meet their financial obligations, a practical and generous approach that reflected his public-spirited activities. Cuffe’s philanthropy was extensive. A member of the Westport Society of Friends, he was appointed by the congregation to a committee to decide whether a new Meeting House should be constructed. Cuffe was a leader of that committee and provided half of the costs of the new building, the same one you stand before now. Behind the meeting house is a small group of graves, each belonging to a member of the congregation. Paul Cuffe and his wife lie behind the next house, past a wall, under a tree in a group of inconspicuous Quaker graves. Distinct, prominent, and seemingly separate. This is Paul Cuffe.

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Thomas Wilson Dorr

2017-08-09T13:18:45+00:00

The Man Behind the Rebellion

Thomas Wilson Dorr has been called an unlikely people’s hero in the Rebellion that bears his name. A well-educated lawyer, Dorr hailed from an upper-crust Rhode Island family. His father, Sullivan Dorr, amassed great wealth through his dealings in the China Trade, and Dorr’s mother, Lydia (Allen) Dorr, was the sister of the prominent textile manufacturer Zachariah Allen.

Thomas Wilson Dorr’s family aligned themselves with Samuel Ward King and the Charterites during the conflict of 1841-2. His parents even wrote to plead with him against running for governor under the People’s Constitution, but he was not dissuaded. When Dorr and his followers attempted to seize the Providence arsenal, Dorr’s father and uncle, Crawford Allen, were among the men on site to defend it. Ultimately Dorr was estranged from all in his family, apart from his mother.

Despite pressures from disapproving family members, verbal abuse from his opponents, and the disappointment of former allies changing sides, Dorr remained convinced of the righteousness of his cause. In August 1842, two months after the debacle at Chepachet, Dorr wrote a lengthy letter to his friend Williams Simons, editor of the Providence paper The Republican Herald:

“It is due to myself to say that although I am not insensible to the opinions of men, I feel conscious that I have done the duty which was assigned to me by the People of R. Island, and in this a source of satisfaction of what no hostility or malice can deprive me . . . my spirit is not broken by the burden of defeat & obloquy that has been cast upon me.”
Thomas Wilson Dorr would likely have been surprised, although hardly displeased, to learn that his legacy in Rhode Island lives on. While he was not able to secure King’s seat as governor in the Old State House on Benefit Street in 1842, Dorr’s likeness now stands outside the senate chamber of the Rhode Island State House on Smith Hill.
This location, 109 Benefit Street, was the home of Thomas Wilson Dorr.
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John Brown House Museum

2017-05-07T21:05:19+00:00

A Grand House on the Hill

Success, ambition, and glamour dominate this block of Benefit Street. John Brown became wealthy from his family’s shipping business, which included privateering, the China Trade, and Triangular Trade. John, along with his brothers Nicholas, Joseph, and Moses, financed the voyage of the slave ship Sally in 1764 that proved a disastrous endeavor, both in loss of life (109 of 196 enslaved Africans died before the ship reached Jamaica), and financially (which convinced all the brothers but John to discontinue their involvement in the trade).
John Brown had this luxurious home built for his family in 1786. The family had previously lived in a townhouse across the street from his brother’s home at 50 South Main Street, which still stands today. One of the grandest in the United States, the Power Street mansions played host to presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. Washington visited in 1790 on his first tour of Rhode Island since becoming president, as he had avoided it while Rhode Island remained a hold-out on the ratification of the Constitution.
The house passed through several Brown descendants until 1901 when it was purchased by Marsden J. Perry, a utilities and transportation magnate. Perry made significant changes to the property in the spirit of colonial revival, filling the house with early American antiques as well as the most complete collection of Shakespeareana in the world. Perry reportedly wanted to acquire a particularly rare folio, and when he lost the bid, he decided to get rid of his whole collection, which became the founding collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
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The Changing City

2017-05-05T20:01:35+00:00

A View from Roger Williams National Memorial

Providence began as a sleepy farming village along the Great Salt Cove and The Great Salt River (the Providence River, today). It stayed that way into the eighteenth century, even while seaports like Newport amassed incredible wealth through the triangular trade which leveraged the sale and labor of enslaved Africans for massive profits. While Newport’s economy declined after the Revolutionary War, Providence’s fortunes turned around thanks in part to successes in the China Trade by men like John Brown. Brown even oversaw the enlargement of India Point to increase the surface area of the port to allow for more wharves–and bigger profits. Sumptuous goods from faraway lands made their way to Providence, which was quickly becoming a cosmopolitan 18th-century hotspot. Spices and silks from the East Indies were hoisted off of ships and trucked up the hill, dotting storefronts along the harbor. The distinctive smells from chocolate and paper mills and spermaceti candleworks permeated the air. As Providence became a burgeoning industrial powerhouse in the nineteenth century, the Great Salt Cove had to yield to progress and its ensuing infrastructure. By 1898 the Cove was filled in and covered with train tracks and commercial and manufacturing buildings.
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Newport Distilling Company: A Pirate's Legacy

2016-05-11T05:37:35+00:00

Thomas Tew gained such renown for his exploits from 1692 until 1695 that he was nicknamed the Rhode Island Pirate. Tew, a privateer from Newport who turned to piracy, led two major voyages, and accrued more treasure than he could spend before he met a violent death. Due to his colorful role in the city’s history, the Newport Distilling Company named their first product after him--Thomas Tew Rum. Tew’s namesake is not the first rum to be made in these parts. Before the nineteenth century, Newport was the “rum capital of the world.” Today’s rum distillers use a process similar to that employed in the eighteenth century, mixing blackstrap molasses with local water and fermenting it in tanks using yeast from the adjacent brewery. This process yields a liquid called a “wash” that is then distilled twice. The resulting spirit is aged for several years in oak barrels before water is added to lower the proof. Finally, the rum is individually bottled, corked, and sealed with wax. Rum played a central role in “the triangle trade,” a term used to describe the selling of rum, sugar, goods, and enslaved Africans among the nations of Europe, Western Africa, the Caribbean, and the Eastern United States. Rum-making and the triangle trade historically provided much of Newport’s wealth, and depended on the labor and selling of enslaved Africans and African Americans whose contributions are too often ignored. In addition, African Americans contributed a great deal to the culinary heritage of the Ocean State, such as the oysters and other foods offered by restaurateur George T. Downing at the Sea Girt Hotel in Newport, another stop on this tour and on the Rhode Island Black Heritage Tour. Today, visitors to the Newport Distilling Company can go on free tours of the facility, also home to Newport Storm Brewery, and reflect on the shifting social and political climates of the past three centuries that have led to the revival of this once-ubiquitous spirit.
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