Black History Adds a New Dimension to Local Lore

Wickford’s Town Dock probably doesn’t rank on anyone’s map of black history landmarks, but Saturday morning local historian G. Timothy Cranston, author most recently of “Walking in Wickford,” wove the dock, the , and several historic houses into a memorable tour of local African American history.

Cranston’s history walk, the season’s first sponsored by the , took two dozen attentive history buffs from Colonial times to the 21st century.

At the dock, for example, 18th-century ships disgorged molasses for two Wickford rum distilleries as part of the infamous “triangle trade.” As Cranston reminded his listeners, Wickford ships carried the rum to Africa, where it helped pay for slaves. Ships then took the slaves to Caribbean sugar cane plantations, where they helped pay for molasses. Finally, ships returned to the dock with molasses and profits for their owners. “Wickford was not a big player in the triangle trade, but it was a player,” he said.

Cranston said the dock was also one of three places in town where just-purchased slaves landed on the way to their new owners. Many prominent Rhode Islanders owned slaves, including the Romes, Updikes, Gardiners and Cranston’s Colonial ancestors.

At the 1786 Immanuel Case house on Main Street, Cranston pointed out the narrow extension at the back that served as slave quarters. “In New England, owners liked to keep their slaves close,” he observed.

After the 1676 King Philip’s War, most members of the defeated Wampanoag and Narragansett tribes not killed or sent as slaves to the West Indies were forced to serve as indentured servants in households that included black slaves. Intermarriage among the subject people had an impact on the tribes’ subsequent development, Cranston said.

While the state eventually banned the slave trade, owning slaves remained legal until the Emancipation Proclamation. Cranston ticked off the names of several prominent North Kingstown residents who advertised for runaway slaves in Newport newspapers. One minister of the Narragansett Church, which included a gallery for slave seating, mused in his diary about amputating a slave’s toes to stop his persistent escape attempts.

Cranston said the state’s last legally held slave, James Howell, died at a Jamestown farm in 1859.

Many free black families lived in North Kingstown, too. Cranston identified the 1786 Dominic Smith house on Fowler Street as the first in the state built specifically for a black family. Smith was the mate of a ship, one of many who worked as fishermen or sailors on larger ships.

Cranston said that after an 1815 gale destroyed most large waterfront homes along Pleasant Street, wealthy residents moved inland and working-class families, including black families, rebuilt in the Pleasant Street-Fowler Street neighborhood.

115 Pleasant Street was purchased in the 19th century by Nancy Thomas, a “woman of color” whose fisherman husband drowned. She served as a housekeeper and caretaker at several larger nearby houses. When she died her children inherited the house. It remained in her family until the 2009 death of Thomas B. Morgan, a World War II veteran and Electric Boat employee.

Aside from going to sea, black residents worked in a variety of jobs. Black Civil War veteran Jim Chaseset up a yeast farm serving bakers and brewers. He owned several Wickford properties and his daughter Mary Thomas, who lived from 1876 to 1985, spent most of her life at one. “I was her paper boy,” Cranston recalled.

Cranston said that tracing the development of African Americans from being viewed as pieces of property to full-fledged citizenship has taken him down fascinating new paths as he continues to research the town’s overall history.