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Aaron Lopez, Colonial Newport’s Preeminent Merchant

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Aaron Lopez (1731-1782), a Sephardic Jew, became the wealthiest merchant in colonial Newport, R.I. Unfortunately, the American Revolution devastated his domestic and foreign business. While returning to Newport in the hope of restoring his financial affairs, he suffered a fatal accident.
After a small number of Jewish settlers arrived as early as 1658 in Newport – known for its religious tolerance – Jewish families began arriving in larger numbers after 1750 from Spain, Portugal and other countries. Many of them became well-known merchants in this prominent seaport, including Aaron Lopez.

Aaron Lopez

Aaron Lopez Comes To Newport

Lopez arrived in Newport on Oct. 13, 1752 with his wife, Anna, daughter Catherine, and his brother David. He became a merchant through the guidance of his half-brother Moses, who had arrived in Newport about 10 years earlier. He began his
career as a local shopkeeper and then became a wholesaler through agents in Providence, Boston, New York City and other ports.
In 1756 he opened a candle factory in Newport that relied on spermaceti — a waxy substance extracted from whale oil. As the price of whale oil skyrocketed, Lopez joined a trust — the United Company of Spermaceti Chandlers — in 1761 in an attempt to control its price and distribution among its members.

Anna Lopez and her son, Joshua, by Gilbert Stuart

The British Naturalization Act of 1740 declared that aliens could not legally trade in the colonies. When Lopez applied to become a naturalized citizen in March 1762, his application was denied, supposedly because the colonies had enough residents. However, the real reason appeared to be antisemitism.
On Oct. 15, 1762 he became a naturalized citizen in Swansea, Mass. He was the first Jew granted this certificate in that colony.

Trading Success

By 1765 Lopez had expanded his trading activity by sending five ships to Bristol, England, his first international venture. He hoped to export mainly lumber and whale oil in exchange for dry goods and hardware. The effort, however, financially failed in a depressed market. Further voyages to Bristol, Africa, and the Caribbean between 1766 and 1768 also proved unsuccessful.

A sample of solid raw spermaceti, a spermaceti wax candle and a bottle of sperm oil.

Around 1769, with improving trading conditions, Lopez expanded trade with Europe, the West Indies and South America. For example, fish, rum, wheat and other goods were exchanged for wines, salt and other items in European markets. Factors (middlemen who connected buyers and sellers of cargo and provided other services) greatly facilitated these trading
arrangements.
Trade especially improved with the West Indies, where Lopez obtained molasses and then made it into rum in Newport. Most of the rum was bought by Americans, with the rest sent to Africa in exchange for slaves. Although only a small part of his mercantile business, Lopez engaged in the slave trade between 1761 and 1774.
As his trading activity thrived up to the American Revolution, he had full or part ownership of more than 30 sailing vessels of varying kinds. Thus, Lopez became the wealthiest merchant in Newport, as evidenced by his tax assessments. Meanwhile, the success of Lopez and other merchants had made Newport — along with Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Charles Town (Charleston in1783) — one of the leading colonial ports on the eve of the American Revolution.
newport-1730

Newport, 1730. Courtesy New York Public Library.

Aaron Lopez,  Philanthropist

Using his considerable wealth, the “Merchant Prince of New England” bought books for the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, opened in March 1750; became a notable founder of Touro Synagogue, dedicated in 1763, also in Newport; contributed 5,000 feet of lumber for constructing the College of Rhode Island in Warren in 1764, which moved to Providence in 1770 and later became Brown University; and donated land for Leicester Academy in Leicester, Mass.
touro-synagogue

Touro Synagogue. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

By 1775 at the onset of the Revolutionary War, both the British navy and American privateers had begun seizing his ships. The resulting British occupation of Newport in 1776 forced Lopez and his family to relocate to Leicester. Needing to earn a living, he opened a retail and wholesale venture that he used to help finance the American cause. Despite legal victories that awarded him some of his vessels seized by American privateers, he never succeeded in restoring his financial affairs.
After several years of living in Leicester, Lopez and his family began a journey back to Newport. Unfortunately, on May 28, 1782 Lopez drowned when his horse and carriage swerved into Scott’s Pond in Smithfield, R.I. He was subsequently buried in the Jewish cemetery in Newport.
Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.
Images: Aaron Lopez, By Unknown – Original publication: unknownImmediate source: http://findingaids.cjh.org/AaronLopez.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39560756. Colonial-era buildings: By Daniel Case, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3969830. Spermaceti and candle By Genevieve Anderson – http://www.marinebio.net/marinescience/06future/wham.htm, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24183274.
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How the English Named New England

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The land that is now the United States once had no name. Fifteen thousand years ago or so, humans showed up and began naming things. Then, 400 years ago, more humans showed up and named them again. They were mostly English. This is the story of how the English named New England, or at least much of it, in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

Natives had already scattered names along the eastern coast of North America when the colonists arrived. They didn’t always name the same things the colonists did. They did name places they visited often, and places that served a purpose – like a river full of fish.

Cape Rosier

Indians used descriptions to name landmarks, such as “river by oak trees” or “stream with beaver dams.” Sometimes they associated landmarks with legends. For example, the Abenaki spun the tale of the giant Glooscap. He once chased a moose to the seashore in what is now called Cape Rosier in Brooksville, Maine. Glooscap killing the moose on the shore. They called a rock that looked like a moose’s rump “Moos-i-katch-ik.” Glooscap then threw the entrails to his dog, reddening a rock they called Osquon, the liver. They named a vein of white quartz, Oolaghesee, “the gut.”

What the English Named

Two things the Natives didn’t name: provinces and tribes.

The colonists made the mistake of using Native place names as tribal names. The people who lived in Nauset were the Nauset tribe, the colonists thought—but that’s not what the Natives thought.

Then the colonists took the names and mangled them. They wrote down the sounds they thought they heard, but the Native languages had sounds the English didn’t know. The English also didn’t standardize spelling and put together letters according to whim.

Big lake, lots of spellings

So the English version of an Indian name is a doubtful – and fluid — replica of the Indian name. Merrimack was Monumac and Molumac. Winnipesaukee had at least 132 different spellings.

Many Indian names were quite long, so the colonists shortened some of them. But not all. People from Webster, Mass., like to show off their ability to say, “Lake Chaubunagungamaug,” believed the lonest one-word place name in the United States. Some just call it Lake Webster. (One does wonder how many different ways people have spelled it over the years.)

A sign for Lake Whatever

Why the English Named American Towns After English Towns

Explorer John Smith named New England. He sailed to the coast of what was then called Northern Virginia from Chesapeake Bay. Smith mapped it, using his version of Indian names, but he didn’t like Northern Virginia. He didn’t like the other names people had called it either, like Norumbega, Nuskoncus, Penaquida and Canada.

little-ice-age-john-smith

Smith hit on “New England” and wrote a book about his travels there, with a map. The book sold well. Six years later, King James granted the land in a charter in which he wrote, “The name shall be called by the name New England in America.”

Smith used the Indian names to denote landmarks, settlements and big rivers. He also took an Indian name meaning “big-hill-people” and turned it into Massachusetts.

Some of the other Indian names on the map seemed barbarous to him. So he had an idea. He decided to flatter Charles Stuart, the heir to the throne, by asking him to change the names, thus making his mark on the New World. Smith sent him the map and asked him to come up with new names.

Charles liked Smith’s suggestion and renamed about 35 places after English towns. He turned Sowocatuck to Ipswich, Passtaquack to Hull, Accomack to Plymouth, and so on. It’s only a folk tale, by the way, that the Pilgrims named Plymouth. The town already had the name Prince Charles had given it.

Prince Charles

Before Smith had turned the map over to the prince, he changed a few things as part of his charm offensive. He gave the royal family’s names to certain geographical features. Smith named the Charles River after the prince, Cape Elizabeth after his sister and Cape Ann after his mother. He also named Cape James after Charles’ father, but that name didn’t stick. It turned into Cape Cod when another English explorer went fishing there.

More Towns Get Named

The English colonists followed Charles’ example of naming towns for English municipalities. Settlers in unincorporated places could call them what they wanted until they incorporated. Then they had to take the name of the English town the legislature gave them. In Massachusetts, though, Marblehead was originally named for its rocky headlands, the English calling all hard rock “marble.” The fishermen who settled Marblehead had little use for the Puritanical niceties of the Massachusetts General Court. Marbleheaders refused to change their name, and lawmakers backed down in the face of their resistance.

Marblehead provides the exception to prove the rule. Today, Massachusetts has at least 104 English names for cities, towns and counties, starting with Amesbury and ending with Yarmouth. Maine has 32, Connecticut 31, Vermont, 36, and New Hampshire has 47. Rhode Island, always the rebel, only has 15. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, since Roger Williams named his settlement after “God’s merciful Providence” and not some burg in England.

Connecticut Makes a Break

Connecticut first broke with the naming tradition in 1695 when it gave a new town the Biblical name of Lebanon.

(One could argue it had already strayed in 1636 when it named Saybrook, a hybrid of the names of Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Brook, two men entitled to the land by virtue of a charter from the Earl of Warwick. But Saybrook had been a separate colony.)

Things went further in 1702 when Mansfield took its name from a major landowner, Major Mansfield. Then in 1708, a group of men who’d volunteered in King Philip’s War received land for their efforts. They formed a town and coined a name for it, Voluntown.

Massachusetts began to weaken in 1712, when Pembroke named itself after a Welsh, not an English, town. Two years later the town of Rutland named itself after a county. Finally, the naming system fell apart in 1715 when Edward Hopkins left a bequest to Harvard, which it used to buy land. The town was named Hopkinton.

Unimaginative Naming

Towns had a lot of land, and new settlements often sprang up next to them. Often the new names showed a lack of imagination. Northampton, for example, was incorporated in Massachusetts in 1656. Southampton, Easthampton and Westhampton followed. Some 25 towns in Massachusetts have such derivative names.

Connecticut settlers took the same approach. Woodstock, for example, has North, South, East and West Woodstock, along with Woodstock Valley and Woodstock Hill. Rhode Island, always the rebel, has an East and West Greenwich, but no Greenwich, and a North and South Kingstown, but no Kingstown. It does have an East and North Providence, though, to go with God’s mercy.

Wartime Naming

Then came the French and Indian wars, starting in 1688. New Englanders began naming towns after the heroes of those conflicts: Lord Jefferey Amherst inspired namings in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire. William Pepperrell got a town in Massachusetts named after him, and New Hampshire named Wolfeboro after Gen. Richard Wolfe’s victory in Quebec.

 

Jefferey Amherst

Rhode Island and New Hampshire each named a town after naval hero Peter Warren, who led the capture of the French fort at Louisbourg in 1745. The other four New England states also named towns for a different Warren — Joseph Warren, who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill. (The hill, by the way, was named after its owner, George Bunker.)

But what about those royal titles and symbols that show up in place names? Those, too, are a product of the French and Indian wars. Names like King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Hanover and Orange symbolized the nation—which was, by 1707, Great Britain.

Then came the Great Awakening in the 1730s, which gave Connecticut Goshen, Canaan, Bethlehem and Sharon.

How the English Named the Small Things

The early explorers named for large geographical features. They adapted the Native names for rivers and mountains, like Connecticut, Katahdin and Penobscot. Or they named things after themselves, as in the case of Samuel Champlain, who bestowed his name on a lake.

The English government set the tone for naming towns. But when it came to small things, like streams and streets, New Englanders invented some of their own terminology.

They preferred “pond” to “lake” and “brook” to “creek.” Mainers liked “stream” better than “brook,” and that usage spread across northern New England. New Englanders use “cape” instead of “peninsula,” “neck” in the case of a small peninsula or narrow strip of land surrounded by water.

Forget about “gap” – in New England the pass between mountains is a “notch.”

“Intervale: is also a New England word: it’s from alluvial flats lying along the margins of streams and it comes from inter (within) and vallis (vale or valley).

The English also named things after plants and animals. The region is full of Chestnut Hills and Beaver Brooks. The colonists named things after their shape; hence, Spectacle Island and Spectacle Pond. Sugar then came in a loaf with a point at one end, so “Sugarloaf” not only named hills, it became the name of the kind of hill it resembled.

Sugarloaf Mountain

After the Revolution

The American Revolution changed everything. After the war, towns, streets, schools, bridges, mountains and all manner of things were named Washington, Adams, Revere and Franklin, as well as Freedom and Independence. A Cape Cod town even gave itself a French name after that country’s help in the war.

The Second Great Awakening and foreign wars further expanded the range of names a town could take. Much of the interior of Maine was settled after the Revolution, and so Maine towns sound a bit different than the rest of New England. For various reasons, Mainers liked to name their towns after cities and countries. Hence, Maine has a Peru, a Mexico, a Denmark and a Moscow.

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont all have a Berlin. One would think that would have to do with admiration for the German city. But the New England towns incorporated well before Berlin hadn’t grown enough to be known in the colonies. They’re actually closer to Burlington than Berlin.

George Stewart, whose book, Names on the Land, informs much of this story, explains. Berlin, he wrote, probably comes from Burland or Birling, an English name, and the English inability to spell consistently.


With thanks to Names on the Land: a historical account of place-naming in the United States by George Stewart.

Images: Highway overpass: By Sensboston – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71387878.

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Seven Fun Facts about the Clambake

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In the depths of winter or in a far-away clime, the very word “clambake” may bring a tear to a New Englander’s eye. To the Yankee, clambakes epitomize carefree summers at the shore, sunshine and salt air and the camaraderie that attends a massive pigout on steamed seafood.

The clambake requires four elements: firewood, rocks, rockweed and a work ethic. The clambake master digs a hole on a beach. He or she lines it with rocks, preferably flat, and then fills it with firewood—perhaps driftwood gathered from said beach. The fire then burns for several hours. When it burns out, shovel off the ashes, layer rockweed onto the rocks and then pour on the goodies: clams, lobster, fish, sausage, corn on the cob, potato, onion. Cover with more rockweed and then top with a tarpaulin soaked in saltwater. When it smells done, about an hour and a half later, take off the tarp and the seaweed. Ring the dinner bell.

A Rhode Island clambake

To clear up any misconceptions about the clambake, here are seven fun facts about that sublime New England ritual.

1. Narragansett Bay is the epicenter of the clambake.

They began in the early 19th century as small events at picnics, fairs and grange meetings, possibly in Rhode Island. The first mention of a clambake in a cookbook called it a “Rhode Island Clam Bake.”

The commercial clambake probably began in Warwick at a place called Buttonwoods or Buttonwoods Beach. A family registered with the Narragansett tribe, the Kinnecomms, held clambakes on the beach for paying customers. They were said to have served thousands in 1840 for a William Henry Harrison rally for president.

A clambake on Narragansett Bay

After the Civil War, more resorts and seaside communities grew up along the Bay — places like Hunt’s Mills, Kettle Point, Squantum Point, Ocean Cottage, Silver Spring, Cedar Grove, Camp White, Crescent Park, Portsmouth Grove and Sakonnet Point on the east shore, and Field’s Point, Rocky Point, Oakland Beach and Buttonwoods on the west.

They lured paying visitors with clambakes, typically on a Thursday. A typical Rhode Island clambake or shore dinner consisted of a white potato, sweet potato, corn, onion, sausage link, piece of fish, 30 steamer clams, lobster, watermelon, six littlenecks on the half shell and a bowl of quahog chowder.

2. Natives did not invent the clambake.

When the American public embraced the colonial revival, it began to view the clambake as part of the New England founding myth. Though Philadelphia, New York and Cleveland held clambakes, they became a New England icon.

According to  the creation myth, the first settlers approached the shores of Massachusetts and saw steam rising from the Native clambake on the beach.

Um, not really. Natives did bake clams, but not with all the fixings. On Nantucket, for example, they put quahogs side-by-side on the ground, applied burning coals to their backs and ate them after a few minutes.

Clambake at Seaside by Winslow Homer

But historians have found no evidence that Natives combined lobster, potatoes and other comestibles into what we call the clambake.

Robert P. Tristram Coffin asserted in his 1944 book, Main Stays of Maine, that only the “effete and degenerate” commit the unpardonable sin of mixing food. Coffin then waxed elegaic about the Abenaki way of cooking clams. They did it  “in the open, under the whole high blue and blazing Summer sky.”

For the fire, Coffin advised, “collect the spars and ribs, rimy with salt, from ancient ships, driftwood turned to sabs of sheer silver by the tide and the wind, wood that has come in from far places over the sea.”

The poetry continues. “When the blaze falls, and you have rubies and topazes of living coals left a foot deep, throw yourself into the flooding tide and dredge up armfuls of rockweed.” Tear it out by the roots, and “heave the green sprays with blossoms of orange balloons growing on them upon your bed of coals.” When the rockweed reaches a depth of six inches, pour on your bushel of clams. throw on more rockweed and cover them over. Sit down and let her steam.

Coffin concluded, “That tender small clam tastes like the elixir of life.”

3. 19th century clambakes were huge.

Before the automobile took over, people traveled to leisure destinations en masse – by steamboat, trolley or railroad. Once they arrived, they stayed in one place. Clambakes could serve large numbers of people outdoors on tables that were simply long wooden planks covered with butcher paper. Some had pavilions by the beach.

Rocky Point Clambake House

In New Bedford, Lincoln Park, which opened in 1893, had a clambake pavilion that seated hundreds at a time.

Rocky Point in particular won renown for its enormous clambakes. Its shore dinner hall seated 2,500 people, but crowds still formed long lines to get in.

The automobile put an end to the mega-clambakes. In 1907, Field’s Point in Providence served 150,000 clambakes in 1907, but only 80,000 three years later. What was left by the Great Depression got wiped out by the Great Hurricane of 1938.

A clambake for sailors in Newport, R.I., during Fleet Week in 1910

4. Presidential candidates liked (or pretended to like) clambakes.

Horace Greeley, who ran for president in 1872, came to a Silver Spring clambake in Rhode Island on August 6. The New York Herald reported that 10,000 people showed up, waved national flags and listened to a brass band. They filled the beer salons as three huge fires glowed like smelting furnaces under seaweed and tarpaulin as they baked about 10,000 clams.

Greeley arrived to hearty cheers, the Herald reported. People crowded around him, shook his hand and waved hats and handkerchiefs. The clambake started at 2 p.m. Greeley “breasted the beating surf of humanity, and after desperate struggles, succeeded in reaching the dining hall.” He then “went to work upon the bivalves tooth and bait.”

A crowd any politician would love

Prussian professor Anton Siegafritz found the political clambake horrifying. In describing them to the uninitiated, he wrote that they featured speeches, music and song, along with “profuse feasts upon a species of oyster called the clam.

“Vast crowds attend these celebrations, and no sooner are the gorged with the insidious comestible, than they become full of excitement and furores, swear themselves away in fealty to the most worthless demagogues, sign, fight, dance, gouge one another’s eyes out and conduct themselves like madmen in a conflagration.”

5. One is expected to eat clams with gusto and not with a fork.

In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes planned to make history at the Rocky Point Hotel. He would call inventor Alexander Graham Bell on the telephone—the first presidential phone call ever. Instead, he made the unpardonable error of eating a clam with a fork at the clambake held afterward.  His gaffe made the front page of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. The newspaper chastised the president for failing to eat the clam like an honest local epicure—with his hands.

Oh, the indignity!

6. The clambake became a thing in Cleveland.

When the railroads came, they carried iced shellfish west to Cleveland, Chicago and beyond.

In Cleveland, wealthy people like the Rockefellers had summer homes in Lake County, just east of the city. After the Civil War, they began to throw clambakes on Little Mountain with huge amounts of food.

The clambake spread beyond Lake County. Typically, they happened in the fall. One writer called it “the period of the expanding belt line.” The average businessman, trade association member, company employee, lodge brother and union member attended at least two or three in a season, he wrote. Halle’s department store held them for employees after World War II. Cleveland mayor Ralph Perk, who served from 1971-77, held clambakes as political fundraisers. (Perk’s wife, Lucille, famously declined an invitation to a White House dinner because it was her bowling night.)

Cleveland Mayor Ralph Perk. Maybe a clam would have cheered him up.

Unlike the New England clambake, the Cleveland version eschews the sand pit, the rocks and the seaweed. Everything just gets thrown into a pot: a dozen clams, half a chicken, an ear of corn and a sweet potato. Add rolls, butter and coleslaw to the menu, plus pies for dessert, and you’ve got a Cleveland clambake. Lately some cooks have added kielbasa to the mix.

If a Cleveland clambake sounds bizarre to you, just remember Cleveland once belonged to Connecticut.

7. Controversy surrounds the Rhode Island clambake clam chowder.

The Rhode Island clambake begins with clam chowder and ends with watermelon. However, Rhode Island Clam Chowder has no milk. Unlike the typical New England Clam Chowder, it has two essential ingredients: quahogs and a clear broth made from onions, clam juice, salt pork, celery, herbs and spices.

Non-Rhode Islanders have long vilified the dairy-free chowder. “It is a kind of vegetable soup, spoiled by a sea-creature whose cooking is a tragic mistake,” wrote Coffin. “There’s a price on Rhode Islanders’ heads in Maine.”

A tomato-based clam chowder

Even worse, Rocky Point clam chowder included the tomato. A cookbook writer in 1940 called it a “terrible pink mixture.”

So noxious was that concoction to a Maine state representative that in 1939 he threatened to file a bill making it illegal to add a tomato to clam chowder. Guilty offenders would have to dig up a barrel of clams at high tide. As any clammer will tell you, that is not only cruel and unusual punishment, but impossible.

He never filed the bill, as a clam chowder contest held in Maine determined the superiority of Maine-style clam chowder.


With thanks to the The Great Clam Cake and Fritter Guide.

Images: Seafood By inuyaki.com – https://www.flickr.com/photos/arndog/3719278633/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7341831. Rhode Island clambake, Providence Public Library Digital Collection, CC By-SA 4.0. Tomato-based clam chowder By Alexa – Manhattan Clam Chowder, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46461294.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “House for ‘Clam Bake’ at Rocky Point, R.I.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1850 – 1930. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-aed6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

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Ward McAllister’s Newport Summers

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In Gilded Age Newport, Rhode Island, an invitation to one of Ward McAllister’s summer picnics could make or break a hopeful social climber.

One contemporary aptly described this era as “an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of dazzling wealth, restless endeavor, and rivalry.”[1] American ideas about class were changing, especially in cities. Old and new money mixed like oil and water. The increase in American fortunes necessitated stricter guidelines for social acceptance. Enter McAllister, a controversial figure who coached this evolving class of insecure millionaires in Old World aristocratic customs.

Ward McAllister

Ward McAllister’s Newport Roots

McAllister held a rapt audience among the exclusive “Four Hundred” in New York, but he held court on Aquidneck Island. Part of his success stemmed from experience. McAllister’s visits to Newport predated the New York crowd by decades. He was so intimately entwined with the city’s 19th-century history that one local newspaper claimed the Georgia-born, world-traveling transplant as “a native Newporter.”[2]

A Ward McAllister picnic at Bayside Farm

McAllister’s childhood summer vacations illustrate a very different kind of Newport — one still on the rise and not yet “the most luxurious and stratified resort in America.”[3] They demonstrate some of the features that attracted early tourists to Aquidneck Island. They also sketch a portrait of a loving extended family, ordinarily scattered hundreds of miles apart, who associated the area with togetherness and refuge. Finally, these summers were formative for McAllister’s later social ascent.

Newport’s “Rise and Fall and Rise” [4]                                        

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, Newport was the fifth largest city in the colonies.[5]  As participants in the Triangle Trade, the port city’s merchants made connections with their counterparts in other colonial maritime hubs, notably Charleston. They dealt in molasses, sugar, rum, slaves and other lucrative goods.

The arrival of 10,000 invading British troops changed everything. The Revolution bled Newport of half of its population and most of its prestige. As historian Jon Sterngass notes, “No city seemed less likely to prosper in the first third of the 19th century.”[6]

Yet it did. A newly-independent United States found its footing, and Americans gained the means to travel for pleasure. Wealthy southerners with pre-war connections to and fond memories of Newport returned to the city, rescuing it from a decades-long economic depression. One of these early tourists was Ward McAllister’s grandmother, Sarah Marion Mitchell Hyrne Cutler.

View of Newport

“The Duchess” [7]

Born in 1761, Sarah was no stranger to vacationing in Newport. Joining other prominent South Carolinians, Georgians, and Virginians, the Marions trekked north to enjoy Aquidneck Island’s congenial social scene, natural beauty and cool climate. Newport saw such an influx of southern families seeking reprieve from summer heat and mosquitos that the resort became known as “the Carolina hospital.”[8]

The death of Sarah’s first husband, Dr. Alexander William Hyrne, left her a widow at 20—and a very wealthy one. This tragic event could have cemented South Carolina as her lifelong sphere of influence. However, Sarah’s periodic visits to the Northeast had proved influential, if not fateful.

Sarah Cutler

When Sarah fell in love with Benjamin Clarke Cutler, the sheriff of Norfolk County, Mass., she knew marrying him would mean moving north. Undaunted, she said her vows in Charleston in 1794 and embarked for Boston, where the couple settled happily. They had five children: Mary (called Eliza), Julia, Benjamin, Jr., Louisa and Francis Marion.[9]

“A Meteor-Like Life”[10]

Each of the Cutler children grew up, married, and moved away. Sarah welcomed her children’s spouses with open arms and cherished the births of her grandchildren. However, she lamented that changing circumstances would force her “to lead a meteor-like life by wandering from one star to another” to see her scattered family.[11]

Louisa moved farthest from her Boston home. She married Matthew Hall McAllister, Jr., of Savannah in 1823. A private lawyer when he married, McAllister rose to become U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia in 1827. He also served as a Georgia state senator in 1834 and mayor of Savannah in 1837. Louisa and Matthew Hall McAllister were married for more than 40 years. They had five children: Harriet, Julian, Matthew Hall III, Ward, Francis Marion and Benjamin.[12]

For Louisa, the distance between Georgia and the great cities of the Northeast, where her siblings had settled, seemed interminable. “I wish I did not love you all so much,” she once wrote to her sister, “as I am to be deprived of your loved society… The kindness of strangers and friends excite[s] my warmest gratitude, but the love of my own is more precious than rubies. I do not love the South, but[,] as it is my home[,] must try to make the best of it.”[13]

Louisa Cutler McAllister at 64

Louisa’s husband was sensitive to her homesickness. Consequently, as Ward McAllister would later write, “this best of fathers sent his family North every summer, with one or two exceptions, to Newport, R.I.”[14] Summers on Aquidneck Island were a salve for the pain of great geographic distance.

“Our Terrestrial Paradise”[15]

Newport’s early tourists typically stayed in one of the city’s many boarding houses. Or they rented cottages on The Point or on Thames Street. Others, like McAllister’s extended family, preferred more space, opting to stay in farmhouses on the outskirts of Newport proper.[16]

The Cutlers, McAllisters, Francises and Wards rented each summer from the Bailey family, not far from Third Beach in Middletown. When the weather cooperated, they enjoyed being outside. Ward McAllister—called “Wardy” in family letters— remembered flying kites and building crackling fires under the stars at Purgatory Chasm, a commanding rock formation overlooking Sachuest (Second) Beach.[17]

Purgatory Chasm

The rock formations of Paradise Valley were another favorite spot. As Ward’s uncle, Rev. Benjamin Clarke Cutler, wrote to a parishioner in Brooklyn:

In this retreat every thing is delightful. This morning I spent alone, rambling over the most glorious battlements of ocean scenery I ever saw. It is a place called Paradise, an immense pile of rocks, affording a view of the whole southern end of this fine island, and of a noble amphitheatre of sea and sky. Around are highly cultivated fields and farms, and near by, entirely sequestered, are groves of forest trees, affording a perfect shade, broken only to give a view of the neighboring ocean. The morning has been peerless; a cool, bracing air from the northwest, a bright sun and a clear sky, relived only by a few silvery clouds. I confess I have not for years been so elevated by natural scenery…[18]

From Paradise to Purgatory by William Trsot

Family letters — full of charming, funny stories of antics, outings, and visitors — capture the happy cacophony of the Bailey farmhouse. After long days exploring the Island’s natural beauty, everyone crowded inside and drifted to sleep on mattresses stuffed with corn husks.[19]

Town and Country

From the 1830s onward, Newport’s renown grew, but its atmosphere remained largely communal. Summer visitors of different backgrounds, regions and social classes sailed, swam and fished together. They might go into town to visit the Redwood Library or attend a theatrical performance. Or they’d dance at the immensely popular “hops” hosted at hotels. Construction of those hotels heralded the crescendo of Newport’s antebellum tourism scene.[20]

Young Julia Ward Howe, Ward McAllister’s first cousin and another visitor to the Bailey farm, captured the resort’s antebellum character, and her family’s place in it. The future activist, writer and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” lyricist observed, “Newport is quite full, visitors flocking from every direction… As for us, we eat, we drink, and sleep abundantly, ride and walk constantly, and are neither important, influential, witty nor wise.”[21]

Refuge from Cholera

In the summer of 1832, family matriarch Sarah Cutler again “united the various branches of her family under one roof.” But this was no ordinary season in Newport.[22] Cholera had arrived in North America.

Carried on westbound ships, the horrific disease struck Canadian ports first and New York City shortly afterward. July and August 1832 saw roughly 2,500 cholera deaths in New York alone. The victims included Lt. Col. Samuel Ward, Jr., Sarah Cutler’s brother-in-law.[23] Those too poor, sick or otherwise unable to flee the crowded city fell victim to this vicious, stigmatizing and rapidly spreading infection.[24] “The accounts from New York keep us in a constant state of uneasiness,” Louisa McAllister wrote to her sister Eliza, who remained in the city, “and we long to gather our dear group at Bailey’s.[25]

Map of the New York City cholera epidemic

Newport was safer than New York, largely due to city officials’ quick enforcement of a strict embargo. No ships could come into port or leave. Even mail delivery paused, triggering increased anxiety at the Bailey farm. However, these precautionary measures proved effective. By the epidemic’s end, only nine reported cholera deaths had occurred in Newport. [26] Those lodging with the Baileys that summer were spared.

Ward McAllister’s New Age in Newport

Even years later, Newport remained central to Ward McAllister’s adult life. In 1852, he married Sarah Taintor Gibbons, whose father had loaned “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt money to buy his first ferryboat. The couple purchased a 50-acre parcel called Bayside Farm. Like the Bailey farm, it was located outside Newport proper and offered gorgeous views of the water. Prior to settling in New York in the late 1850s, the growing McAllister family lived at Bayside for nine months out of the year.

As the Civil War loomed, Newport’s social atmosphere shifted. Despite connections drawn by trade relationships and trans-regional marriages like Sarah Cutler’s and Louisa McAllister’s, southern newspapers urged their readers to shun northern resorts to demonstrate Confederate patriotism.[27] The “Southern contingent” that had fundamentally shaped the early tenor of 19th-century Newport’s tourism industry was quickly outnumbered by the northern elite.[28]

Watching a regatta from Castle Hill

Meanwhile, Newport’s reputation grew. So did the crowds. Fashion drove the center of Newport’s social life into the city limits, first to grand hotels like the Ocean House and, later, to subscription-based entertainment spaces like the Newport Casino and private homes.

Newport Cliff Walk ,1885

The “galaxy of most elaborate country houses” that later came to dominate proud Bellevue Avenue and Ocean Drive were “walled in” from prying eyes and parvenus “with an almost feudal aggressiveness.” [29] After the Civil War, as historian Rockwell Stenstrud writes, “Newport [became] unrecognizable to anyone who had been away for a period of time.”[30]

Adapting to the Gilded Age

McAllister, more savvy than often credited, remembered the old days. Witnessing Newport’s evolution had primed him to marry the Island’s antebellum charm with the “cutthroat culture” that permeated Gilded Age resort life at his Newport farm.[31] He did it with picnics.

Ward McAllister, seated with guests at a picnic

Guests included New York’s most powerful families—Astors, Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Wetmores. They picnicked alongside diplomats, state and local political figures, and even artists. However, McAllister once commented, “do not for a moment imagine that all were indiscriminately asked to these little fêtes… if you were not of the inner circle… it look the combined efforts of all your friends’ backing and pushing to procure an invitation for you.”[32]

During McAllister’s exclusive summer picnics, Bayside Farm’s rustic white farmhouse and picturesque livestock in the pastures—no matter that they were rented specifically for the occasion— created a “romantic, out-of-town feeling” that seemed like a novelty.[33] Guests feasted on rich delicacies and enjoyed champagne, claret and madeira from McAllister’s meticulously-curated collection. Afterwards, there was dancing in the barn, where a brilliant chandelier hung from the rafters.

Ward McAllister’s picnic table

Between food, decorations, table settings, music and other essential elements for hosting 140 people, one of McAllister’s picnics cost roughly $27,700 in today’s money.[34] The price, as one newspaper editorialized, “makes a plain, hungry, pickle-and-sandwich picnicker… smile.”[35]

A pinnacle example of McAllister blending his early memories with higher social stakes came in 1882. He organized a luncheon for President Chester A. Arthur overlooking Paradise Rocks.[36] To the “commander-in-chief of the 400,” the “noble amphitheatre of sea and sky” that his family had once enjoyed was unquestionably fitting for the commander in chief.[37]

The Last Valley-Paradise Rocks by John LaFarge

Ward McAllister’s Newport Summers

No matter how radically Aquidneck Island changed, McAllister and his extended family could always “make a little visit to Bailey’s and see the dear group in imagination.”[38] The social arbiter’s authority in Gilded Age Newport gains richness when understood as the culmination of generational visits throughout the resort’s 19th-century history. On Aquidneck Island, he and his family created memories, with enduring influence, to last a lifetime.

Ward McAllister at an 1890 picnic


Footnotes and an image guide are in a separate post. Click here to see them.  

Emily Parrow earned her M.A. in History from Liberty University in 2021 and wrote her thesis on Ward McAllister and nineteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island. She currently serves as Manager of Individual Giving at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home, in Lenox, MA. Emily’s thesis can be accessed here: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/719/ 

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Two Frank Brothers Joined the R.I. Black Regiment. One Stayed. One Left.

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In  April 1777, 17-year-old William Frank left his home in Johnston, R.I., and enlisted in the Rhode Island State Brigade to fight in the American Revolution. The next month, his 15-year-old brother Benjamin joined the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment in Providence.

They of course risked death, not just by enemy fire but by starvation, disease and fatigue. They would wrap their feet in rags, forage in the woods for food, endure grueling marches, watch their comrades die.

So why did they do it?

They were Black, and they wanted equality. Military service was a way for them to get it. They’d receive food, uniforms, a regular paycheck, land at the end of their service, and a pension – theoretically, at any rate.

This is their story, as told by Ben’s descendant, Prof. Shirley Green, in her new book, Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence.

The Frank Brothers

The Frank brothers undoubtedly had little money and few prospects. They’d grown up in a family that was one of 10 free Black families in segregated Johnston. Their father, Rufus, owned no land. He had served in the military during the French and Indian War, first at Fort Stanwix in western New York. Then after the Spanish entered the war, he sailed to Cuba and participated in the siege and capture of Morro Castle on Havana Harbor.

In the summer of 1775, George Washington took command of the Continental Army. It looked as if Ben and William Frank wouldn’t get a chance to follow in their father’s footsteps. The soldiers who fought at Concord and Lexington included Blacks and Natives. But Washington believed he couldn’t recruit and train a professional army with Black soldiers. So he systematically expelled them from the ranks.

Earl of Dunmore

Then Virginia’s former governor made him change his mind.

In the spring of 1775, Virginia Royal Gov. John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, had been run out of the colony by the patriots. He fled to the British warship HMS Fowey in the York River. From there he directed raiding parties against the rebels. Then Dunmore had an idea.

Earl of Dunmore

On Nov. 7, 1775, he issued Dunmore Proclamation, offering freedom to enslaved people who joined the British. As many as 100,000 Black men, women and children fled to British lines—including Harry Washington, enslaved by Washington. Dunmore had special uniforms made for his 800-man Ethiopian Regiment. He had “Liberty to the Slaves” embroidered on the front of them.

Smock similar to the one worn by Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment.

Washington responded in January 1776, by letting free Black veterans enlist in the army. Then in January 1777 he allowed all free Blacks to join.

By war’s end, somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 Black men joined the Continental Army.

The Frank Brothers Join Up

After starting out in the Rhode Island State Brigade, William then enlisted in the integrated 2nd Rhode Island. Ben joined the 2nd Rhode Island as well.

They probably didn’t have shoes, and they may have been unfit for duty because they didn’t have proper clothing. In August 1777, their commander, Col. Israel Angell, described his troops as a “ragged, lousey, naked regiment.”

They survived fierce enemy attacks and the misery of the winter encampment at Valley Force. But perhaps worse than fear, loss and physical suffering, they endured the sting of racism.

The Frank Brothers fought in the Battle of Red Bank, defending Fort Mercer along the Delaware River. Four hundred army and militia soldiers fended off an attack by 1,200 Hessian and British troops while under bombardment by British warships. A few weeks later, though, British warships returned to pound the fort with artillery shells. It worked. They inflicted heavy casualties on the defenders. Of the 400 defending the fort, 250 were wounded or killed after five days. Running low on ammunition, they abandoned the fort to the British.

Valley Forge

The harsh winter at Valley Forge sickened 3,800 men and caused 3,000 to desert. The Frank Brothers stuck it out.

continental-army-facts-privy

Washington reviews the troops at Valley Forge.

The loss of so many thousands of men at Valley Forge convinced the Congress to pass the Slave Enlistment Act In 1778. It offered immediate freedom to “any Black, mulatto or Indian man slave.” Slaveowners didn’t like the idea of armed Black men, so they pressured Congress to repeal the Act four months later.

But within that four-month window, Col. James Varnum returned to his native Rhode Island to raise an all-Black battalion. Black soldiers from Valley Forge also went to Rhode Island to recruit.

james-mitchell-varnum

James Mitchell Varnum

One hundred free and enslaved Blacks enlisted in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment under Col. Christopher Greene. Then 70 Blacks and Natives, including the Frank brothers, were transferred from the 2nd Rhode Island to the 1st. The regiments were now segregated.

The Battle of Rhode Island

The regiment then went to Rhode Island as part of the expedition to drive the British from Aquidneck Island. Led by Gen. John Sullivan, they besieged Fort Adams, but couldn’t overcome British resistance. Then British reinforcements arrived, and the Americans had to flee.

On Aug. 29. 1778, the British chased the fleeing American army. The 1st Rhode Island regiment was assigned to protect the right wing of the American line near Durfee’s Hill. With shells flying all around them, they repelled three assaults, allowing the army to escape. The Frank brothers again survived.

The Siege of Rhode Island

For the next year, the 1st Rhode Island patrolled the shore. Ben, now 18, got married to a woman named Sarah Wilbur, who had a son, Abraham.

In March of 1780, a year after his marriage, Ben deserted his regiment and abandoned his wife. Perhaps his marriage failed. Perhaps he could no longer stand the poor food, the vermin, the ragged uniforms and skipped paychecks. Whatever the case, he was far fro the only American soldier to desert. As many as a third of the army may have done so.

Shirley Green, his descendant, believes racism contributed to Ben’s decision to desert. Once the army segregated the 1st Rhode Island, desertions increased 470 percent. Green tracked 53 soldiers of color. Three deserted before the Slave Enlistment Act, while 18 deserted after it.

The Two Frank Brothers

William reenlisted in February 1781. The 1st Rhode Island regiment under Greene was sent to Westchester County, just north of British-occupied New York City. It was theoretically neutral territory. However, a band of Loyalist raiders called De Lancey’s Corps of Refugees waged guerilla war in the area.

A company under Lt. Jeremiah Greenman was ordered to guard Pines Bridge over the Croton River. On May 14, 1781, De Lancey’s Corps of Refugees surprised and overwhelmed the small detachment, killing and capturing many. Then the Loyalists went to the army headquarters, Davenport House, and ambushed Greene, Maj. Ebenezer Flagg and the soldiers stationed there. They killed Flagg and eight Black soldiers. They stabbed Greene multiple times, then tied him to a horse and dragged him for a mile, still alive. Many believe they tortured him to death because he led a Black regiment.

Christopher Greene

William Frank survived the Battle of Pines Bridge, and he went on to serve in Yorktown, which he also survived.

Twelve years after his honorable discharge, William Frank received back pay owed to him. He also received the land bounty promised him when he enlisted. He sold it, moved back to Johnston and raised a family.

Ben Frank

Ben signed up to serve with the British in New York City, the last British stronghold in America. To keep track of Black Americans who took their side, the British kept a list – the Book of Negroes, with 3,000 names. Ben appears in it as Ben Frankham.

By April 1784, Ben had emigrated to Nova Scotia with other Black Loyalists. He lived in Birchtown, the largest free Black settlement in North America. Life was no picnic there. They lived in makeshift huts, endured discrimination and harsh winters and were given the worst land to farm.

Ben got married, again, to Margaret Jackson, the daughter of a Loyalist. They settled in Granville Ferry, N.S., and had nine children. Ben died in 1838.

The Rest of the Story

Shirley Green was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, but her maternal grandfather was a native of Nova Scotia. Green wanted to know why.

She had her Ph.D. in history and taught at the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University. So she knew how to go about getting some answers. In a lecture to the Newport Historical Society in the spring of 2024, she explained what she came up with: microshistory.

Microhistory, she said, is when you focus on a person, on an event, on a community, or on a location on a very small level,  and you try to tell a bigger story from that. Most microshistorians, she said, start out trying to answer a question or solving a mystery.

She wanted to know how the experiences of her ancestors inform us about the experiences and actions of free Blacks in revolutionary America.
Her book is the culmination of her journey to answer those questions.


Click here to see Dr. Shirley Green’s lecture on the Frank Brothers on The Battle of Rhode Island Association’s youtube channel.  

Smock: By JBowie17 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35824064. 

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John Gorham Mechanizes Silverware Production

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John Gorham (1820-1898) pioneered the transformation of silverware production from handcraft to mechanized operations in the mid-1850s.  The Gorham silver firm – located in Providence, Rhode Island – became the industry leader by the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Gorham Silverware

The Gorham silverware business began in 1831 in Providence with Jabez Gorham (1792-1869) — John’s father — and his partner, Henry Webster. They added coin silver spoons to an array of gold jewelry products that Gorham had been producing since 1813.  They foresaw that these lightweight silver spoons would soon replace pewter.  By 1841 Gorham had sold his jewelry trade and acquired the Webster silver business. He also agreed to a partnership with his son John.  Their small shop, peddlers and trips to cities and towns served as distribution channels for their silverware (mainly spoons). They also sold  custom-made silver goods (e.g., thimbles, tongs and combs).

As sales grew, they borrowed money for a new building and a steam engine to replace a horse-drawn source of power. Nervous about repayment of the large debt, Jabez sold his share of the business to John in 1848, as the new building neared completion.

Gorham silverware in the Milwaukee Museum

John Gorham knew that handmade production of spoons hindered further growth.  One worker in an 11-hour day made only about a dozen spoons.  Thus, mechanization was the key for increasing future standardized output.

In 1852 Gorham went to England where he ordered a steam-drop press from James Nasmyth, based on his invention of the steam hammer.  This device formed spoons in a mechanized blow that eliminated hand labor.

Diagram of Nasmyth’s steam hammer

Other labor-saving devices Gorham used in his firm were roller dies, which directly pressed pattern designs on silver blanks, and polishing wheels.  These mechanized operations, coinciding with growing consumer demand for all kinds of standardized silverware and hollowware  (concave containers for food and liquids) greatly enhanced his business. Meanwhile, European-employed designers continued to create intricate patterns for his wares.  Among the more successful patterns was  “Medallion,” which  appeared in 1864.

A Gorham spoon for an ice bowl. Note the polar bear.

Gorham Silverware Hits $1 Million

Growth of the company surged from 1850 to 1870.  In 1850 the firm had fourteen employees and revenue of $29,000; by 1870 it had about 400 workers and sales of about $1 million.  Although Gorham hired European designers, most of his employees were American production workers employed in mechanized operations, tool making, and varied processes. Starting in 1865, the firm began producing electroplated items, applying silver on a cheaper metal object.  Beyond mechanization, further efficiencies came from coordinated supervision of the firm, detailed inventory of every part and finished product and voluminous data about the company’s designs.

The Gorham manufacturing plant in Providence

Thus, by 1870 the Gorham Manufacturing Company (having incorporated in 1865) had become the leading silverware company in the U.S.

Some notable commissions resulted from its high-quality work.  In 1859, Mary Todd Lincoln bought a silver tea set and flatware for use in the White House,  known later as the “Josephine” pattern.  More impressive was the 816-piece service bought by Henry and Elvira Furber, between 1873 and 1879. It served 24 people, and was the largest single commission ever received by the company.

Narragansett Berry Spoon by Gorham

Over time Gorham marketed his wares through sales outlets across the country, backed by substantial advertising.  In addition, he showed displays of his products in the 1850s at the Rhode Island State Fair, the 1873 Cincinnati Industrial Exposition and the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.  At this venue, he displayed several pieces including “Hiawatha Boat” (bought by President Grant’s wife, Julia), a huge object called the “Century Vase” and the “Neptune Epergne” (table centerpiece) from the Furber commission.

Gorham trademark for Fine brand Certain Named Silverware

Panic

Despite the fortuitous commission from Furber, the Panic of 1873 adversely affected both the company and John Gorham.  After sales reached $1,024,000 in 1872, they dropped to $521,000 in 1878.  Meanwhile, Gorham declared bankruptcy in 1875, from murky financial transactions unconnected with his firm. He was forced to retire in 1878.  The company managed to recover and prospered up until World War II, but declined thereafter.  In 1967 Textron became the first of several owners.


Images: Silver bowl detail CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1043557. Gorham silverware in the Milwaukee Museum By Sailko – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63468527.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.

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