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Foster RI

Four Days in May: The 1942 Rhode Island Forest Fires

On May 1, 1942, fire leveled more than 300 acres in the Limerock section of Lincoln, R.I. The source of ignition was at first thought to be ashes from a wood chopper’s pipe. The fire – the first of the 1942 Rhode Island forest fires — destroyed a cord of wood, damaged a garage and threatened three homes.

On the same day, 250 acres burned in Johnston on the Rohrig Estate. It took 60 firefighters to save a Scout camp and a farm from the blaze.

Again on the same day, firefighters fought a 350-acre forest fire at White Rock just northwest of Westerly. Only a wind change saved a number of houses in the fire’s path, something State Fire Service workers and 80 men from three towns couldn’t accomplish.

Manpower was scarce, as the United States had entered World War II six months earlier, and tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders joined the war effort. But the fires would only get worse over the next few days – and suspicions would grow about the source of the 1942 Rhode Island forest fires.

Westerly Fire Chief Columbus Pasetti believed arson started the fires. But 15 wildfires would burn all over Rhode Island over the first four days in May. The cause might have been even worse than arson.

Fire Bug

As soon as firefighters smothered the Westerly blaze, they got called to a four-acre fire at the Cook Farm. But the State Fire Service men had already broken off to extinguish a fire in Coventry.

The Coventry fire took two days to put out and spread into West Greenwich, where it mushroomed into a 40-square-mile inferno. By then it consumed a dozen homes and leveled camps and barns.

Rhode Island officials were convinced they had a fire bug on their hands.

1942 Rhode Island Fires

On May 2 alone, fires broke out in the western Rhode Island towns of West Greenwich, Scituate and Coventry. In the eastern part of the state, a fire started in Newport among fallen timber from the 1938 hurricane around Tonomy Hill.

Officials said the fires, the biggest in Rhode Island memory, had been set deliberately.

A call for help went out. Soldiers from Fort Devens and sailors from Quonset Point joined the crusade to extinguish the fires. All available apparatus in the area responded, as well as equipment from as far away as Warren and Bristol.

A thousand people fought the Rhode Island fires by then, but still they couldn’t extinguish them.

Army and Navy officials said they dispatched more men to help. Governor J. Howard McGrath issued a public appeal for another thousand men.

All workers from the Works Progress Administration and the state Department of Public Works were dispatched to the scene. Volunteers poured into the area, but were only allowed to fight the fire if they had some equipment. Some volunteers went in with as little as a shovel or a burlap bag. The situation was growing desperate.

Warwick announced a special police motorcycle patrol to protect their woodlands.

All told, 3,000 volunteers and firefighters fought the Rhode Island fires.

Louttit School

At least 75 volunteers and firefighters received injuries in the fire. They were treated at a makeshift hospital at the Louttit School in West Greenwich (now the town’s public library). The school also served as a headquarters for the whole firefighting operation.

The Providence Police radio patrol set up two heavy-duty transmitters at the Louttit School, communicating via six portable sets.

The U.S. Army set up a mobile field kitchen to feed the hungry men. Emergency canteen units from the Red Cross and Civil Defense Women’s Ambulance and Transportation Corps also arrived at the scene.

The Louttit School, now the West Greenwich Library

Martial Law

It’s still May 2, and Governor McGrath declares martial law in Coventry, West Greenwich, Scituate and in parts of three other towns. Blue-uniformed state guardsmen along with 200 soldiers with loaded rifles now patrolled the roads of those towns.

Suddenly 20 of those state guardsmen found themselves trapped by flames as the fire surrounded them. They managed to escape.

Another guardsman, while going to his backpack tank, got disoriented and had to run for his life as the flames leaped ahead of him among the tree tops. He finally found refuge in a swamp.

Damage

Another story unfolded when a grandmother, a mother and three children ran for their lives as the fire raged around them. They found salvation in a nearby brook. As the fire passed over them, they made their way through the smoldering forest to a highway where a motorist picked them up and brought them to safety.

They had watched as their home, their barn and their garage burned to the ground. Their dogs and all their livestock perished, except for one pig.

Among the buildings destroyed in the Rhode Island fires was a storage facility with 250,000 board feet of lumber owned by the federal government. Firefighters barely saved another building with 1.25 million board feet of federal lumber in it.

Coincidence? It was widely believed, according to the New York Times, that it might be sabotage. No one, however, made the official charge.

Enemy Action?

Author Ian Fleming wrote once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

Governor McGrath said he saw Army aerial photos that showed the fires starting up in widely separated areas. The conditions at the time were not conducive to flying sparks igniting fires in those far-apart places.

James R. Simmons with the Federal Fire Service strongly hinted that the Rhode Island fires were suspicious. Of the 15 fires that erupted almost simultaneously, many started near federal lumber storage areas – the location of which was confidential.

Gov. James Howard McGrath

May 3

On May 3, yet more Rhode Island fires broke out, four to be exact: two in Assonet, one in Somerset and one in Tiverton. One hundred men took three hours to check the Tiverton blaze by a backfire.

Fire also raged in the Moosup Valley section of Foster along the Connecticut border. Rhode Island and Connecticut fire forces struggled to halt the progress of that conflagration.

At 9 p.m. that night, Governor McGrath announced that all of the fire seemed to be under control. Mopping-up operations would continue into the next day to make sure the fires were out. By the end of May 3, the last 1,500 firefighters straggled home as the nightmare seemed to be at an end.

A Wider View

What caused the Rhode Island fires? We have seen experienced professionals speculate that arson or maybe sabotage started them. Remember, Governor McGrath saw Army aerial photos showing many fires starting at the same time.

Was there a precedent for this? Here’s a bigger view.

On April 20, 1942, Forest Ranger J.B. Fortin reported 20 fires starting almost simultaneously on Sunburst Mountain in Brevard, N.C. They developed into huge forest fires.

Fortin, a veteran ranger, had never seen anything like it. On his first radio call, he said it had to be saboteurs. The outbreak of fires in Brevard went on for a week.

Then later that month 168 fires broke out in New Jersey — coincidentally near an Army base. Those fires grew so tremendously that a call went out for shock troops of citizens to help extinguish them along with 2,500 soldiers. The fires eventually consumed 5000 acres, according to the New York Times.

William Breuer in his book The Air Raid Warden Was a Spy, entitled one chapter The Eastern Seaboard Set Ablaze. The FBI was going to investigate all of these fires, but never revealed what they found.

So were all of these fires sabotage?

Maybe.

Leo Caisse, the author of this story, passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

1942 was a bad year for fires. The Cocoanut Grove Fire in Boston killed 660 people that year. Read more about them here and here.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Highest Point in Each New England State

You might think the most challenging mountain climbing adventure in New England is to the highest point in the region: Mount Washington in New Hampshire. You would be wrong. It’s actually in Foster, R.I., but not because of its height.

New England’s high points are the subject of much lore and controversy. Henry David Thoreau climbed two of them. They’ve inspired literary works by authors from Nathaniel Hawthorne to J.K Rowling. One has a potato named after it. Another was supposed to be the place where God appeared in 1851.

Here is the highest point in each New England state, with a story to go with it.

Mount Frissell

Despite its location near the tony towns of Great Barrington, Mass., and Salisbury, Conn., Mount Frissell is the Rodney Dangerfield of mountains.

It just doesn’t get any respect.

Though the highest point in Connecticut is on Mount Frissell, Mount Frissell’s summit is in Massachusetts. And getting to Connecticut’s highest point requires climbing up two mountains, then climbing down to the high point.

Plus the trail to the summit (rather than the highest point) of Mount Frissell is near an attraction more interesting to some: the New York-Connecticut-Massachusetts tri-state marker.

Bear Mountain gets more respect than Mount Frissell because it’s the highest summit in Connecticut. Not only is it climbed more, but it’s on the Appalachian Trail. Some call it the fake Connecticut high point. Bear Mountain’s summit is 2,316 feet — 64 feet lower than the south slope of Frissell, which is 137 feet lower than Frissell’s summit.

Mount Katahdin

Mount Katahdin near Millinocket, Maine, is only the 22^nd highest state peak in America, but National Geographic named it the country’s second best summit hike. Not because of its height or difficulty, but because it’s “the most inspiring peak in all of eastern North America.”

After Henry David Thoreau scaled it in 1846, he wrote, “This was the Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night.”

Katahdin made another literary appearance in the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles. The narrator, Gene, talks about his friend sleeping on top of Mount Katahdin, where “each morning the sun first strikes United States territory.”

Katahdin, which ends the Appalachian Trail, also has a potato, two U.S. Navy destroyers and a sheep named after it.

Mount Greylock

You can see five states from the summit of Mount Greylock in Adams, Mass.: Massachusetts, of course, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling put a school of wizardry atop Mount Greylock in her 2016 story, the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It can be read on her Pottermore website.

Mount Greylock also inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write The Unpardonable Sin. The snow-covered mountain reminded Herman Melville of a great white sperm whale, which he named Moby Dick in his masterpiece. Thoreau wrote about his climb in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

The mountain may have been named after an Indian chief, Gray Lock, who raided English settlements in Vermont and western Massachusetts during the last French and Indian war. Or it may have been named for the gray clouds that hover at its summit.

Greylock has extensive stands of old growth red spruce, and it’s an important bird area with 132 species of birds recorded on it. For more about recreation on Mount Greylock, click here.

Mount Washington

On a clear day, the view from the summit of Mt. Washington stretches 130 miles, to the Atlantic Ocean in the east and Lake Champlain in the west.

Today New Hampshirites proudly claim Mount Washington as the home of the world’s worst weather. On April 12, 1934, a wind speed of 231 mph was recorded on its summit, which is in Sargent’s Purchase.

In 1851, John Coffin Nazro made a bigger claim for New England’s tallest peak. Nazro, a devout Christian, announced that God would be appearing at the top of Mount Washington on July 4, 1851. He renamed it Temple Heights to signify its role as home to a new religious movement.

All it did was rain on that day. People who had come to see God told Nazro what they thought of him. Nazro gave up his religious movement and joined the Navy.

The Abenaki Indians also believed that the top of the mountain was a holy site. They declined to climb it in the belief that they would be punished with death if they did.

The first car to climb Mount Washington was a Stanley Steamer on Aug. 31, 1899. Co-inventor Freelan O. Stanley and his wife Flora drove to the peak in one of the earliest publicity stunts in the automotive industry.

For more about things to do on Mount Washington, click here.

Jerimoth Hill

No, the highest point in Rhode Island is not the 550-foot-high state landfill in Johnston.

It’s Jerimoth Hill, all 812 feet of it, in Foster, R.I. Some say it used to offer the most challenging climbing adventure in New England. The Highpointers Club, a national mounting climbing group, called it ‘America’s most inaccessible high point.’

The peak of Jerimoth Hill was owned by Brown University, which used it as an astronomy observatory location. The trail leading up to it, though, is on land once owned by a man who didn’t appreciate hikers traipsing across his property. Music teacher Henry P. Richardson posted signs saying, “Trespassing is a violation we take seriously.”

Richardson supposedly had a secret security system on his property. He enlisted a neighbor to report on any trespassers. One hiker returned from the summit of Jerimoth Hill to find his tires slashed. Another said Richardson tried to take his camera.A third claimed Richardson fired a warning shot with a shotgun.

In 2002, the Providence Journal suggested a solution for highpointers who couldn’t climb Jerimoth Hill: Shovel dirt onto 805-foot Durfee Hill in Glocester to make it higher than Jerimoth.

By 1999 the Highpointers Club negotiated four access dates a year with a friend of Richardson. Richardson died in 2001. The new owners opened the access trail on weekends.

The state bought Jerimoth Hill from Brown in 2014, and today you can climb it undisturbed by shotgun blasts. But manage your expectations. Jerimoth Hill is heavily wooded, has no views at all and is only about five feet higher than the highway.

You might think Rhode Island has the lowest high point in the country. You would be wrong. Jerimoth Hill ranks only 46^th.

New England’s honorary state, Florida, lies even lower even than the District of Columbia.

Mount Mansfield

From Stowe, Vermont, look toward Mount Mansfield and you may see a reclining giant’s face. Many a climber has tried to distinguish the giant’s chin, nose and forehead. The chin is the tallest point.

According to a Stowe newspaper in 1858, a giant was walking north and, “being fatigued with his journey, as night came on he laid him down to sleep, and unfortunately, he has never since awoke, but like the giant Rip Van Winkle sleeps on.”

The effort to make Mount Mansfield a regional mascot may have been spurred by competition with New Hampshire’s Old Man in the Mountain. In the mid 19^th century, Daniel Webster famously popularized the Old Man with the words: “God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.”

A small monument can be found along the summit. A cairn called Frenchman’s Pile marks the spot where lightning struck and killed a man many years ago.

Photos: Mount Washington By wwoods – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1539623; Mount Greylock By Ericshawwhite – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28407006; Jerimoth Hill By Fredlyfish4 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19337222. This story about the highest point in each New England state was updated in 2021.

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Levi Brisson: R.I. Father of the Year, and the Year After That, and …

There are many reasons to take note of the history of Foster, R.I. Home to one U.S. senator, Theodore Foster, and birthplace to another, Nelson Aldrich, it has had more than its share of fame for a town its size.

But perhaps its most famous resident goes largely unremarked in the history books. That would be Olivier (Levi) Brisson. Levi’s contribution to history? He was father to 43 children (give or take).

Foster Town Hall

Around 1900, when Levi was in his 70s, newspapers began taking note of his prolificacy, reporting each new child (sometimes jumping the gun). Living near the border of Connecticut in an old schoolhouse, the Brissons were local celebrities, though not everyone sung their praises. Some apparently felt he should have drawn the line somewhere south of 40.

Levi Brisson

The good-natured, 110-pound Canadian import was generally willing to talk to reporters looking in to find out the current tally of children, though getting the exact count is difficult.

If you’re wondering about the math, Levi Brisson was apparently genetically disposed to fathering multiple-birth pregnancies. News accounts vary as to the specifics. Some reports say his first wife had triplets, three times, and quadruplets once. His second wife had five sets of twins and his third wife also gave birth to twins. And his daughter made headlines when she, too, gave birth to triplets.

One account notes that 15 of his children once had measles simultaneously. Most recently, Levi’s story has been told by author Annie Proulx, his great-great-granddaughter. She wrote of him in her book, Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place.

Her record of the children of Levi Brisson: “He was married three times. His first wife, Clemence Benjamin, bore him six children, including one pair of twins. His second spouse, Mary Cyr, was the mother of 21, including two pairs of twins, and his third and pregnant wife, Maggie LeBarge, has borne him 11, of which four are dead. If he had lived today he could have had his own television program.”

Proulx notes that he was of limited means by the later years in his life. The cost of raising three families had taken its toll. The town, however, welcomed him to live rent free in an old East Killingly, Conn., schoolhouse (next door to Foster) apparently because his children made it possible for the area to continue to justify maintaining a local school.

Levi Brisson died in November 1903, falling short of his goal of 50 children, but leaving a giant of a family tree nonetheless.

This story was updated in 2022.

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