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Portsmouth RI

Six Historic One-Room Schoolhouses

Thousands of one-room schoolhouses once educated New England children, some well into the 20^th century.

Small, utilitarian buildings, they usually lacked plumbing and electricity. An outhouse stood out back, as did a woodshed for the wood-burning stove that heated the room. In the early days, one-room schoolhouses were usually built on tiny plots of cheap land in the village center. Dim, cold and often crowded, one critic called them ‘juvenile penitentiaries.’

One-Room Schoolhouses

In the 1850s, school sessions ran for eight weeks in summer and eight weeks in winter. They increased to three sessions, then to three longer sessions. But the length of the school sessions affected attendance, because the children had to help with farm chores like haying in the spring and apple picking in the fall.

In the 1850s, school reformers like Horace Mann and Henry Barnard led a wave of change that affected the look of one-room schoolhouses. They believed schools should have good light, better heat, comfortable seats and separate entrances and cloakrooms for boys and girls. In their view, schoolhouses should have ‘civilizing’ architectural style and solid construction to uplift and inspire students.

They suggested the two entrances as a way to prevent ‘much confusion and rudeness’ and to promote ‘orderly habits.’

New England’s one-room schoolhouses began to reflect those physical changes. But they were slower to change something else: the district school.

Typically, towns divided themselves into school districts and made each district responsible for educating its students. Reformers attacked the district schools because they didn’t give all children an equal education. Some of the one-room schoolhouses had untrained teachers and none had a standard curriculum. Religious dogma often filled the children’s textbooks.

Ultimately, most one-room schoolhouses disappeared. They were moved, dismantled for reuse in other buildings or converted to a new use with additions and alterations. Some survived, however, and some serve as museums today reminding schoolchildren to be grateful for central heat, electricity, and a ban on corporal punishment.

Here, then, are six one-room-schoolhouses, one in each New England state. If you know of other one-room schoolhouses, please let us know in the comments section.

Wylie School

The Wylie School in Voluntown, Conn.

The Wylie School in Voluntown, Conn., is typical of the hundreds of ungraded one-room schoolhouses that predominated in rural Connecticut as late as the 1930s. It’s atypical, though, because it survived until today in relatively good condition.

In 1850, the town built the Wylie School and later named it after Horace Wylie, who donated the land. Unlike New England towns outside of Connecticut, It had financial help from the state. Connecticut set up a School Fund from the sale of the state’s land in the Western Reserve in Ohio, which includes Cleveland.

The Wylie school had two entrances to separate the 15 to 20 boys and girls who attended. It also had a three-hole privy that still survives.

One teacher, Miss Margaret Tanner, taught in Voluntown from 1909 to 1947. For many of those years she taught at the Wylie School, which didn’t close until 1939. The town never upgraded the school’s heating and sanitation beyond the wood stove and the outhouse.

Today the Voluntown Historical Society uses the Wylie School for meetings and events.

Jct. of Ekonk Hill and Wylie School Rds., Voluntown, Conn.

York Corner Schoolhouse

The York Corner Schoolhouse and Jefferds Tavern.

Maine, a largely rural state, had 4,000 one-room schoolhouses by 1900. That number fell to 226 in 1960 and today only a handful remain.

York has one that survived, the York Corner Schoolhouse. It’s one of the earliest existing 18^th-century one-room schoolhouses in the country. The town started building it in 1746, then paid two pounds 13 shillings to finish it nine years later. The windows had no glass, just oiled brown paper, and the school had no stove, just an open fireplace.

After the schoolhouse closed, a farmer converted it to a chicken coop. Local preservationists saved the building and converted it to a museum. Today it belongs to the Old York Historical Society’s nine historic buildings. In season, visitors can tour the Old Schoolhouse and Tavern.

Maine, by the way, still has six island one-room schoolhouses.

3 Lindsay Rd., York, Maine

West School

Old West in Dennis

The West School in the Cape Cod town of Dennis is the only remaining one-room schoolhouse of the twelve that once educated local schoolchildren. Built aroud 1770, it’s also the oldest in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Younger children attended school in the spring and summer, while the older ones went to school in winter when they had fewer farm chores.

The wooden building used to stand at the intersection of Old King’s Highway and New Boston Road. It operated as a schoolhouse until 1865, and then moved to 61 Whig Street in 1973. Today it’s part of the Josiah Dennis House property, which the Dennis Historical Society runs as a museum.

61 Whig St., Dennis, Mass.

Indian Stream Schoolhouse

A piece of North Country history: The Indian Stream Schoolhouse in Pittsburg, N.H.

The Indian Stream School, one of nine one-room schoolhouses in Pittsburg, N.H., was built and furnished in 1897 for a few hundred dollars. It educated students through the eighth grade, with the older students tutoring the younger.

The town closed the Indian Stream Schoolhouse in 1939, and it stood vacant for years. Then the son of one of its students, Roy Amey, came into possession of the school. The roof leaked, the floor sagged and the chimney had fallen in. Amey wanted to save it as a piece of North Country history, so he and others formed a nonprofit to restore the school.

In 2014, New Hampshire Public Radio interviewed Amey and Bernice Fish, a former student. Amey described how his father had attended the school in 1907.

My father talked about it as very strict, you were very respectful to the teachers, and you came here to learn. Very small classes, very cold in the winter. You’d come here in the morning and there would be snow on the floor, you’d track it in and it didn’t melt because there was no heat. You’d stand around the stove and shiver and wait for it to get going.

Fish recalled the primitive conditions:

We didn’t have electric lights we didn’t have a flush toilet. We had a pail of water out in the entry there. I think every one of us drank out of the same cup. That’s why we’re tough now! Sometimes the teacher would make us a pot of cocoa in order to give us something hot to drink.

Today it’s a museum open to the public on weekends during the summer and fall. Donations are requested.

10 Amey Dr., Pittsburg, N.H.

Southernmost Schoolhouse

The Southernmost Schoolhouse, one of the oldest one-room schoolhouses in the country.

Portsmouth, the second oldest town in Rhode Island, decided 300 years ago that learning was an ‘excellent ornament to mankind’ and authorized construction of two one-room schoolhouses: the Northernmost and the Southernmost. Built in 1725, the Southernmost still stands, and the Portsmouth Historical Society calls it the oldest schoolhouse in Rhode Island.

The Southernmost had a troubled early history. The first schoolmaster, James Preston, boarded with another family until he fell ill. The town let him and his family live in the basement of the school. After he died, his widow and her family used the school as their home until the town kicked them out in 1746.

The school was donated to the historical society in 1952, and today serves as a museum. Young visitors today are no doubt intrigued by the school’s precise menu for meting out corporal punishment:

Boys and girls playing together – 1 lash
Fighting at school – 5 lashes
Climbing for every foot over 3 feet up a tree – 1 lash
Giving each other ill names – 3 lashes
Wearing long fingernails – 2 lashes
Boys going to the girls’ play place – 3 lashes
Girls going to the boys’ play place – 2 lashes
For not saying yes or no sir or yes or no marm – 2 lashes

The worst infractions? You got seven lashes for lying and eight for telling tales out of school. Misbehaving to girls got you 10 lashes if you were a boy, while swearing at school got both sexes nine lashes.

870 E. Main Rd., Portsmouth, R.I.

Eureka Schoolhouse

The Eureka Schoolhouse, once painted yellow and blue.

The story of the Eureka Schoolhouse in Springfield, Vt., begins with the construction of the Crown Point military route between Fort No. 4 in Charlestown, N.H., with the fort at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. The road wasn’t just for the military; it was intended as a path for westward settlers, and Springfield, was the southern gateway.

Springfield settlers began working on the one-room schoolhouse in 1785, but didn’t finish it until 1790. Today it’s the oldest one-room schoolhouse in Vermont. Though built out of hand-hewn timbers, the settlers tried to give the primitive structure some style. They finished the walls in rough-cut wooden boards scored to resemble cut stone. Originally they painted it yellow with a cobalt blue roof.

The first schoolteacher, David Searle, gave the school its name. After he graduated from Yale he headed north to the Vermont frontier, looking for work. When he reached No. 4, residents told him Springfield wanted to hire a teacher. He followed the Crown Point Military Road, and when he spotted the new school he said, ‘Eureka’ — Greek for ‘I found it.’

Apparently he did his job well. A number of the students went on to attend Dartmouth College.

The town moved the school across the road in 1837. The school population dwindled and the town closed it in 1900. The abandoned building probably would have crumbled into the earth, save for a local preservationist named Anna Hartness Beardsley. She spearheaded the effort to carefully dismantle the structure in 1958, store it and then rebuild it using much of the original material. It reopened in 1968.

Today the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation owns the Eureka Schoolhouse, along with the Baltimore Covered Bridge; the Springfield Chamber of Commerce runs it as the centerpiece of a small historic site.

470 Charlestown Rd, Springfield, Vt.

End Notes

If you enjoyed this story about one-room schoolhouses, you may also want to read about the first public high school in each New England state here.

Images of one-room schoolhouses: Wylie School By Digitalpilgrim – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21161288; Old York School https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/96001495_text; Old West School in West Dennis, By Athanasius28 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27997051; Portsmouth RI Schoolhouse By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20439385; Indian Stream Schoolhouse By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51959410. This story was updated in 2019.

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The 1673 Murder of Rebecca Cornell and the ‘Good Fire’

On the night of Feb. 8, 1673, Thomas Cornell rushed into the sitting room where he had earlier left his mother Rebecca Cornell. On the floor he found a body, badly burned. He said he suspected he’d found a drunken Indian who had fallen into the fire.

But as he rushed close, he declared: “Oh, Lord! It is my mother!” And so began the strange case of the murder of Rebecca Cornell.

The Cornell house, which no longer stands.

The Cornells were a well-respected family in Portsmouth, R.I. Thomas and Rebecca, originally from England, ran an inn in Boston. They left Massachusetts in the wake of Ann Hutchinson’s expulsion for her religious beliefs. The Cornells sympathized with the more tolerant society Roger Williams was creating in Rhode Island.

The Death of Rebecca Cornell

Thomas senior died in 1655. Both Thomas Cornells, senior and junior, were well-regarded citizens, serving public office. By 1673, Rebecca had entrusted her estate to her son Thomas.

On the day she died, Thomas spent more than an hour talking with his mother in her sitting room. Then he was called to dinner. The evening dinner was salt mackerel, which Rebecca did not eat. She said it made her dry in the night.

Thomas sent his son Edward to ask Rebecca if she wanted boiled milk or some other supper. As Edward tried to rouse his grandmother, he was alarmed by a dog bounding from the sitting room. Something was amiss and Edward ran to fetch a candle and raise an alarm. When Thomas returned to the sitting room with Edward, he found the body on the floor.

Kneeling down, Thomas first tried some Indian phrases to communicate with the injured person. On closer inspection he recognized his mother. The first coroner’s inquest was quick and to the point. Rebecca Cornell had died in a fire. She had probably fallen asleep, dropped ash from her pipe on herself and burned to death. But four days after the death, Rebecca’s brother John gave a strange testimony.

Ghost Sighting

He was asleep in bed when “he felt something heave up the bedclothes twice, and thought somebody had been coming to bed to him, where upon he awaked, and turned himself about in his bed, and being turned, he perceived a light in the room, like to the dawning of the day, and plainly saw the shape and appearance of a woman standing by his bedside where at he was much affrighted, and cried out, ‘in the name of God what art thou?”

The apparition answered, ‘I am your sister Cornell,’ and twice said, ‘see how I was burnt with fire.’ And she plainly appeared unto him to be very much burnt about the shoulders, face, and head.”

The vision reinvigorated the investigation. Rebecca’s brother interpreted the vision to mean that his sister accused someone of burning her intentionally. Rebecca’s body was inspected a second time, and this jury found a suspicious wound in her stomach. A new version of events began to take shape, and Thomas Cornell was charged with murdering his mother.

The Trial

At trial, witnesses painted an unpleasant picture of life in the Cornell home. Rebecca Cornell had complained about her treatment. She had to work on the farm. She went to bed without her bed made up or warmed. And she complained that Thomas was skimpy in heating the home and would not provide a good fire.

Her son declined to hire a maid to look after her. And she and Thomas argued over whether rent should be paid for staying at the house and whether he should pay her or vice versa.

Rebecca Cornell, two witnesses testified, had contemplated killing herself, either by stabbing herself or drowning herself. Further, she had told some, she planned to leave Thomas’ house and move in with her son Samuel in the spring. Of particular concern to Rebecca: Thomas’ second wife, Sarah, who she disliked.

Patience Coggeshall testified: “She was afraid there would be mischief done. Her daughter-in-law was of such a desperate spirit, for not long since, said she, she ran after one of the children of his first wife, with an Axe, into her house; but she prevented her striking the child. Yet she did not live with any of her other children because she had made over her estate to her son Thomas. If she had thought her son Thomas first wife would have died before her, she would not have made it over to him.”

Credibility Gap

Meanwhile, other witnesses questioned Thomas’ story about his mother refusing mackerel, charging that she had been known to eat it.

John Pierce suggested Thomas Cornell was glad his mother was gone. He testified: “Thomas Cornell said that his Mother in her life time had a desire to have a good fire, and further said, that he thought God had answered her ends, for now she had it.”

The jury convicted Thomas Cornell of murdering his mother with virtually no evidence that he had done so. Two years after he died on the gallows, his widow Sarah was charged with assisting in the murder, along with a local Indian. She was not convicted. However, the case of Rebecca Cornell caused the people of Rhode Island to debate whether spectral evidence should be used in criminal cases at all.

This story about Rebecca Cornell was updated in 2023.

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6 Religious Revival Camps

Tens of thousands of New Englanders went to religious revival camps in the summer to pray, preach and sing during the 19^th and well into the 20^th centuries.

Plainville Camp Grounds

The camp meetings inspired intense religious contemplation in the great outdoors for days at a time. People could attend the almost-continuous services that often lasted several days. Their fervent prayer was often accompanied by ecstatic motions, including falling, head jerking, dancing, laughing, singing and rolling in the mud.

Rev. Sarah Mount described what the campgrounds were like:

Imagine traveling to a lovely three-acre grove of trees, cleared of all underbrush, where tents for sleeping are standing in an oblong square, or a circle. Behind the tents are carriages, wagons and tethered horses. Cooking fires are placed just outside the tent flaps. In the center of the tents, there is a stage in front of a semicircle of benches, one section for the women and another for the men. At night this tent ground is illuminated by candles.

Some of camps are still around, true to their original purpose. Others are simply summer resorts.

Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, even a Quaker ran the religious revival camps. It was the Methodists, though, who brought the camp meeting east from the western frontier.

The Methodist movement steamrolled the established religious traditions of the country and caused a tremendous stir. Somewhat more progressive in their attitudes toward slavery and women in the church, the Methodists reached out to include the working poor in their churches. The church’s message was that salvation was there for the asking, no matter your background or sins.

The first Methodist revival camp meeting was held in New England in 1802 at Haddam, Conn.

One of the most sensational crimes of the 19^th century was linked to a camp meeting in Thompson, Conn., where a Methodist preacher allegedly had sex with a mill girl and later murdered her. The religious revival camps were often located near water for ease of transportation access. Some have become seaside resorts, like Old Orchard Beach, in Maine. The most famous, Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, attracts prominent African-Americans such as Spike Lee, Henry Louis Gates and Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

Here are six New England places where religious revival camp meetings were held, one in each state.

Plainville Camp Grounds

A Plainville cottage for sale

When the Civil War ended in 1865, the New Haven District of the Methodist Church founded a campground for revival meetings in Plainville, Conn. Methodists would pray and preach there for the next 92 summers.

Like many religious revival camps, Plainville’s layout was probably influenced by the Camp Meeting Manual. A central platform was built and meeting-goers put up a circle of tents around it.

Soon a train station was built, and farmers drove as many as 3,000 Methodists to camp meeting in wagons to the campground. Eventually a building was erected to store equipment, and a screened auditorium was built in the center in 1905. Today’s it’s an open-air pavilion.

Churches in the district began building two-story cottages in a circle around the center of the campground. From the 1880s to 1910, individual families built their own cottages on the narrow streets radiating from the circle. They began to spend time in their cottages even when a revival meeting wasn’t held.

The campground also hosted large gatherings for the American temperance movement, the Grand Army of the Republic, Seventh Day Adventists and chautauquas.

The revival movement faded and in 1957 the Methodists sold the campground to the Plainville Camp Grounds Association. In 1980 the campground was declared a National Historic Site.

Some of the cottages weren’t maintained and had to be torn down in the 1940s and 1950s, but others were improved, expanded and painted bright colors, giving them the nickname ‘painted ladies.’ Eighty-seven are privately owned on the Plainville Camp Grounds, and 19 of the original cottages survive on what is called the Circle.

Click here for multiple images of the Plainville Campground.

Empire Grove Campground

Empire Grove got started in 1793, when Methodist circuit rider Jesse Lee preached and served communion at the house of Nehemia Strout in East Poland, Maine.

Shortly after Maine separated from Massachusetts, Methodists began holding camp meetings at a New Gloucester farm, which they eventually outgrew. In 1857, the grandson of Nehemiah Strout offered them his pasture land for $37.50 a year for 99 years. Seven years short of the expiration date in 1950, the Empire Grove Campmeeting Association bought the land.

Campers in the early years stayed in tents, but eventually built cottages. Today there are 58 left. Originally they were built on a circle around the center, but many have been moved to more spacious lots. The association bought more land in 1980, bringing the total to 99 acres.

There was once a fence, which kept out horses on Sundays. Cottage owners bought season tickets for 25 cents.

Empire Grove is still holding camp meetings. “We are an Ecumenical Christian fellowship with ties to the United Methodist Church,” the Association says. “Some live here year round, others during the summer months, and a few who are here only for Campmeeting.”

Today Empire Grove features a preachers stand, chapel fellowship center, lodging, time keeper and museum. For an album of Empire Grove’s cottages, click here.

Asbury Grove Methodist Campground

Asbury Grove library

When the Asbury Grove Methodist revival camp opened in Hamilton, Mass., in 1859, 12,000 people attended the first camp meeting. Until then, Methodists who lived in or near Boston had had to travel to Eastham on Cape Cod for camp meeting. Hamilton was only 30 miles north of Boston.

A pulpit was erected in a pine grove and wooden benches built around it. Platforms were constructed for tents that could shelter as many as 100 people at a time. The tents started to give way to wooden cottages, the first built in 1868. In the style of most Methodist revival camps, they were rough on the inside and decorated with ornate gingerbread outside.

Over the next three decades, an estimated 300 cottages were built. At its peak, 11 trains a day served the railroad depot, 200 kerosene lamps lit the streets. There was a chapel, library, dining hall, hotel, bakery, post office and small jail.

Asbury Grove was intended as a retreat from worldly cares, and campers came from all walks of life. One 19^th century resident directory lists a shoe manufacturer, teamster, oil dealer, carpenter, and a tin ware dealer.

Fires and hurricanes diminished the camp over the years, but still standing are five dormitories, more than 100 historic cottages, pulpit, tabernacle, library, dining hall and bakery. For the 150^th anniversary in 2009, the Asbury Grove Meeting Association renovated the historic buildings. Worship services and social gatherings marked the occasion.

Today, Asbury Grove is a hidden gem in one of Boston’s wealthiest suburbs.

Advent Christian Campground

Alton Bay postcard

The first call for a camp meeting in Alton Bay, N.H., went out on Aug. 4, 1863:

NEW HAMPSHIRE CAMPMEETING
Providence permitting, there will be a campmeeting at Alton Bay, N.H. to commence September 7, and hold over the following Sunday. Come ye servants of the living God to the New Hampshire campmeeting to feed the flock of Jesus Christ and save souls from the “second death.” Further particulars herewith.
For the brethren, J. G. Smith

The Advent Christian Campground in Alton Bay, N.H., started with a lease of four acres along Lake Winnipesaukee from the Boston and Maine Railroad.

A natural amphitheater was created by placing a circle of wooden benches in a grove of pine trees.

The campground expanded to 78 acres and included a large tabernacle, a kitchen, a bakery, store, book store, boarding house and an ice house. By 1900, 10,000 campers came each summer, staying in more than 250 tents. Small wooden cottages were eventually built on tent platforms standing cheek by jowl to each other.

By 1945, 400 cottages had been built. A fire swept through the campground that year, destroying many of the cottages, the tabernacle and book store. Another fire in 1967 destroyed the boarding house and store. Much of the campground was rebuilt after the fires.

Today, the Alton Bay Campmeeting Association is a year-round Christian conference center with a relaxed atmosphere ‘that provides opportunity for fellowship, reflection, prayer, rest, recreation, and participation in a wide variety of activities geared to spiritual life and growth.’

Portsmouth Camp Meeting

Portsmouth Camp bookstore

In 1890, a Quaker minister named Seth Cook Rees held the first Portsmouth Camp Meeting on July 25, 1890 on Aquidneck Island. Rees ran the Portsmouth Camp Meeting Association for 25 years. Campers stayed in tents during the first camp meeting, which lasted 10 days. A kitchen was added, then a retreat center, small one-room cottages, larger cottages, a dormitory, a dining room and a bookstore. Cottages have been handed down through generations of the same family.

Some of the cottages and buildings are in need of repair. To see a photo gallery of the buildings and grounds, click here.

Today, about 150 adults and children come to the Portsmouth camp to worship and pray around the first week in August. They are Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Nazarenes and non-denominational. Portsmouth Camp Meeting is listed in the Holiness Camp Directory.

East Barnard, Vt.

An East Barnard meadow

During the 19^th century, Methodist circuit riders from all over attended an annual meeting in Barnard, Vt. Revival meetings were planned for them en route to the conference, and at the same time it was happening.

That may explain why East Barnard, a hill town village in Barnard, was a hotbed of Methodist fervor. Early in the 19th century, preacher Truman Allen wrote Methodism ‘spread like small pox before the vaccine.’ Many young men were converted in East Barnard, where camp meetings lasted as long as four days in August. White cotton tents stretched a quarter of a mile from East Barnard village. Today, the campground is dotted with fields and houses.

In 1834, the East Barnard Methodists and other denominations in South Royalton and North Pomfret got together to build a church. It was finished the next year.

Other Religious Revival Camps

A short list of some other New England campgrounds include:

Camp Aldersgate in Scituate, R.I.
Camp Bethel in Haddam, Conn.
Craigville in Centerville, Mass.
Hedding CMA in Epping, N.H.
On-I-Set Wigwam Spiritualist Camp in Wareham, Mass.

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William Barton Goes From Rhode Island Hero to Vermont Deadbeat and Back

Rhode Island’s Col. William Barton seized his place in history in July of 1777 when he slipped into Middletown, R.I. He passed more than 1,000 occupying British troops and kidnapped British General Richard Prescott from the house he occupied.

Portrait of William Barton by James Louis Sullivan now at Brown University in the Rhode Island Historical Society collection.

The news undoubtedly made an impression on the young Marquis de Lafayette, who had just arrived on his first visit to America hoping to join the Revolution. Years later, Lafayette would try to help Barton out.

Barton’s fortunes would take a bitter turn following his daring escapade. He spent more than a decade in a Vermont prison for nonpayment of a small debt to a town named after him.

William Barton

William Barton was born on May 26, 1748, in Warren, R.I. He took up the trade of hatter, which may explain his later mad behavior.

He married Rhoda Carver in 1771, and they eventually had four children. When he learned about the Battle of Bunker Hill, he joined a Rhode Island regiment as an adjutant in August 1775.

By 1777, the British occupied Newport, R.I. Sir Henry Clinton had commanded the occupation, but returned to England and left the high-handed Gen. Richard Prescott in charge.

Maj. General Richard Prescott was a thorn in the side of Rhode Islanders during the British occupation of Newport.

Prescott had already earned a bad reputation for his harsh treatment of American prisoners, including Ethan Allen. In Newport he allowed his men to cut down nearly every tree and use wooden grave markers for firewood. He ordered crops destroyed and people thrown in jail. And when people failed to doff their hats at him, he struck them with his cane, shouting, “Disperse, ye rebels.”

His men hated him as much as the Rhode Islanders did, which would prove his undoing.

In June 1777, William Barton, now a lieutenant colonel, had his headquarters in Tiverton, R.I. An American named Coffin escaped British captivity and made his way to the American lines. He told Barton that Prescott was living on an isolated farm belonging to Henry Overing, and he had forced his attentions on Mrs. Overing. Only a sentry and a few soldiers guarded the house.

The Kidnapping

Coffin convinced William Barton he could capture Prescott. So Barton took five whaleboats and 40 men who knew how to use them, muffled the oars with lambs’ wool and set out for Portsmouth. It took them 26 hours to travel 10 miles in pouring rain. The men had no idea what they were about to do.

Replica of a traditional whaleboat at Mystic Seaport.

They halted at Hog Island near the mouth of the harbor. The rain stopped, and at midnight Barton revealed the plan. After a day of rest, they slipped past the British warships guarding the harbor at night. The men put ashore opposite the Overing property and hiked through rough terrain to the house.

A sentry challenged them, but they quickly overpowered him. The sentry told them Prescott was asleep on the second floor. They found Prescott, though whether Mrs. Overing was with him is lost to history. “You are my prisoner,” said Barton.

“I acknowledge it, sir,” replied Prescott.

Barton ordered him out of bed and hustled him in his nightclothes toward the whaleboats. Thus Prescott earned the nickname ‘The Barefoot General.’

The Overing house, where Barton captured Prescott

Not long after he landed, a boat arrived under a flag of truce carrying the general’s clothing, wigs and perfumes. Eventually the Americans exchanged him for captured Continental Army general Charles Lee.

Vermont

William Barton received a painful leg injury in fighting in 1778 and never fully recovered. He did, however, continue to serve in the Continental Army throughout the Revolution.

But Barton’s orneriness, an asset during his war service, soon became a detriment. To honor his military achievements, the Congress awarded him a French-made decorative gold sword.

He bought land in northern Vermont in a town that now bears his name – Barton. He soon got embroiled in a bitter lawsuit over land that he had sold to two people. The court ordered him to pay $320 in damages.

Stubborn and difficult, William Barton refused to pay – though he could have. For 14 years he stayed in the prison in Danville, Vt., rather than settle his debt.

He had to live in a yard surrounded by chains, where people came to visit him and hear how he captured Prescott. Barton happily obliged.

Lafayette

The Marquis de Lafayette seldom forgot a friend, as he showed when he visited Vermont in 1825 on his final celebratory tour of America.

He had gone to Barton’s home in Providence, where Rhoda Barton told him he hadn’t visited her in 30 years.

Lafayette in 1825

The French hero of the American Revolution then saw Barton during his travels through Vermont. He offered to pay Barton’s debt, but Barton refused. Lafayette then quietly paid it himself.

After emerging from jail at age 77, William Barton found his capture of the British general had became a cause for celebration, commemorated annually. He would die six years later, his reputation restored, and be buried back in Rhode Island.

This story about William Barton was updated in 2022.

Images: Whaleboat By Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115479.

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Six Revolutionary War Battlefields in New England

Revolutionary War battlefields abound in New England, where, after all, the whole thing began. The patriots fought the British in every colony before and during the war, and many of the sites remain undeveloped.

Here is our choice for the best six Revolutionary War battlefields in New England, with one in each state.

Fort Griswold, Connecticut

Fort Griswold, one of the most infamous Revolutionary War battlefields.

Named after Deputy Gov. Matthew Griswold, the Connecticut Colony built the fort in 1775 in Groton to defend the supply depot at the mouth of the Thames River. The fort also protected privateers operating out of the harbor.

In 1781, the traitor Benedict Arnold led a company of British soldiers in an attack on New London. Meanwhile, another British commander, Edmund Eyre, attacked the fort. The British had the advantage. Arnold knew the angle to attack so the American gun positions couldn’t fire effective shots.

The British forces infamously massacred the American soldiers. After Col. William Ledyard surrendered his sword to the British, they ran him through with it. At the time of surrender, six Americans were dead and 20 wounded. When it was all over, 83 Americans were dead and 36 wounded. Arnold went on to burn New London.

The earthen walls of the fort still stand. The Ebenezer Avery House, which sheltered the wounded after the battle, has been restored on the grounds. A Revolutionary War museum also depicts the era.

For directions to Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, click here. For information from the Friends of Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, click here.

Fort George, Maine

Fort George, the Revolutionary War battlefield where the Penobscot Expedition ended in ignominy.

Castine, located in Downeast Maine, is one of the oldest European communities in North America. Since the early 1600s, French, Dutch and English colonists have built trading posts, forts, missions and permanent settlements there.

In 1779, the British sent troops to occupy Castine with the hope of establishing a colony called New Ireland. They built a fort and named it after King George III.

Massachusetts, alarmed by the British occupation, sent a combined naval and military expedition to capture the fort that summer. Known as the Penobscot Expedition, it had 19 warships and 24 transports. Though the patriots outnumbered the British, they failed to take Fort George and suffered the worst U.S. naval defeat until Pearl Harbor. Paul Revere, in charge of ordnance, ended up court martialed for cowardice and insubordination. He fought the charges and won his acquittal.

Some of Fort George still remains, as does the British canal built in 1779, gravesites of Revolutionary War soldiers and historic houses, taverns and churches. Castine has marked its many historic sites with signs. (Click here for a map.)

Minute Man State Park, Massachusetts

North Bridge, the granddaddy of all Revolutionary War battlefields.

It doesn’t get much better than Minute Man National Historic Park in Lexington, Lincoln and Concord.

The 970-acre park memorializes the opening battles of the American Revolution – and then some.

Lexington Battle Green, site of the shot heard round the world, belongs to the Town of Lexington. The Buckman Tavern sits on the green, which leads to the five-mile-long Battle Road Trail. Patriot militia skirmished with the British regulars along the trail, now a restored colonial landscape that includes the Hartwell Tavern.

In Concord, Daniel Chester French’s famous Minute Man statue stands by the North Bridge, where the colonial militia shot back at British soldiers in the second battle of the day.

The Wayside also belongs to the park. Authors Amos Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Sidney lived there (not all at the same time).

The Town of Lexington owns and maintains Lexington Battle Green, site of the shot heard round the world.

Fort Constitution, N.H.

Fort Constitution and the Portsmouth Harbor Light.

An important skirmish before the war took place in New Castle, N.H. A handful of British soldiers manned Fort William and Mary there in 1774, when tensions rose between the colonies and England. The stone fort stood at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, guarding access to the harbor and to Kittery, Maine (then Massachusetts).

Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth in December to warn patriots that British troops might seize powder and guns at the fort. A raiding party of 400 men then stormed the fort. They subdued the six soldiers inside and took the gunpowder, muskets and cannon.

The fort, renamed Fort Constitution, now belongs to the State of New Hampshire. The Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse stands inside the fort.

Fort Constitution Historic Site is a great spot for a picnic. For more information click here.

Quaker Hill, R.I.

The most famous Rhode Island battle of the American Revolution is called the Battle of Rhode Island or the Battle of Quaker Hill. By August 1778, the British had occupied Newport, on Aquidneck Island, for almost two years. That month, Continental Army troops led by Gen. John Sullivan sailed from Tiverton to Portsmouth and set up a siege on Aquidneck. They planned to drive the British soldiers back to Newport and then recapture the town with the help of French naval forces.

But a hurricane prevented the French naval commander, Count d’Estaing, from attacking the 6,000 entrenched British soldiers. D’Estaing instead sailed his fleet to Boston for repairs. The patriots then tried to withdraw, but the British attacked them in Portsmouth in a valley among three hills. The Americans retreated to Tiverton without a single soldier killed. The 1^st Rhode Island Regiment, comprised of African- and Native-American soldiers, took part in the action.

The 365 acres of the battlefield had no structures on them at the time of the conflict, but since then 36 houses and a barn have been built.

At the intersection of Route 2 and West Main, the state chapter of the NAACP put up a marker to commemorate the 1st Rhode Island’s role in the battle. And a granite memorial stone marks the Battle of Rhode Island on the corner of Union Street and Route 138 in Portsmouth.

A site of another skirmish is nearby. On the night of July 11, 1777, Col. William Barton and about three dozen infantrymen sailed from Tiverton to Middletown and captured British general Richard Prescott in his bed.

Prescott was occupying a farm owned by a Loyalist, despite warnings of inadequate security. That farm, now known as Prescott Farm, was restored with the help of heiress Doris Duke. The public can now visit. Visitors can tour the house where Barton captured Prescott, a windmill, a country store, a guardhouse and a historical vegetable garden. For more information, click here.

Hubbardton Battlefield, Vermont

Vermont’s only Revolutionary War battlefield, in Hubbardton.

The Hubbardton Battlefield in Hubbardton is the site of the only Revolutionary War battle fought entirely in Vermont (or what would become Vermont). (The Battle of Bennington was actually fought in New York state.) It’s also one of the best preserved battlefields in America.

The battle started on July 7, 1777, when British forces caught up with the American rear guard of the forces retreating after they withdrew from Fort Ticonderoga. The Americans, led by Seth Warner, fought with discipline and inflicted heavy casualties on the British. Though they lost the battle, they halted the British and prevented them from pursuing the main American army.

The battlefield itself and the small museum that explains it lie off the beaten path, but they feature stunning views of the Vermont landscape. It’s off Exit 5 on Route 4, between Rutland and New York state.

Click here for more information.

Photos: Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse and Fort Constitution By Kenneth Dupont – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62728239. Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park by By Staxringold via English Wikipedia. Fort George earthworks and cannon by Jerrye and Roy Klotz via Wikipedia. Old North Bridge By Daderot at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5942756. This story about Revolutionary War battlefields was updated in 2023.

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The 21 New England Colonial and State Capitals

New England cities and towns used to vie for colonial and state capitals the way they now court sports stadiums, with the result that 21 New England capitals graced the land since Europeans settled the region.

Typical 18th century New England government building

Typical 18th century building you’d find in New England state capitals

Rhode Island, the tiniest state, has had the most state capitals, while Massachusetts, the largest, has had the fewest.

Connecticut once had its state capital in New York and Maine had its in Canada. Two of Vermont’s capitals have served as the seat of a national government, and Boston was at one time the capital of all New England.

The reasons for moving colonial and then state capitals had to do with conquest, migration and the ideals of the American Revolution. Americans thought they were taxed without representations, and they blamed the distance from the British Parliament. After independence, they believed they needed equal physical access to the state legislature to get represented equally.

21 New England State Capitals

From 1776 to 1812, the people of the 13 original colonies agitated to move their state capitals to the center of the state, writes Rosemarie Zagarri, in The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776-1850.

“The confidence of people in their government rested on people’s ability to know and be known by their representatives,” Zagarri wrote. After decades of westward migration, it made no sense to them to have a capital on the Atlantic coast.

Old State House 1793

Boston, the longest continuing state capital in the United States, was the one New England capital that stayed put. John Winthrop’s city on a hill had too much power to let any upstart town take the government away from it.

As is still the case, western Massachusetts resented Boston for it. The people of Springfield, Mass., commented in 1780 that “It is probably, by Reason of their different situations, that many of the more distant Towns will generally omit the full Exercise of their Rights, and that those at or near the Center of Government will exercise them in their full Extent.”

Seating the commonwealth’s government in Boston was on the list of grievances during Shay’s Rebellion.

East vs. West

Residents of Lenox objected to the Massachusetts constitution of 1778 because, as they put it, “[Article 6] has a tendency to induce the Remote parts of the State … to neglect keeping a Representative at the General Court. In a word it is making Representation unequal.”

Plymouth

Boston reigned as the capital of all New England when King James II created the Dominion of New England in 1686. James correctly worried the colonies were too independent and thought consolidating the colonies would solve the problem. It didn’t. The Dominion lasted all of three years. In 1689, the Boston Revolt ended the Dominion and sent Royal Gov. Edmund Andros packing.

Boston, however, wasn’t always the capital of all Massachusetts. For 70 years, Plymouth was the capital of Plymouth Colony, which included Cape Cod, Scituate, Marshfield and Duxbury, Bridgewater, Taunton, what is now New Bedford and Fall River, Dartmouth and Freetown. Plymouth could even argue a history as capital of Rhode Island, as Plymouth Plantation claimed parts of Rhode Island including Bristol, Rehoboth and Little Compton.

The Flying State Capitals of RI and Conn.

View of Newport, 1730. Courtesy Library of Congress.

View of Newport, 1730, one of RI’s many state capitals. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Rhode Island and Connecticut resolved the conflicts over the location of their state capitals. They decided on rotating state capitals, a solution dubbed ‘The Flying Statehouse.’

From 1639 to 1644, Portsmouth, R.I., served as the capital of the English colony of Aquidneck Island and Providence the capital of – well, Providence. For more than a century, Providence prevailed as the seat of government when the two colonies merged in 1644, with the brief interruption of Boston as the capital of the Dominion.

In 1776, Rhode Island embarked on a lively experiment, rotating its capital to each of the five county seats: Providence, Newport, East Greenwich, South Kingstown and Bristol. The experiment proved too lively. After 1853 the state legislature stopped meeting in the Kent, Washington and Bristol counties and alternated between Providence and Newport. Providence grew and Newport declined, and in 1900 the government finally settled down in Providence.

The old Connecticut Statehouse,.

The Dutch once claimed Connecticut. Its capital was New Amsterdam, a fort at the tip of the island now known as Manhattan. In 1639 Connecticut broke off as a separate English colony. A year later, so did New Haven.

Hartford and New Haven held sway as respective state capitals, except during the three years of the Dominion of New England.

From 1701 to 1875, Hartford and New Haven were the co-capitals of Connecticut, with the General Assembly holding spring sessions in Hartford and fall sessions in New Haven. Lawmakers got fed up with the complicated arrangement and decided to settle on one city. Hartford and New Haven vied for the privilege of hosting the government, and Hartford won.

Vermont and NH

Artists’ conception of the first New Hampshire Statehouse

Portsmouth became the capital of New Hampshire in 1689 until 1775, with the usual caveat about Boston.

During the American Revolution, New Hampshire’s General Assembly shuttled among Concord, Hopkinton, Dover, Amherst, Charlestown and Hanover, but officially settled in Exeter. After the war, New Hampshire citizens clamored for a centrally located capital and travel-weary lawmakers agreed.

Portsmouth cautioned against the move in 1790, arguing that citizens were less likely to be represented when their state capitals were far away.

Concord became New Hampshire’s de facto capital in 1808, though not by law until 1816.

Montpelier

Vermont has had four capitals. The state started out as disputed territory between New York and New Hampshire. On Jan. 15, 1777, representatives meeting in the oldest town, Westminster, declared independence from both and gave themselves the name, The Republic of New Connecticut. Almost six months later, representatives of the new republic met in the biggest town, Windsor, and changed their name to the Republic of Vermont.

Vermont succumbed to the prevailing desire for a central capital in 1805, 14 years after it became a state. Windsor lost out to the small town of Montpelier, then with a population of less than 2,000.

Maine

Part of Maine was once the French colony l’Acadie, and in 1604 its capital was Ile St. Croix, now the uninhabited St. Croix Island. In 1605 Port Royal, now in Nova Scotia, became the capital of Acadia. Then by 1658 Maine had joined Massachusetts, and until 1820 its capital was Boston.

The people of Augusta chipped in $11,000 for this

For the next 12 years, Portland served as Maine’s capital, but many lawmakers wanted to move the seat of government to a central city or town. In 1822 a committee was appointed to visit Portland, Brunswick, Hallowell, Augusta, Waterville, Belfast and Wiscasset. The Lewiston Saturday Journal reported, “In each of which towns a choice of very valuable lots was freely offered for the acceptance of the state.”

They said if it were to be on the seaboard, it should be in Wiscasset, but if inland, on Weston Hill in Augusta because of its scenic beauty. Augusta bought the hill and gave it to the state. That sealed the deal; Augusta it was.

Still Not Resolved

Architects drew up plans for a statehouse budgeted to cost $80,000. In the end it cost $138,991.34. Augusta citizens picked up $11,000 to keep the capitol, but the tug-of-war hadn’t ended. Portland, now known as ‘the deserted village’ after the capital moved, kept trying to get the government back.

On Jan 26, 1907, the Lewiston Saturday Journal reported ‘ever since 1821, the issue has been right there in the same old place. Sometimes it has been quiescent. Sometimes it has been acute. It comes in cycles–usually of ten years separation. Several times it has shaken the state from border to border. It may do so again — this session or next. In either case, Augusta must wake up. … a serious and important movement [is] forming.”

Augusta kept the capitol.

This story about the 21 New England state capitals was updated in 2023. Image of the Old Connecticut Statehouse By olekinderhook, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54816354.

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