Adventures in Archiving: A Letter From Gull Rock

I am back at work on the archiving project at the Paine House Museum (when I am not teaching, that is), after getting some advice about how best to proceed after the newspapers have been removed from the rest of the collection. The newspapers have been carefully taken off the floor and removed from piles of other documents, and

organized by title inside two plastic bins, a temporary measure until we get acid-free storage boxes. I also began labeling boxes and organizing materials according to type -- there is now a box for letters, a box for loose papers (handwritten), a box for loose papers (typed), a box for WRICHS papers, a box for Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission (RIHPC) papers, and a box for account/record books and diaries.

So far, I have been able to find almost all of the newspapers in the Library of Congress collection, though at least one title (Inside) is not in their collection at all. Others are going to require me to open them up and look for publisher information; I only want to handle them one more time, when I put them into permanent storage boxes. Most are from the twentieth century -- a record of particularly momentous national or international events like the JFK assassination, Eisenhower's inauguration in 1953, or the Soviet invasion of Hungary in '56. There are others that relate more closely to the local history of area, and some date back as far as the 1880s:

The Evening Star (Peekskill, NY)
The Farm Journal (Philadelphia)
George Washington Bicentennial News (The Alexandria Gazette, Alexandria, VA)
Inside
The Home (oversize)
Mirror and Farmer (Manchester N.H.)
New England Homestead (Springfield Mass.)
North Country
Pawtuxet Valley Daily Times (West Warwick RI)
Providence Evening Bulletin (Providence RI)
Providence Evening Telegram (Providence RI)
Providence Journal/Providence Sunday Journal (Providence RI)
The Providence Star-Tribune (Providence RI)
The Observer (Greenville RI)
Our Young People (American Baptist Publication, Philadelphia PA)
The Reminder (Coventry RI)
The Rhode Islander - Providence Sunday Journal Magazine (Providence RI)
The Springfield Newspapers
The Stars and Stripes (Washington, D.C.)
Thoroughfare Celebration in the Shepard Stores - advertisement (Providence RI)
The Young Ladies Bazaar (Chicago IL)
The Youth’s Companion (Boston MA)

As far as advice how to begin with the preliminary organization of the rest of the collection, I emailed Lori Urso and talked with Patricia Ahl, and Eleanor Langham, the Director, Librarian & Archivist, and Museum Assistant, respectively, at the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society. Lori forwarded some pictures I sent her to Patricia and warned her I was coming with questions about the library at WRICHS. After Eleanor looked at the pictures she assured me she had seen archives in far worse shape, and suggested that she would start by organizing things into boxes by types of materials. Patricia added that if more records come to light providing accession & donor information or other provenance, that would be helpful, but for now the important thing is to find out just what we have in the WRICHS library and put like things with like. Even though they are light-years ahead of WRICHS at Pettaquamscutt in terms of organization, they are still dealing with the same problem of materials "found in collection" -- boxes filled with "stuff" that comes with little or no information as to what's inside or where it came from.

So the methodology I will follow for organizing the WRICHS collection, to go back to the Basics of Archiving course, is by "Types of Materials" where

Records are divided into groups based on what they are--correspondence, diaries, photographs, and minutes, for example.

Should topics begin to emerge within or across types, that will be a further means to differentiate materials. Whenever there is any semblance of provenance or of original order, I plan to keep it, simply storing for now items in the groupings and the order they are in when they are grouped in some order. A priority that has emerged from the most recent WRICHS meetings and work on the collection policy for Paine House Museum (a whole other blog post on that is in the works) is finding all the records having to do with the Society itself. So much "institutional history" took place before any of the present members and volunteers became active that, until those papers are reorganized and gone through, the WRICHS has little sense of its "institutional self" -- we have little idea of what "we" did before we got there, if that makes any sense.

I also asked the folks at Pettaquamscutt about cataloging software (and when I spoke with Kirsten Hammerstrom at Rhode Island Historical, she gave me pretty much the same

advice); for now I should just enter basic information into an Excel spreadsheet. Most software that we might eventually use (PastPerfect, CollectiveAccess) is compatible with Excel, and any database I create now in Excel could be easily exported at some point in the future. I had already started listing the newspaper collection into a Word.doc, so I had to transfer the information over to Excel, but fortunately I hadn't gotten too far with the Word catalog. After an hour or so of copying and pasting, all the newspapers were re-cataloged in Excel.

After that, I took a bundle of news papers I had noticed in a stack of other materials last time I was working (left, the bundle is just visible in the pile to the left of the chair, in the yellow circle) and brought it out to the work table. This looks to be the last of the newspapers that were in the piles on the floor, though there are a few more on the bookshelves, and no doubt some still lurk in boxes I haven't yet looked in. These newspapers were inside a deteriorating paper bag and tied with string. On the outside of the bag were written the words: "The Story of the Hurricane of 1938." (below)

The newspapers, all copies of the Providence Journal, the Providence Evening Bulletin or the Providence Sunday Journal, ranged in date from September 22, 1938 (the day after the 1938 Hurricane struck) to October 9, 1938. For the first few days the headlines were all related to the storm: "Hurricane Kills At Least 125 In State" on September 22; "71 Dead, 57 Missing in Westerly…Villages Vanish; Coast Changed" on the 23rd; "Toll of Hurricane Reaches 300" on September 24. But a few days after the disaster, alongside the reports of the storm damage and the cleanup were stories of an escalating crisis and the possibility of war in Europe. The Czechs were balking at Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland on September 27th, 1938, but over the next several days "The Big Four" weighed in, appeasing Hitler and trading the Sudetenland (and in the spring of 1939, the rest of Czechoslovakia) for 11 more months of peace. For October 3, 1938 the headlines read "Sudetens Welcome Hitler."

Meanwhile Rhode Island continued with its clean-up efforts; on September 28 sharing the headline with "Hitler Agrees to 4-Power Talks" was "One Giant WPA Plan to Clear State Charted."

But as I took each paper and cataloged it I discovered, in the midst of "The Story of the Hurricane of 1938" collection, a folded letter whose letterhead identified its origin as from Little Compton. Along with the letter was a small square of white paper (right), on which is stamped "Town of Wareham Selectman's Office September 30[?] 1938," and written on it is "Pass to Onset Edward Tourtellot and Party of Four. Officer Reidy."

Onset is a village (and a beach) in Wareham, Massachusetts; Onset Bay lies off the coast of Wareham and opens up to Buzzards Bay and out to Rhode Island Sound (Onset is labeled B on map). Wareham is at the exact opposite end of the stretch of coastline that begins with Little Compton (labeled A on map). From Little Compton the coastline curves east and north until it reaches the isthmus of Cape Cod, opposite the Elizabeth Islands and western block of Cape Cod. In a hurricane storm surge, the coastline and islands would funnel the stormwaters in Buzzard's Bay higher and higher until they reach the end of the funnel. There lies Onset.

The letterhead on the paper the letter is written upon has printed in a neat maroon font:

      Gull Rock                -               Little Compton                -               Rhode Island.

The letter itself reads:

Sat. Eve.

Dear Fora [Sara?],

Quite a lot has happened since I saw you. I thought Wed. I would go out in the Atlantic house and all. Three or four times perhaps more, the ocean came under my front door, lucky the door held. I was busy mopping floors and window sills. My front screen door was damaged, half dozen or so shingles torn off below living-room windows, garage doors blew off, well curb blew over.
My house escaped but you should see my yard in front [page 2] sand and rocks. bayberry bushes. bathing house door, large rocks brought up right to my front door Moved those large boulders I had for a wall half way across the front lawn.
If you came down now you wouldn’t see any Warren’s Point bathing beach or “break-water.” All houses down and from breakwater. Big fishing bldg went floating up the river with 3 people or more in it. several drowned. Two houses next Stone House collapsed.
I had 2 suit-cases packed and planed to move up to Lowe-Smith’s [Love-Smith’s?] if I had to get out. [page 3] Richard sad I was crazy to stay in the house as long as I did. Said I wouldn’t have had a chance to get out if a wave came large enough it would pick the house right up.
To-day I came nearly setting the house on fire, melting some paraffin to cover orange marmalade. Went out to speak to mail-man, came back the kitchen was ablaze, sauce-pan ad probably tipped and wax had fallen in oil burner. I turned off burner singed my hair and dropped sauce pan on floor. I’ve been having a heck of a time I’ll say.
[page 4] coming down Wed. nite Richard had to jump from his car just below Stone Bridge. He took the road near the water thinking there would be trees falling on the highland road. A large wave came and turned the car over. He was up to his waist in water. Left the car there. The wreckers brought it down the next nite. I don’t think its any good now. It had floated down the river some distance from where he abandoned it.
Yesterday his riding-horse was taken sick. We went for veterinary said sleeping-sickness so he had to be shot. This is all I can write now as I want to write my cousin in Middleboro[?] whose sister lives in Wareham also hard hit

Eliz.

[in the top and side margins on page 1]
I wondered how the Nickersons at the cape[?] fared. Hope you can read this scrawl.

[in the top and side margins on page 2]
You can still get here by machine, coming around by Stone House & over Lloyd’s hill but not Warren’s Point way but it is pretty rocky going in places.

Based on the evidence in the letter, Elizabeth had probably gone to her "Atlantic house" on Wednesday September 21, 1938 without knowing that a Category 3 hurricane was approaching the coast. She was familiar enough with Richard that he was most likely a relative of Elizabeth -- a cousin, son or brother, or even possibly her husband. Conditions were still so bad Wednesday evening that Richard's car was rolled over by a wave while he was driving to Gull Rock. Both were fortunate not to have been swept away in the storm.

My father had related similar stories of his experiences in the 1938 Hurricane to me since I was a kid. He was 13 in 1938 and living in Fishtown, which was once a village outside of Mystic, Connecticut (at present there seems to be little left of Fishtown other than its old cemetery). The day the '38 Hurricane struck, as my father recalls, school let out a bit early once the teacher realized a bad storm was brewing. Before he got home, my father said the water flooding the road to Fishtown was up to the front sprocket of his bicycle and he was pedaling in a foot and half of water. A passing delivery truck stopped and the driver yelled for my father to get in. The driver threw my father's bike in the back of the truck, and delivered him safely home. Then the storm really hit. The old farm house, built in 1721, weathered the storm with some minor damage, but my father, my grandparents and my Uncle Walt (my grandmother as it happened was also very pregnant with my Uncle Bruce in September 1938) watched on as the wind blew the roofs off two barns, then tore the barns right off their foundations and rolled them across the yard.

I attempted to locate "Gull Rock" on maps of Little Compton, including this one from 1925 that the Little Compton Historical Society has "zoomified" on its website, but not that map nor any others I have looked at has a location marked Gull Rock. Based on Elizabeth's descriptions, it was probably not far from the beach since waves reached to her front door and rolled her stone wall around. There are other clues in her letter too -- Stone Bridge, for instance, and Lloyd's Hill, that might help piece together where in Little Compton Elizabeth and Richard weathered what has been described as the worst hurricane to strike New England since the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635. Elizabeth's letter, dated only "Sat. Eve.," was probably written on Saturday September 24, 1938, and the pass from the Wareham selectman, appears to be dated September 30, which was the following Friday (the day that the Providence Journal reported "Czechs Accept Big-Four Terms"). Likely there is a connection between the reference to Wareham in Elizabeth's letter and the document from the selectman's office -- had they heard from Elizabeth's cousin or her cousin's sister? Conditions in Onset were bad enough that selectmen had apparently closed off access to the area without their permission. And speaking of the selectman's pass, why is this with the letter sent from Little Compton? Was Fora (or Sara) one of the "party of four" led by Edward Tourtellot that traveled to Onset on that late September day, and who later bundled together all the newspapers, the letter and the pass and gave it to the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society for posterity?

Altogether, there may be enough to eventually identify who Elizabeth and Richard were; the one clue that would almost certainly have identified everyone involved -- the envelope the letter was mailed in -- was not with the letter or in the newspaper collection. Someone at the Little Compton Historical Society might be able to help piece this mystery together. As far as the person the letter was addressed to -- Fora, or possibly Sara, the WRICHS records in the PHM library might have clues as to who that might have been. I also have a feeling that this discovery is only the first of many just waiting inside the next box or under the next pile of documents in the WRICHS archive... For now, just that we know that that we have this letter is an important first step in organizing this collection.

Remembering (and Forgetting) General Isaac P. Rodman

Adventures in Archiving: Where to Begin?

I have more than just a passing interest in the science (or art?) of the archive, the result of spending countless hours in town hall vaults, libraries and archives while researching my MA thesis. I have seen a wide range of efforts at preservation, organization and access to materials, and I have become a true believer in the power of digital tools to improve access, analysis, and preservation of historical materials. Now that I have finished my History master's I haven't ruled out going back for my MLIS in the conservation and preservation of historical documents. When I joined the Western Rhode Island Civics and Historical Society this year, at the first meeting I attended one of the tasks planned for this summer was inventorying the Paine House Museum in preparation for application for a CAP Assessment. I immediately volunteered to catalog the library and organize the manuscripts in their library, as an opportunity both to help out the WRICHS and to gain some first-hand experience in archiving before investing in an advanced degree in the field. After the May 22 meeting, some WRICHS board members took me for a tour through the house, and I got a first look at the library: two rooms on the second floor of the Paine House piled with printed books, papers, manuscripts, newspapers and other documents.

When I began working in the library yesterday, I quickly realized the scope and complexity of the task ahead of me. The materials had never been cataloged or given accession numbers. Essentially it was a tabula rasa -- as was I, since I had never cataloged or archived anything, years of researching in libraries and archives notwithstanding. It all seemed rather daunting -- where to even begin?

But, between May 22 and yesterday I had taken "The Basics of Archives," a distance learning course offered by the American Association for State and Local History. Gwenn Stearn at the Rhode State State Archive was kind enough to send me the course on a CD-ROM, courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Records Advisory Board.

My notes from the BACE course offered this sage advice on arranging manuscript collections under two guiding principles:

Provenance: the practice of keeping groups of records together based on who created them.
Original Order: maintaining records in their original order reveals how the creator used the records.

Next the BACE suggested that I look for "Collections and Series," and gave advice for the following three scenarios:

Case 1)
The records are well organized, record series are easy to determine, and the arrangement necessary seems almost obvious.
Case 2)
The records are relatively organized, but more work needs to be done to analyze collections and record series.
Case 3) The records are a mess.

I went with Case 3. BACE supplied me with two possible scenarios for Case 3 collections:

Scenario A: You can identify records series
Scenario B: You cannot identify series or original order

As I looked at the piles of newspapers and scrapbooks on the floor, loose papers on shelves and piles of books, manuscripts in boxes on chairs and under a 48-star US flag, it was clear that the original order for almost everything save some of the shelved books had been lost long ago. Provenance might be locatable in WRICHS meeting records dating back to the founding of the Society in the 1940s, but I'll need to find those first (they are probably somewhere in these piles of papers), and then read through them all before I will know whether that information can be recovered for any of these other documents. BACE suggests that

In these cases you may be forced to create an order for the records. Archivists generally arrange these kinds of collections in one of four ways.

• If you must impose an order on the records, pick one of these arrangement schemes and stick with it.

Types of materials

• Records are divided into groups based on what they are--correspondence, diaries, photographs, and minutes, for example.

Functions or roles of the creator

• Records are divided into groups based on activities. A college professor’s papers might be divided into personal life, teaching and research, professional service, and community service.

Chronology

• Regardless of the type of record, everything is placed in chronological order.

Topic

• Topics are identified and the records grouped by topic. The topics should reflect the person’s life or activities—not the subjects the archivist thinks people will want to research because research trends change over time.

So I would need to impose some semblance of order on the collection. Two concerns immediately arose. First, the BACE course had red-flagged the potentially destructive presence of paper and especially newspaper in a collection.

Paper
• Paper created before about 1840 was made primarily from cotton and flax rags turned into pulp. This paper is strong and quite stable. When stored correctly, this paper can last for hundreds of years.
• After 1840, modern paper production used trees as the source of pulp. This paper produces acid when exposed to air and moisture.

Newsclippings within a Collection
Newspaper is particularly unstable due to the large percentage of acidic ground wood pulp in the manufacturing process and the lack of protective alkaline buffers.

• The best way to save your old newspaper clippings is to make photocopies onto good quality archival paper and discard the originals.
• Old newsclippings can contaminate other records around them because the newsprint is highly acidic.

A conversation back in June with Kirsten Hammerstrom, the Director of Collections at the Rhode Island Historical Society, only reinforced my suspicion that my first task should be to catalog and isolate the newspaper collection. So the safest place to start seemed to be with the newspapers, and I began cataloging and storing the newspaper collection. I am sure there are more buried under things I haven't moved yet, but all the newspapers piled on the floor under the west window

have been gathered and temporarily stored in open plastic bins lined with acid-free tissue paper.

I came back today and worked for a few more hours. I had picked up some storage boxes, and brought those in. I cleared everything out of what had once been a pantry except for some maps on one of the shelves that are in such fragile condition I don't dare move them for the time being. I tidied up the random piles, and took out some empty cardboard boxes that are really just garbage, leaving them to be "de-accessioned" by one of the board members. I also removed the 48-star flag and the table from the middle of the library space. The table fits perfectly in the now-cleaned-out pantry, and may make a good work space once I get going again. It is possible to walk across the room once more.

But my second concern. I want to talk to people with training and expertise in this area, to find out how in a general way they might impose some semblance of order on the materials, before I do something that would be difficult or time-consuming to undo later on. In the meantime, I have gotten a start on what looks to be a lengthy and quite interesting project!

A Brief Intermission

The past several weeks have been incredibly busy -- so much so I have not had the time to finish the several articles I have begun for this blog, which are all currently in various stages of incompletion. The end of the school year, always a busy time, has become increasingly backloaded with testing and portfolio assignments. Along with the usual end-of-year work at work I have also been busy with several work-related initiatives, from successfully meeting the objectives established for my evaluation this year under the new state mandated system to participating in the state panel that met last Monday June 4 at Rhode Island College to expand the History GSEs (Grade Span Expectations) to include geography, economics, and culture. The group I worked with completed a draft for grade 9-12 geography. (All those years of teaching middle school geography finally paid off!) This summer, if the state can find PD funding for us, we'll reconvene to work on the economics and culture GSEs. The underlying theme of all that work was of course the Common Core -- we used language from the Common Core History/Social Studies Standards where ever possible so we won't be re-writing the GSEs again in a couple of years when the Common Core hits... I also have a "brainstorming" session to revitalize the Rhode Island Model Legislature program coming up in about a week. Myself, state coordinator Joe O'Neil and a number of the other high school advisors will look into how we can return Model Legislature to its former greatness. The Pettaquamscutt Historical Society is holding its annual meeting on June 20--this past Friday the Pettaquamscutt hosted Lindsay Leard-Coolidge's most informative lecture "A Sense of Place: The Painters of Matunuck, 1873 to 1941" at the Hale House, about the impressionist painters colony established by William Weeden and E. E. Hale in late 19th century Matunuck. This was also the first time I have been inside the Hale House since the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society renovated and opened the house to the public.

Finally, the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society June meeting is coming up June 26--which reminds me! I have some phone calls to make and information to put together before that meeting...a future blog post on the details of our summer's work there is in the pipeline too.

I also graduated on May 17 with my masters degree in history -- I found it somewhat odd I was the only Rhode Island College MA history student to graduate in either the August 2011, January 2012, or May 2012 semesters -- when I first started there were at least dozen students pursuing the thesis-optioned MA in history. Talking with my thesis advisor Dr. Ron Dufour this past spring, he prophesied that the History MA degree at RIC would likely be phased out in the next few years... I wonder too what effect the proposed replacement of both the Board of Governors for Higher Education and the the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education with an 11-member k-20+ Board of Education is going to have on ALL public education in Rhode Island.

On a lighter note, I walked into a CPT meeting last week and discovered the History Department got a delicious cake last week to celebrate my graduation and another department member's successful acquisition of the guidance position she has been working toward for about as long as I've been working in my thesis. Cake is good!

The kids have been very busy with softball, swim and dance, which means Tara and I have been busy since none of the people can drive themselves yet to any of these activities. But this is the last week at work -- major course assessments for seniors finished last week and underclass exams are this week. Light at the end of the tunnel! Next week, Inara will turn 4, on the same day that the 2011-2012 school year will come to an end. Huzzah!

Everyone has been working hard on the garden. Tara has done much of the work this year, and it's entirely to her credit the garden is doing very well. We still need to plant some hill vegetables and tomatoes and maybe some peppers if we can find room. The legumes and lettuces are all starting to come up. We are also doing two farm shares this summer (I feel a juice fast coming on soon!) Just this past weekend we located several sources of locally-produced chicken and beef, which I intend to write more about in a future blog post.

Finally, in what I interpret as a good omen for the yard and garden this summer, yesterday morning we discovered an eastern box turtle sunning itself on the front step. The turtle became very curious of me sitting in his (or her?) vicinity and tried to crawl up -- first my shoe, then the steps -- to get a closer look at me. Kitty Man then became very curious of the turtle, but Tara shooed Mr. Man off before any possibility of a Cat vs Turtle war tournament could break out in the herb garden...and at that point the turtle took leave and very quickly hustled off.

"I Am Providence" - Reflecting on the Legacy of H.P. Lovecraft (or lack thereof)

Phillip Eil's feature on H.P Lovecraft this week in the Providence Phoenix poses the question -- are Rhode Islanders finally ready to recognize Providence-born H.P. Lovecraft's legacy as a horror writing hero? Given Lovecraft's contribution to the genres of science fiction and horror, his affinity for New England in general and Providence in particular, it's odd that Providence (a city which since the 1990s prides itself for its attention to culture and the arts) has done...not much in promoting itself as Lovecraft's hometown. Eil's article points out that beyond Lovecraft's grave site (right) and a plaque at the John Hay Museum (quoted below), there are no other memorials to Lovecraft anywhere in Providence. Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac, even Robert E. Howard and Zane Grey are among the long list of literary figures that have museums or houses devoted to their memory. It is time to establish a similar historical institution devoted to H.P. Lovecraft. I argue that if such a museum were to be founded anywhere on Earth (other than beyond a nameless mountain range in Antarctica), it should be in Providence, Rhode Island.

The dearth of a official plaudits is not for lack of local enthusiasm for Lovecraft. Donovan Loucks, who operates the extensive (and award-winning) website, The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, has identified all the relevant Lovecraftian sites in Providence and a walking tour designed to take aficionados to see them.

For a few years local fans also ran the aptly named NecronomiCon, but it fizzled when the organizers apparently burned out after running the Lovecraft memorial every odd-numbered year from 1993 through 2001. Lovecraft's birthday is still celebrated annually with visits to the Ladd Observatory and graveside readings by Lovecraft stalwarts.

I never can be tied to raw, new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.

Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes—
These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.
                        - H.P. Lovecraft, XXX. Background, Fungi from Yuggoth                         (Appears on Lovecraft's Memorial Plaque, John Hay Library, Providence RI)

Lovecraft clearly loved the old colonial architecture of Providence's East Side, aptly described here in a poem that was otherwise an ode to fungus on a gigantic trans-Neptunian world. At right is the house on Angell Street in Providence where Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890 (image from The H.P. Lovecraft Archive). What a beautiful old Victorian house! Unfortunately it was torn down in 1961 -- it would have been perfect for a Lovecraft museum . Luckily there are many other locations with a "Lovecraft" connection in Providence. It is time for a concerted effort to establish a an H.P. Lovecraft museum or house in Providence, preferably somewhere connected to his life or his writing, if that is possible. I think there is sufficient interest to support a Lovecraft museum from the "sci-fi and horror communities" and knowledgeable tourists looking for something interesting to see while in Providence. Given the current state of the real estate market, there will never be a better time to move forward with such a project.

I also think that along with celebrating the originality, the brilliant eccentricity of Lovecraft's writing, that the numerous criticisms leveled at him should be part of the exhibit as well. While some might argue against celebrating the work of someone who was clearly as racist as Lovecraft, presenting Lovecraft's less savory aspects in the context of his times should be part and parcel of the exhibit. America at the time of Lovecraft's writings was easily as racist as he was, nor was antisemitism confined only to Nazi Germany. Attitudes toward the aboriginal peoples around the world (with the exception of anthropologists and a few enlightened missionaries) mirrored Lovecraft's label of "savages." These aspects of his writings and personal beliefs are just as important to providing a complete picture of Lovecraft and early 20th century America, just as the inclusion of Sally Hemings at Monticello is vital to the understanding of Thomas Jefferson and the late 18th century. Lovecraft's foibles provide a "teachable moment" for those visitors who come because they wanted to visit the museum for the author of the "Cthulhu Mythos," but when they would leave they would have an increased understanding of what America was like 75 to 100 years ago, and how far it has come since then.

That others find his writing sophomoric should not inhibit our efforts to establish a serious institution devoted to Lovecraft either -- haters gonna hate. Even as Lovecraft biographer L. Sprague de Camp described Lovecraft's prose as "turgid, verbose, and overwritten," it was a far more charitable assessment than what Colin Wilson and other critics had to say of Lovecraft's stylings of the otherworldly. But despite numerous naysayers, H.P. Lovecraft has had an indisputable impact on modern media and popular culture -- from the movie Alien to Stephen King and Clive Barker to Metallica and even French philosophers -- promoting Lovecraft as a favorite son can only have a positive multiplier affect on the cultural cachet of the capital city.

In a state where some residents were half-serious when they proposed that the Big Blue Bug represent the Rhode Island on the state's quarter, it's time for Howard Phillips Lovecraft to take his rightful place as a literary icon of the state.

But the stream of Time, swift flowing,
Brings the torment of half-knowing --
Dimly rushing, blindly going
      Past the never-trodden lea...

-excerpt from "Despair", poem by H.P. Lovecraft (February 1919)

Lest we fall into despair at the horror of our past...

(image of a not-so-invisible whistling octopus after all from cryhavoc.org)

The Mill Seat at Woodville - Vestiges of a "Liminal Village"

One recently overcast day, I clambered over a guardrail and over a quite rickety foot bridge in Woodville, RI and took some up-close pictures of the former mill seat there. This site is on my list of southern Rhode Island's "liminal villages" -- communities that straddle the border of two towns separated by a river, usually centered on a textile mill. Like the mill villages at Potter Hill, Burdickville, Usquepaug, Bradford, Alton, and Kenyon, the textile mill was located in one town while much of the mill housing was built across the river in the other. In the case of Woodville, the mill seat and (what was likely) the local store, tavern, and owner's house was in Richmond (see below) while much of the worker's housing was in Hopkinton.

Here are two photos I took of the mill seat late in the summer of 2007, when the Wood River was as low as I've ever seen it. On the right (or north) bank of the Wood River is Richmond; the left (or south) bank is Hopkinton. And yes, that is a goat grazing amongst the mill ruins all the way to the right. Some of the old gears are still plainly visible through the foliage in this photo from 2007 (below).

Based on the series of "For Sale" signs along the road in Richmond leading up to the Woodville Bridge, the entire corner (including mill seat, the old store, the owners house, and several other structures that make up the former mill compound) are currently up for sale. I decided then to stop and get a closer look of the ruins before any new owners come along and clear the old mill away...

Historically, these locales had been divided in the colonial era when the state of transportation made attending town meetings on the other side of swollen, icy rivers inconvenient and even dangerous. Colonial town records suggest that the bridges of the day were precarious and frequently damaged or destroyed in floods. These locations were often the seat for grist or snuff mills, and were only sparsely populated.

Prior to King Phillip's War, Rhode Island's towns were quite large (see map at left, Rhode Island Town's, 1675). Kingstown for instance encompassed an area of 240 square miles, and originally consisted of the present-day towns of East Greenwich, West Greenwich, Exeter, Narragansett, North Kingstown and South Kingstown. The white population, by contrast, was quite small; by 1670 Rhode Island's entire European population has been estimated at slightly over 2100. The majority of Rhode Islanders at that time lived in a handful of villages and settlements that hugged the coastline of the tiny colony. When Rhode Island finally held its first census in 1708, the number of residents had increased to to 7100; by 1730 that number had increased to 17,000 (see Census of Rhode Island, 1865).

The process of carving smaller towns from the two large towns that made up the King's Province began in 1722/23, when residents in the southern section of Kingstown petitioned the General Assembly to partition the town so they might more easily attend to public business. The General Assembly tabled the petition for a session to allow Kingstown's northern residents to respond. But despite complaints from the residents of Wickford, the General Assembly replied that Kingstown was “very large and full of people so that it is convenient for the ease of inhabitants and dispatching business to divide the town” (see RI Laws 1730, page 126). In the spring of 1723, South Kingstown was taken from Kingstown and what was left became North Kingstown--which was allowed to keep Kingstown's original founding date as its own. (see map King's County, 1757, below)

This procedure set the precedent for creating new towns from old in Rhode Island. Twenty years later, residents from the western section of North Kingstown as also complained that it was difficult to get to town meetings in Wickford; in March 1742/43 the General Assembly created the town of Exeter.

Westerly was similarly carved up beginning in 1738. The eastern half of Westerly was divided into Charlestown at the Wood and Pawcatuck Rivers; a few years later the section of Charlestown north of the Pawcatuck petitioned to become Richmond when "evil minded men" from the plantation area along the coast "carried our meeting several miles from the center which we agreed upon" (Petitions to the General Assembly, Vol. VI, document 145). A decade later residents of northern Westerly petitioned to be divided at the Pawcatuck and became Hopkinton (which was separated from Richmond at the Wood River at what would become Woodville). The division of Westerly clearly illustrates the dilemma geographic barriers presented to remote members of the body politic. With the exception of the boundary between Westerly and Charlestown, every other division followed the contours of a river.

West Greenwich was similarly formed by petition in 1741, though East Greenwich was a special case. In the aftermath of King Phillip's War, the General Assembly set aside the northern section of the King's Province "for the accomdatinge of soe many of the inhabitants of this Collony as stand in need of land” -- which became the town of East Greenwich. (Bartlett, Rhode Island Colony Records, Volume II, pages 587-88). Since Kingstown was not a functioning town at the time (despite it's creation by the General Assembly in 1674), no one from there complained when East Greenwich was removed from its jurisdiction. In 1729 when the Rhode Island's county judicial system was established, East Greenwich was made part of Providence County. In 1750 it became the county seat of the newly formed Kent County.

Later, in the early decades of the 19th century, the grist and snuff mills at these river crossings were bought out by local entrepreneurs to build the first water-powered textile mills. What factors went into deciding which town the mill proper was to be built? Why was most of the mill housing often built in the town "across the bridge?" How for instance did residents decide where to build the local church? What attracted workers to settle in one mill village rather than another? How permanent or transient was the workforce? These questions for now remain unanswered. Answers to other questions about these liminal villages can be derived from what is generally known about 19th century American society. How was it resolved which town got the village post office? After the election of Andrew Jackson, the so-called spoils system determined the location of the federal post. In years that a Democrat was President, the post office was likely located in the business or home of a stalwart Democrat; when the nation had a Republican (or Whig) President, the post office was relocated to the shop of a similarly suitable partisan. Woodville's post office was established in 1853, and was closed down in 1925 (see R.I.H.S. Postal History), which provides us with some indication of the heyday for this particular mill seat. As for the taverns, their location was determined once the temperance movement began in earnest in the 1840s. If one side of the village "went dry," a grog shop would simply reopen on the other side of the village across the river, so long as liquor licenses might still be had there. Even if the town wasn't dry, town councils shared information with neighboring councils about "common drunks" who had been "posted" or banned from being sold alcohol within the town limits, so they would not simply carry on their dissipation in the next town over. In a liminal village like Woodville, the Hopkinton town clerk had only to cross the bridge to put the notice on the tavern door in Richmond to shut off the local tosspots.

To date, there has been little scholarly research done on the village at Woodville. The Rhode Island Historical Preservation Society conducted a preliminary survey of Hopkinton in 1976. A brief entry for Woodville Historic District notes only that it was:

A small settlement along both sides of Wood River, extending into the town of Richmond. There remains today in Hopkinton a group of five residences dating from the middle-to-late nineteenth century. One has been maintained; the other four are deteriorating. To the west are several other dwellings associated with the community, and an undistinguished mill is located along the nearby river. About 1666, when the area was part of Westerly, James Babcock, began the manufacture of iron and continued until his death in 1698; the business subsequently continued in operation as the "Lower Iron Works." In the 19th century the textile industry was introduced to Woodville. (1870 - Woodville, Woolen Mill, and several buildings.) (page 18)

But seeing as this is a liminal village, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Society's survey for Richmond, conducted in 1977, also reported on Woodville. It is somewhat more informative:

At Woodville (13), several miles downstream [from Hope Valley], a gristmill was established on the Richmond side in the eighteenth century. Later, Simeon Perry built a gristmill and also manufactured iron at "Perry’s Iron Works"--the lower works on the Hopkinton side. Subsequently, textiles were produced and iron manufacturing ceased. About 1861, a stone factory which manufactured socks was built on the Richmond side. A small community evolved along the river, at one time including the Woodville Seventh Day Baptist Church, built in 1847, and a railroad depot. Today, the mill, church and depot are gone, and there are few indications that Woodville was ever a manufacturing community; only a few houses have survived around the picturesque dam and falls. (pages 8, 10)

13. Woodville Historic District: An area along the Wood River in the western part of town. Industry began here with a gristmill on the Richmond side and an iron manufactory, begun by Simeon Perry, on the Hopkinton side of the river. It was then known as Perry’s Iron Works. In the middle of the 19th century a stone factory was built on the Richmond side, which later was run by the Rhode Island Hosiery Company to manufacture cotton and woolen socks. The village developed along both sides of the river, but the Hopkinton side grew faster and today retains most of the village structures. In Richmond there remains a dam and several early houses. (1831-Perry’s Iron Works.) (page 28)

The aforementioned short-line railway that connected Locustville and Hope Valley to the main Providence-Stonington Railroad at Wood River Jct. passed through the village to the north of the mill seat. As this map from Jim Spavin's model railroad site indicates, a second bridge was built over the Wood River to carry the train. According to my father (who moved to the area in 1940 when he was about sixteen), he and his friends would run behind the train as it left Wood River or Hope Valley and jump on, pretending to be Depression-era "hobos" riding the rails.

Many of the so-called "shoddy mills" stayed in business into late 19th and even early 20th century before succumbing to competition from the larger factories, which in turn declined with the rise of textile manufacturing in the Dixie Sunbelt. By WWII most were empty buildings. The Woodville Mill endured a few year after as a storage building for a local cloth and remnant merchant; the site has been abandoned now for decades. The larger concerns have been slowly dying too, one-by-one, over the past 30 years, killed off by cheap textiles from Mexico and China. The Charberts factory in Alton closed two years ago, leaving the textile factories in Kenyon and Bradford as the only surviving "liminal" manufactories in the area.

Another view of the "big gears."

A second extant "big gear."

The owner's house / store / tavern, currently for sale, and the decrepit bridge over the tail race.

Metal pegs that once held the door jamb fast in the doorway.

The doorway, looking into the mill.

The basement may have had water running directly through it when the mill was in operation. I had a friend in elementary school who lived in the old mill (then converted to an apartment) in Charlestown at Cross Mills--the water ran directly under his house, and similarly large sets of gears remained there as well.

The masonry wall is still in good shape that runs north to the tail race.

A last look.