Our online collection has many items from 1763 to 2020 describing the votes and voters of Jamestown.

The handwritten document is a list of freemen of Jamestown who voted for the governor and general officers of the colony of Rhode Island in 1763. The list is followed by the vote tally as certified by Benjamin Underwood, Town Clerk, April 20, 1763.

The postcard (left) is a 1989 political advertisement to Re-elect Val Southern to the Jamestown Town Council. The Southern family settled in Jamestown in the 1950s after service in the U.S. Navy. The card is in our Sue Maden Postcard Collection.

The Specimen Ballot for the Town of Jamestown, November 3, 1908 (left) shows six different parties, complete with their own symbols: Republican, Democrat, Prohibition, Socialist, Socialist Labor, and Independence. Running for President and Vice President on the winning Republican ticket were William Howard Taft and James Schoolcraft Sherman.

In the photo right above, Jamestown children encourage residents to “Vote for the Recreation Field.” A recreation field was proposed twice in the 1930s. The 1934 attempt to buy part of the Cottrell Farm failed, but the 1937 proposal to purchase the Sherman Farm where the Lawn Avenue school now located passed. 

 

The brown wooden Town of Jamestown Ballot Box, known as Ballot Box 1, has a metal padlock with its key attached. Machines began to replace the ballot box in 1900, although this box may have been used as late as 1979.

 We have over 1,000 entries in our online catalog from 1763 to 2020 describing voting and elections in Jamestown.