by JHS | Dec 1, 2023 | Events, JHS in the News
Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023, 9 am – 4 pm Lawn Avenue School, Jamestown, RI Visit the Jamestown Historical Society table at the CIAA Holiday Fair. We’ll have great gift items including lots of different books for adults and children, framed and unframed ferry...
by JHS | Dec 1, 2023 | From the Collection
Click on the images below to see them in our Online Catalog. JHS recently received Elmer V. Newton’s Conanicut Island Light Keeper’s Journal, 1921-1933. Lighthouse keepers were required to keep a journal mostly of day to day life, when inspections were made, and what...
by Peter Fay | Nov 30, 2023 | 2023 Articles, Jamestown History Articles
Christine Jackson, a descendant of Bristol Underwood at farmhouse stone wall in Jamestown. (Photo by Peter Fay) Christine Jackson reached down to touch the stone wall bordering the farm on East Shore Road where her third great-grandfather worked in the 18th century....
by JHS | Nov 8, 2023 | Events, Newsletters
Our Fall Newsletter is now available for download. This spring and summer were very busy as the JHS offered talks, outings, exhibits, events, and gatherings. Some events were only for members, some for the wider...
by JHS | Nov 1, 2023 | From the Collection
Click on the images below to see them in our Online Catalog. Hanging on a side wall of the JHS Vault is a collection of Jamestown signs from island merchants that have closed in years past. The Lyons Market was a grocery store located first at 17 Narragansett...
by Rosemary Enright and Sue Maden | Oct 26, 2023 | 2023 Articles, Jamestown History Articles
Stillman Saunders on the beach at his boatbuilding facility in Saunderstown, circa 1905. Unhappy with the ferry service across the West Passage, he launched a rival company in 1906 to compete with the Jamestown & Newport Ferry Company. (JHS, P2012.107.010) For...
by JHS | Oct 24, 2023 | Events, JHS in the News
Machine Guns in Narragansett Bay: The Coast Guard’s War on Rumrunners, a talk and slides by Christian McBurney Tuesday, October 24, 2023, 4 pm, Senior Center, 6 West St, Jamestown, RI All invited. Free. During World War I and World War II, Rhode Island was...
by JHS | Oct 1, 2023 | From the Collection
Jamestown Harbor at Sunset, 1895 The Providence Art Club recently mounted a tribute to commemorate the life and work of one of their original founders, the Black artist Edward Mitchell Bannister. Bannister, born in New Brunswick, immigrated to Boston in about 1848....
by Rosemary Enright and Sue Maden | Sep 28, 2023 | 2023 Articles, Jamestown History Articles
Making one of ‘America’s most natural’ golf courses Winswepe, sometimes spelled Wyndesweepe, built circa 1885, was H. Audley Clarke’s summer cottage on Prospect Hill Farm. (JHS, P1975.015) Audley Clarke, born in 1862 in Staten Island, N.Y., had Newport and Jamestown...
by JHS | Sep 1, 2023 | From the Collection
“Number, Please” Switchboard Telephone Operators Left to right: Nancy Peters, Shirley Whitehead, Maxime VonShade Clark, Jennie Clarke, Ellen “Midge” Matoes Wright, Eva VonShade, Genevieve Matoes Currie, Bess Sheehan, Millie Cullen, Harriet...