by Stephanie Amerigian | May 9, 2022 | Events, Newsletters
Our Spring 2022 Newsletter is now available for download. Don’t miss the committee reports of all the things that we’ve been working on while at home. And take a look at the donations that made over the past year, we value everyone’s efforts to...
by JHS | May 9, 2022 | JHS in the News, Library Exhibits
Harry Shatzer (1879-1922) was born in Pennsylvania. He married Lulu Virginia Broll (1879-1945) of West Virginia in Baltimore in 1907, the year after he began coming to Jamestown for summer work. When Harry bought his livery stable/garage at 20 Narragansett Avenue in...
by JHS | May 4, 2022 | From the Collection
In 1827 the Philadelphia Horticultural Society hosted the first American flower show with the aim “to inspire taste for one of the most rational and pleasing amusements of man”. Flower shows have played important roles for most gardeners and Jamestown proved no...
by JHS | Apr 19, 2022 | JHS in the News, Library Exhibits
Invitations have called Jamestowners to many events over the years. An invitation, hand-signed by John L. Smith, Chairman of the Jamestown Bridge Committee, invited the recipient and their guests to the dedication of the Jamestown Bridge on August 3, 1940. There is a...
by JHS | Apr 7, 2022 | From the Collection
This carriage vase belonged to Harry E. Shatzer, who after arriving in Jamestown in 1912, established a livery stable on Narragansett Avenue. Shatzer would attach the flower vase to his carriages for weddings and funerals. Harry Shatzer was born in 1879 in...
by JHS | Mar 18, 2022 | 2022 Articles, Jamestown History Articles
The first post office in Jamestown was established in 1847. At the time, women were less than 1 percent of federal Postmasters, and the Postmaster’s salary was a percentage of the stamps sold. Mail was not delivered door-to-door; it was held by the Postmaster for...
by JHS | Mar 14, 2022 | JHS in the News, Library Exhibits
Back in 1849, there was a New York City baseball team called the Knickerbockers. During their games, they wore straw caps to protect themselves from the sun. This was the first version of the billed cap we know as a baseball cap. Players experimented with various...
by JHS | Mar 9, 2022 | From the Collection
This lighthouse is located in the West Passage just north of the Jamestown Bridge. It was completed in 1899 and served to warn vessels away from the Plum Beach shoal which extended east from the Narragansett shore toward Conanicut Island. In 1918 granite riprap was...
by JHS | Feb 24, 2022 | 2022 Articles
Jamestown’s Gilded Age, like Newport’s, reached its pinnacle with the hotel boom, and a vast workforce of manual laborers propelled the growing town into the 20th century. Hundreds of them were African Americans: butlers, cooks, washerwomen, coachmen and expressmen....
by JHS | Feb 13, 2022 | JHS in the News, Library Exhibits
The JHS library exhibit for February displays some of the smaller signs and plaques from the Jamestown Historical Society’s collection of signs. Many of the larger ones are on permanent display in the town’s Recreation Center lobby and the back stairwell of Town...
