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Woman with link to local slave visits farm
Jackson, of Providence, aided by the Jamestown Historical Society, encountered the birth site of her ancestor, Bristol Underwood, for the first time.
Tag: Jamestown History
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Saunderstown man picks fight with ferries
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.
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‘America’s most natural’ golf course
Audley Clarke, born in 1862 in Staten Island, N.Y., had Newport and Jamestown roots. His ancestor Jeremiah Clarke (1605– 52) was one of the founders of Newport and an early governor of Rhode Island.
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Slaves linked to Africa
In 1816, Ormand Remington of Jamestown told the Newport Town Council that he “was born on the coast of Africa and brought into this country by Captain Robert Stoddard, [a Newport slave trader], when he was about 12 or 13 years old.”
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Ferryboats from Virginia
For 78 years, from 1873 to 1951, the town of Jamestown through the Jamestown & Newport Ferry Co. provided transportation between Conanicut and Aquidneck islands.
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Ferries Known for Long Lines
Before the Newport Pell Bridge was completed in 1969, the only way to get from Jamestown to Newport was to take the ferry or drive through Providence.
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Ferrying across bay once a dangerous duty
Dinah Battey, of Jamestown, 20, married her husband in 1711. Six days after her wedding, on the sailing ferry home from Newport, the boat capsized, and she tragically drowned. Little was more dangerous in Colonial Rhode Island than crossing the bay in ferries.
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Tradition of Portuguese crown dies with younger generation
Most of the Portuguese immigrants who came to Jamestown at the turn of the 20th century were from the Azores, an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic about 900 miles off the Portuguese coast. Many of these immigrants spoke of their homeland as the Western Isles rather than Portugal.
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Irish immigrants were prolific in the early 20th century
In 1880, more than 80 percent of the people living in Jamestown were native to Conanicut Island, and only 1 percent came from non-English-speaking countries.
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Remington Only Local Slave to Buy Freedom
Orman Remington was enslaved at Gershom Remington’s farm, which is now Watson Farm, on North Road. He was the only known slave in Jamestown’s history to purchase his own freedom, an exceptionally rare event that often was enabled by other people assisting with payment.
