Abbott Chandler, a 30-year-old merchant mariner who had made nine voyages around South America to the Pacific Ocean, arrived in Jamestown about 1880.

Among the men who served at Fort Greble and stayed to become a Jamestown resident was Antoni Piliski. He was born in late 1874 or early 1875 in an area of northeastern Poland that had been annexed by Russia in the late 18th century.

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.

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.

For 78 years, from 1873 to 1951, the town of Jamestown through the Jamestown & Newport Ferry Co. provided transportation between Conanicut and Aquidneck islands.

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.

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.

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.

Few were left untouched by the global conflict, and 13 men from Jamestown died serving their country. The hardest-hit local family was the Brooks family. Eighty years ago, the United States was entering its second year of involvement in World War II.