portsmouthhistorynotes

I have been doing some research on Maud Howe Elliott as I learn about the women of the Newport County Woman’s Suffrage League. As I read Maud’s book – This Was My Newport – I came across much about her childhood summers in Portsmouth. She details a very interesting memory of visiting Lovell Hospital.

The Howe family summered at a house off of East Main Road by Lawton Valley. When Howe was around seven or eight, she decided to run away with a boy who lived on the Redwood Estate (where Redwood Farms is today.) She walked down the valley to the shore, pass the Portsmouth Asylum (the location of Raytheon) and to the railroad tracks by the shore. They two children were headed for Portsmouth Grove where the Providence boat stopped to take on and leave passengers.

The two “tallerdemalions” (as she called them) were confronted by a sentry for Lovell Hospital. “Who goes there? Halt!” Two sentries pacing their beat at the entrance of the military hospital grounds crossed their bayonets above the young couple’s heads and proceeded to chaff them. Then, relenting, the good natured soldiers returned to their beat while the children wandered down the broad middle path between the oaks and the hospital tents to the boat-landing. One point of dread they touched: a place of torture, where, in a small shed, a culprit stood with water falling drop by drop upon his head…”

The steamer “Perry Mail” was at the dock, but the children didn’t have any money for the fare. The sun was setting and the sentries told them to “put for home, young ones, as tight as you can go.” The long road climbing the steep hill from Portsmouth Grove was trim and well-kept, then. The children soon reached the summit, and turned for one last look at the camp with its white tents gleaming among the dark trees. The bugle sounded, the sunset gun boomed, and the “Flag of our State Battles” came at a run down the tall flagstaff.

The Portsmouth Grove House had became the administration building for the Lovell Hospital. The hospital, built in 1862, cared for wounded Union and Confederate troops. Again, these soldiers arrived at Portsmouth Grove by steamships. The Rhode Island Hospital Guard which was made up of soldiers too disabled for battle, kept the peace and watched over prisoners. After the war the hospital was dismantled and there are no signs of it left.

More on Lovell Hospital coming in feature blogs.

Resources:

Frank L.Grzyb has written a book, Rhode Island’s Civil War Hospital: Life and Death at Portsmouth Grove.

Elliott, Maud Howe: his Was My Newport. Cambridge, Mass, Mythology Company, 1944.

In the mid 1800s excursion boats used to make their way to the dock at Portsmouth Grove. Portsmouth Grove was a good place for a group picnic and for a day out by the water. Located on the west side (known later as Bradford or Melville) it was an important tourist destination. Even with an operating hospital, newspaper ads show that visitors still came to visit as late as 1862.

Edmund Cole operated the “Portsmouth Grove House” before the Civil War. During the Civil War it served as the location for Lovell General Hospital. More on Lovell Hospital will come in a later blog. This blog entry will focus on the happenings before the Civil War. The Portsmouth Historical Society has the diaries of David Durfee Sherman in our collection, and he writes about the amusements there at Portsmouth Grove Amusements Fandango & Ten Pin Alley.

1 September 1859 ”I went down to the Grove House & turned the Fandango (a merry-go-round) about 6 hours & got $1.50, It is very hard work to turn it, especially when not evenly balanced. The steamboat Cononicus came twice from Providence leaving 1300 people – all Irish – to enjoy themselves until nearly 8 o’clock when the boat came & took them all off…they expect this to be the last party of the season”

Portsmouth Grove welcomed hundreds of guests who arrived on steamships. For their recreation pleasure, Portsmouth Grove offered picnics, swimming, shore dining, a “fandango” and flying horses. Groups like the Sons of Temperance came a thousand strong for clambakes and chowder. There were even moonlight and torchlight excursions to Portsmouth Grove.

• Transcription of Shearman Diary by Marjorie Webster.

In the 1920s (and even before) Portsmouth was home to some well known professional actors. Aquidneck Island has always attracted summer residents with its mild climate. Portsmouth was a transportation hub and the Fall River Line made travel to New York City theater sites easier. Newspaper articles from the end of World War I to 1929 record the activities of professional actors who lived in Portsmouth.

The January 5th 1918 Newport Mercury reported that the Christian Union Church pastor Robert Downing entertained the troops aboard the U.S.S. Massachusetts for New Year’s Day celebrations. The boat carrying Rev. Downing had to break its way through the thick ice. The troops enjoyed the performance and gave the minister three cheers and wished him a happy New Year. Robert Downing was not an ordinary pastor. Before he became a minister, he performed Shakespearean plays and even had his own touring company. He retired from the theater in 1909 to became a minister. Downing’s church – the Christian Union Church in Portsmouth – is now the headquarters of the Portsmouth Historical Society. Downing used to dramatize scripture readings for his congregation. Some church members enjoyed the drama while others did not. He served as minister from 1915 to shortly after this performance for the troops. He continued to live in Portsmouth even after he resigned as minister. At first the congregation had a hard time getting the Downings to leave the parsonage. Late newspaper articles show the Downings continued to come back to their home on Quaker Hill in the 1920s. The New York Times reported in 1919 that he would take a role in a moving picture called Termination.

Newspaper articles also tell us about an actors’ colony at Island Park that continued to spend summers in Portsmouth for over eighteen years. A 1908 Fall River Evening Herald article let us know that the actors enjoyed the pleasures of Island Park.

“Gertrude Dion Magill, Nat Leffington, and Mr. Royan of the Puritan Theater are having the time of the their lives rising, bathing and securing fine coat of tan coloring on their complexions. Miss Magill is remarked along the shore as an expert swimmer. The trio says they are charmed with the park as a summer resort and will surely laud its beauties to other members of their profession the summer season.”

In 1921 the Fall River paper includes an article on the arrival of actors Mr. and Mrs. Hill who have been coming to the Island Park Actor’s Colony there for over 18 years.

At the Portsmouth Historical Society Museum the curator’s committee is focusing on life in the 1920s. We have a crystal radio set donated to the museum by Annie and Fred Sherman and it is from the J. F. Sherman estate.

This lower photo shows an American family in the 1920s listening to a crystal radio. It is from a 1922 advertisement for Freed-Eisemann radios in Radio World magazine. The small radio is on the table. Crystal sets work off the power received from radio waves, so they are not strong enough to power loudspeakers. Therefore the family members each wear earphones, the mother and father sharing a pair. Although this is obviously a professionally posed, promotional photo, it captures the excitement of the public at the first radio broadcasts, which were beginning about this time. Crystal sets like this were the most widely used type of radio until the mid 1920s, when they were slowly replaced by vacuum tube radios.

Radio historians generally agree that broadcasting for the public began in 1920 with a broadcast on station KDKA out of Pittsburg, PA. On November 2, 1920, station KDKA out of Pittsburg, PA, made the nation’s first commercial broadcast. They chose that date because it was election day, and the power of radio was proven when people could hear the results of the Harding-Cox presidential race before they read about it in the newspaper.

However, very few folks heard the broadcast because few radio receivers were privately owned. After word of that original broadcast spread people overwhelmed radio manufacturers. They stood in line for hours to fill out order forms because the manufactures had run out of radio receivers. Between 1923 and 1930 fully 60% of American families purchased radios and gathered around the new devices to listen to nightly entertainment broadcasts.

The more folks purchased radios the more radio stations were needed to satisfy the public. In just two years 600 stations were up and operating nation-wide.

In Providence RI thriving downtown department stores like Outlet, Shepard’s, Gladding’s, Diamond’s, the Boston Store, and Cherry & Webb competed for shoppers. Of those stores, the Outlet and Shepard’s were the boldest of rivals. Radio in Rhode Island was born out of this intense department store rivalry. In June of 1922, Shepard’s launched WEAN, the first radio station in Rhode Island. Just three months later and not to be outdone, the Outlet premiered WJAR. Not long after, Cherry & Webb debuted WPRO. The new technology provided these stores with an exciting promotional vehicle unlike anything the world had ever seen – or heard.