One of the attendees at our Bristol Ferry Commons/Mt Hope Park evening asked me about the Bristol Ferry Inn and what had happened to it. I have some of the pieces of that story, but there is still more to uncover.

The earliest information I have traces an original Inn to a tavern owned by David Gifford. At the time of the Revolutionary War, Gifford was the leader of the militia and ferryman for Portsmouth. The caption on this photo mentions “The old house belonging to David Gifford was built into the upper part..” of the Inn.

An article by the Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission booklet on Portsmouth stated: “About 1850, a large hotel with accommodations for up to 50 people, was built, and, for the next three-quarters of a century or so, Bristol Ferry was a thriving place, with the hotel, a wharf, a store, summer cottages, a railroad station on the Old Colony line between Fall River and Newport, a telegraph office and post office.”

The Bristol Ferry Inn advertised in New York papers like the Brooklyn Eagle in 1926. A Nine-Hole golf course is advertised at this time.

1870 Ward map
Ad in Brooklyn Paper

One travel guide has a description of the hotel’s charms.

“The one hotel here is a big, white, airy structure, tempered with green blinds surrounded by broad piazzas, even up to the third story. In its setting of great poplar trees, with neatly white-washed trunks, it looked somehow like pictures of old-fashioned ” young ladies’ seminaries.” Its proprietor is Alfred Sisson, and the house looks large enough to accommodate twice its stated limit–fifty. However, the ground floor is taken up mainly with large parlors, and a long dining hall; about are in the house now, all the proprietor cares to entertain. Row boats are let by the hotel, and sail but three-fourths of a mile to main land at Bristol Ferry..”

Something must have happened to the three story inn because the Fall River Evening News for July 10, 1923 reports on the opening of a two story smaller hotel. The hotel was described this way.

“The hotel occupies the site of the old Bristol Ferry House at Bristol Ferry, R.I., the main building occupying somewhat higher ground than the older one did, giving a better view. ……
A small hotel more pleasing in effect it would be hard to find. It is a natural wind grewy rising aaboutve field stone supports of a piazza that extends along the full front. …. The main building has two full stories…There are 11 suites of bedroom and bath.”


In its later days the Inn was known as “Hylander Inn” and was burned down in 1945. Coincidentally, the owner, Louis Carreiro, had his Pocasset Country Club building burned down in 1956.