portsmouthhistorynotes

Oakland Farm at Sarah Gibbs time.

Today “Oakland Farm” is best known as a condominium community or it is remembered as the country estate of a branch of the Vanderbilt family.  Before the land was sold to the Vanderbilts, Oakland Farm was the summer home of Sarah Gibbs and her sister Ruth Gibbs Channing.  Ruth was the wife of William Ellery Channing, a famous Unitarian minister, and Oakland Farm was Channing’s treasured summer retreat.

Sarah Gibbs is best known for her founding of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth.  Known as “Aunt Sarah” by her family, she was famous for her hospitality.  Sarah never married, but at Oakland Farm she was surrounded by loved ones. Sarah was an integral part of the Channing family and wrote about the Channing girls as “my children.”

The reminiscences of family friend Miss Mary Powel, give us a glimpse of Sarah’s Oakland Farm.

“Here she kept not only a good farm but a charming and really beautiful old house…not far from the highroad.  The garden, carefully planted and containing several curious foreign trees (one brought back from England in a flower pot by Miss Gibbs herself), was separated from the road and from the farm driveway by old stone walls and well-kept arbor vitae hedges……The house, a good specimen of colonial architecture, was filled with fine old furniture and many curios.  Owing to the large hospitality of its owner, there were many rambling additions built from time to time and the exterior of the house was adorned here and there by little balconies of open rails….”  (From the Gibbs Family of Rhode Island and some related families.  By George Gibbs privately printed in New York in 1933).

Miss Powel goes on to describe an apple orchard and tree sheltered grass road to the woods where Channing loved to stroll.  To the west of the house were fields of Indian corn and pumpkins with pastures close by.  The farm had the usual outbuildings, barns, corn cribs, stables and sheds.  There was even an outdoor shower!  Approaching Oakland’s door, guests would be surrounded by chickens and turkeys.  Guests would be ushered into a broad beamed drawing room with a fire place.  Sarah would greet her guests there.

Miss Powel describes her  as a “little lady” dressed in fabrics from India and China and draped in white cashmere or camel hair shawls.  “Her features were strong and pronounced, her eyes extremely blue, her complexion rather bright, but much wrinkled and her voice and manner were most kind and gracious…I think that all children thought she was a sort of venerable fairy godmother” – (Gibbs Family, pg 101).  Sarah always sent her guests off with handfuls of ginger cookies.  Miss Powel remembers her as “the genial dignity and gracious cheerfulness of the lady of the manor, with her many rural dependents, her liberal charities, her fond but humble love of the Church; the evening prayer, the kindly chat, the fond welcome and the sweetness and serenity of the scene and the visit.”  (The Gibbs Family, pg 106.)

Sarah Gibbs

While the descriptions of Miss Gibbs’ life at Oakland Farm seem idyllic, there were family tensions that disturbed the peace of both Sarah and her sister Ruth Channing.  The eighty acre Oakland Farm was purchased from John Faxon in 1796 by the merchant firm of Gibbs and Channing.  In 1807 the firm ended and George Gibbs had the property.   When George Gibbs died in 1813, his wife, Mary Gibbs, was granted the farm for her lifetime use.  Mary was concerned about what would happen to the family estates at her death, so she established a trust for the benefit of her children.  It was her intention that Ruth and Sarah would have use of the property for their lifetimes, but after their mother’s death the brothers (George and William) tried to challenge that.  They refused to sign the “life tenancy” agreement for their sisters and explored ways of breaking the trust.

The strain in the relationship between the Gibbs sisters and their brothers weighed heavily on Sarah.  Sarah wrote to her Uncle Walter in 1825:

“The stillness of Oakland is increased in the solitariness of my feelings, – it is a desolation I can never lose – but in the quiet here I strive to interest myself in the garden, to forget that I have a Brother so near to me who has never called or sent to us to offer to give us any assistance.”

A month later she wrote again to her uncle:

“I have not heard from W(William) or what (he) has been doing – this silence forebodes a storm I very much fear – In the sense of the correctness of our feeling and actions- I hope we shall meet all the difficulties with composure and firmness – to me it has been a hard struggle to be cast off where I ought to expect so much tenderness & kindness.”

The rift with her brothers was particularly painful because Sarah was known as a congenial and non-judgmental person.  She was an intimate part of William Ellery Channing’s family. Although she disagreed with Channing on theology, it appears there were no conflicts over this.  Although Channing frequently preached at the Union Church just down the road, Sarah never attended a Channing service.   Sarah was devout in her Episcopal faith, both on Sundays and in her home life.  A bell in the Oakland house called the family to daily morning and evening prayer.  She gathered an orthodox Episcopal community around her and erected St. Mary’s Church at her own expense.

In the end there was a compromise between the siblings.  William and George did sign the life tenancy of Oakland Farm to their sisters and the sisters agreed to sacrifice some of their shares in other portions of the estate.  Sarah lived on there until her death in  1866.   Ruth Gibbs Channing lived until 1870.

Sources:

“William Ellery Channing and the Legacy of Oakland,” by Rev. Dr. Frank Carpenter.  Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society, Vol. 65, Part 3, Number 224.

The Gibbs Family of Rhode Island and Some Related Families, by George Gibbs.  Privately printed, 1933.  Copy in the archives of St. Mary’s Church, Portsmouth.

“The Funeral Sermon of the late Miss Sarah Gibbs” by Rev. F. Marion McAllister.  New York, John F. Trow and Co.,1866. Copy in the archives of St. Mary’s Church, Portsmouth.

Elmhurst student illustration of hurricane damage at Linden Lane

Our next book club selection – Sudden Sea – has great stories about the Hurricane of 1938, but it doesn’t have many Portsmouth stories. As I prepare for the book club, I am looking for local hurricane stories. Over ten years ago I interviewed Nan Howell Waters about growing up on Glen Farm. She remembered the hurricane. She was at Anthony school and she was frightened by the stones hiting the windows at school. For a while they wouldn’t let them go home because they had to wait for the bus. She remembered her father, Arthur Howell, meeting her at the head of driveway (Linden Lane). The Howell family and the Camara family lived at the Brown House. The Howells lived on the first floor, but they went upstairs and rode out the hurricane with the Camara family. She remembered looking out of the windows and seeing some of the beautiful Linden Trees falling down.

Nan Howell Waters

We are truly fortunate that Greenvale Vineyards carries on the tradition of Portsmouth farming.  Established as a model “Gentleman’s Farm” by China Merchant John Barstow, the farm and stick style house went into neglect after Barstow’s death.   Major General James Parker’s wife, Charlotte Condit Parker, was among the various heirs to the property. The Parkers took a real interest in Greenvale and brought it back to life. When James Parker retired in 1918, he and his wife resolved to make Greenvale their home and restore the property as a working farm. They began to work on the stick style Barstow house to make it livable and bright for the family. They hired a farmer and re-established a working farm with fields, chickens, pigs, geese, turkeys and a dairy herd.

While living in retirement on Aquidneck Island, Parker continued to be forward thinking, even if some of his ideas met with opposition.  An April 26, 1929 article in the Newport Mercury contains a letter Parker wrote in support of using Kings Park in Newport as a station for Curtis Flying Services seaplanes.  Parker believed it was the best site with passengers embarking and disembarking from the city pier.  He believed seaplanes were safer than airplanes.  “Air travel is sure to come.”  Seaplanes could make a two hour run from New York to Newport and that would enhance the value of Newport as a summer residence.  Mrs. J. Nicholas Brown and her son opposed that use for the park.

Before his retirement to Portsmouth, James Parker had a brilliant forty-two year career in the military. A graduate of West Point, Parker served in the Indian Wars (including chasing Geronimo), the Spanish American War, the Philippine-American War and World War I.  He received the Congressional Medal of Honor for combat at close quarters during an attack by an overwhelming number of enemy soldiers  in the Philippines in 1899.  He rose to the rank of Major General.

In 1934, Major General James Parker was buried with full military honors at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth.  James Parker’s son, Major General Cortlandt Parker, whose grave in close to his father’s also retired to Greenvale and continued the farm.  His grandson, Cortlandt Parker, went on to establish the vineyard that makes Greenvale a going farm today.  Family members, including Nancy Parker Wilson, continue to keep Greenvale a beautiful part of Portsmouth’s farming heritage.

Vintage image of the Barstow house at Greenvale

1860 Aquidneck map showing Howe property.

We know that Julia Ward Howe’s second Portsmouth home was Oak Glen on Union Street. Where was her first home? She started coming for her Portsmouth summers in the 1850s. The 1860 map that hangs on the wall at the Portsmouth Historical Society provides the answer.  It was on West Main Road, north of the Cornell property and in Lawton’s Valley.  In fact it was not very far from the Town Poor Farm.

Writing in her memoir, Reminiscences, and quoted in her daughter’s book – This Was My Newport – we know how the Howe’s came to own the home. She was writing about a notorious real estate agent named Alfred Smith.  Smith would entrap strangers in his gig (a light two-wheeled open carriage), drive them out to one of his properties and pressure them to purchase the property.  Julia says that “This lovely little estate (Lawton’s Valley) had come to us almost fortuitously.”  “In the summer of 1852 my husband became one of his victims… I say this because Dr. Howe made the purchase without much deliberation.”

Julia’s money was used to buy the property, but it was put in Samuel Gridley Howe’s name.  Later he would sell it just as abruptly as he bought it – and without Julia’s knowledge or agreement.  Thankfully, they later bought the Oak Glen property that we know today and Julia spent her last years there.

Note:  page 171 – This Was My Newport by Maud Howe Elliott, 1944.

Dr. Benjamin Greene

Dr. Greene may be familiar to you if you have visited the Portsmouth Historical Society. There is a neat display with his photo, some of his medical books and some items he would have used in his long practice in Portsmouth. Through the tragedy of the “Murder in the Coal Mines,” Dr. Greene would play a role in treating the infamous convicted murderer. He testified at the trial and he continued to treat his patient at the prison even after the trial.

Greene was born in Exeter, Rhode Island.  In 1856 he began to study medicine under the instruction of his uncle, Dr. Job Kenyon.  He enrolled in the University Medical School in New York in 1857.  When he graduated from medical school he went directly to Portsmouth to establish his practice.  In 1860 he married Eunice Chase who descended from old Portsmouth families.

He became a member of the Rhode Island Medical Society and had a successful practice in town.  He dabbled in real estate transaction in Fall River as well and was successful at that.  He was active in the Methodist Church and in the Masonic order. Newspaper accounts show he was a delegate to the Republican State Convention in 1884 and he was active in the temperance movement along with his wife Eunice.    Bayles’ History of Newport County comments that “he enjoys the respect and confidence of the community in which he lives, and of his professional brethren.”

Thomas Holman’s life was a Portsmouth rags to riches story.  He was the immigrant miner who worked his way up to becoming Superintendent of the coal mines.  His role in the “Murder at the Coal Mines,” however, is shrouded in mystery.

Holman was born in Gwinear in Cornwall, England.  Thomas’ parents were poor and they died when he was very young.  He had little opportunity for education and found himself working in the copper and lead mines by the time he was eleven years old.  He continued to work in the mines in Cornwall until 1840 when he decided that there was little chance for advancement in England.  Twenty-two year old Thomas headed directly to Portsmouth where he could get better pay for his mining skills. There are records of Cornwall families migrating to Portsmouth and to Pennsylvania were other Holman family members resided.   He became well known for his skill at mining and he worked himself up to the position of Superintendent of the Portsmouth Coal Mines.

Thomas Holman may have worked at the coal mines until 1877, but he was preparing himself for the farming life.  He started by buying farmland nearby the Coal Mine village which later became the Benjamin Hall farm..  Over time he bought the “Hill Township Farm” which is known as Seameadow Farm today.  His farm covered over 100 acres and he was successful at general farming and stock raising as well.  Thomas married into two prominent Portsmouth families. He was married to Mary Sherman and after she died, he married Hannah (Anna) Barker Albro.

The article on Thomas Holman in Representative Men and Old Families of Rhode Island relates that “He was a man who made a success of life, which he accomplished by hard work, and strict attention to his business.  He never received much education in the schools of his native country, but he was a self-educated man.  He was much devoted to his wife and family and was a good citizen in every respect.”  (pg 2277)

Most prominent Portsmouth citizens held some town office, but outside of serving on the School Committee, he declined all other offices.  Maybe he valued education more than most because of his lack of opportunity to gain an education in England.  He was active in the community as a staunch Republican and vestryman at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

In 1875 Holman testified at the trial that formed the basis of “Murder at the Coal Mines.”  We know through genealogy records that Thomas Holman was actually the uncle of the victim, but there was no mention of the family relationship in the newspapers or in the court records.