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Portsmouth Neighborhoods: Bristol Ferry/Commons – Colonial Days

November 10, 2024

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As the Portsmouth founders moved away from the settlements around the Town Pond, Common Fence and Founder’s Brook, the Bristol Ferry community to the northwest began to develop. In the 1930s, Portsmouth historian Edward West did some remarkable work with land evidence. Among his works are the Land Grant Maps that tell us where the early settlers were given land. How he worked through all the locations with rods as measurements, we will never know. West tells us that upon founding the town “they immediately made laws governing the size and location of the house lots.” They began recording property in a book. There were times when land transferred without records, so the accuracy of the land evidence may be questionable in some cases. West illustrates the grants and town plan with his maps. Some of the first grants given were in the Bristol Ferry area.  As the town was laid out, Sprague Street was the southernmost border.  Land grants were given out in 1657, 1693 and the last lands were given out in 1713.  By 1713 the commons were laid out, highways were straightened and the town was considered finished as laid out from Sprague Street northward. As the Portsmouth population spread to the north and west of Town Pond, the town fathers and surveyors thought they had finished laying out the town.

The first street to the right was “Stoney Lane.”  It was a short “driftway” (a path used to drive cattle or sheep) between Richard Borden’s property and that of Mistress Harts.  South of that was a lane that led to a “watering place” now called Founder’s Brook. On the map it is called Hawkins Lane for Richard Hawkins and his wife Jane who was a friend of Anne Hutchinson. This “watering place” was laid out in 1713 as a public place for the washing of sheep and general water uses.  Also in 1713 Thomas Burton received a piece of land that was known as the “Training Place” before that.  That ground may be where the militia had trained.

Waiting for the Ferry

The tip of the Bristol Ferry area developed commercial businesses like taverns and shops that catered to those using the ferry. Ferries were more informal at the beginning. Those with boats provided a service to passengers and goods that needed to be transported to the mainline at Bristol. This is the site of a town common dating back to 1714. Ferry service started here in 1640. This 1.5 acre space was originally used by farmers and others to keep their livestock and other goods while waiting for the ferry to Bristol. The Bristol Ferry area had a British fort during the occupation. This area was the transportation hub for Aquidneck Island (Rhode Island) and there are records of George Washington passing through here after visiting with General Rochambeau in 1781. The French and Americans would make the start of their long journey to victory at Yorktown through Bristol Ferry.

A Bristol Ferry story

Just above the Bristol Ferry is the 3 acre lot that Richard Searle sold to Mary Paine.  Mary was a bar-maid at Baulston’s public house.  Searl exchanged his lot for a pint of wine.  He didn’t give Mary a deed, but the town council ratified the sale on the testimony of a witness in 1666.  Mary later married John Tripp and that piece of land became the site of his ferry house.

Bristol Ferry Common today

Recommended Reading

 West, Edward. Rhode Island Historical Society Journal in July of 1932 (The Lands of Portsmouth, R. I., and a Glimpse of Its People).

Pocasset, the First Neighborhood

November 7, 2024

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Founded on the Compact.

The original settlers of Portsmouth were dissenters with Anne Hutchinson fleeing from Boston’s church rule. Portsmouth’s town seal proclaims “Founded on the Compact 1638.” Through the Compact twenty three men and their families agreed to form a secular government. Will and Edward Hutchinson (Anne’s son) traveled to Providence to Roger Williams who arranged a meeting with Narragansett Sachems Miantonomo and Canonicus. On March 24th they gave the sachems “a gratuity” of forty fathoms of white wampum beads, ten coats, and twenty hoes. The Narragansett removed themselves from the island, but selling land was not a concept in their culture. To the English settlers, this was a sale.

Pocasset Settlement

When they journeyed to Aquidneck Island, the Island was a wilderness and shelter was a big concern. They crawled into caves around the banks of the cove (Town Pond) where they landed. They followed the native’s example by bending birches into house frames, using mud for walls and weaving twigs to make a thatched roof.  When the group of founders began their settlement, they called it “Pocasset.” It is an Algonquian word that refers to the width of the river, but it is also the name of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation whose land included Tiverton and much of Southeastern Massachusetts..

Re-named Portsmouth

On May 12, 1639 the settlement’s name was changed to Portsmouth. The settlement of Pocasset/Portsmouth included the area around the Montaup Country Club, Town Pond, Founder’s Brook and south to Portsmouth Park. At this time the founders located their houses on small lots around water sources like springs and brooks. They were frightened by the sound of the wolves roaming around the camp.  This was a major threat because livestock was unprotected. They brought with them horses, cows, sheep and hogs. While Anne Hutchinson and the others walked from Boston the animals were brought by ship around Cape Cod.  With the aid of Roger Williams, members of the Narragansett tribe came and laid traps to kill the wolves. The settlers decided to make a Common Fence.  Five rails with no more than three inches between each rail was judged sufficient to keep out predators.  The first fence was built around the common pasture for the whole town and we know that today as Common Fence Point.

They were given land on the provision that they must built homes within a year. Town Pond was in the middle of activity. There were two springs that provided water – one was to the right of Town Pond near the Common Fence that held their animals. The other was by Founder’s Brook and that provided a central gathering spot and washing area. Baulston’s Tavern was located at the southern tip of the Pond. The Training Ground was across the way by the brook.

It wasn’t long before most of these settlers sold their house lots and moved out to their farm land grants. Town Pond and Founder’s Brook are worthwhile visiting today. The murmur of the brook and the bronze copy of the Compact at Founder’s Brook reminds us of the primitive life of the early settlers and their intention to band together as a political body. Town Pond can be viewed from a half mile hiking trail. The Pond has been restored to a tidal estuary, and you can imagine the scene as the founding families first stepped on Portsmouth ground.

Town Pond
Site were settler’s first gathered

Recommended reading: John Barry’s book on Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul.

Roger Williams played a great roll in the founding of Portsmouth.

Common Fence Point: A History

November 4, 2024

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Some places in Portsmouth have changed names over the years, but Common Fence Point was the name used in 1638 and it is the name used today.  A Borden family genealogy gives us the root cause for the name: “To the northeast of the spring a neck of land extends about two miles, which was nearly separated by creeks, marshes and the town pond from the rest of the island.  This strip of land, called by the natives Pocasset Neck, was set off by the settlers as a common by running a fence from the south end of the pond to a cove on the east side of the island. This common was called the fence common, to distinguish it from the lands outside to the south and west of it, which were all common; and the north point then received the name of common fence point. “(1)

The original settlement of Portsmouth took a pattern that was familiar to the English – homes were in a central village location and their animals grazed on common land around the homesteads.  Recording how each family branded their animals was very important with their stock intermingled in the commons. While this may have been a good pattern the first year when they needed to be close together for safety, this land use soon gave way to larger scattered farm lots which included their homes.

The 1849 Hammett Map shows Abner Chace holding Common Fence Point and the Chace (or Chase) family seemed to own pieces of the Point for many years.  In 1865  a charter was granted to several men to build and operate the Rhode Island Oil and Guano Company on Common Fence Point.

Edward West map of original settlers.

Pogy boats
By 1900 part of Common Fence Point held the largest fish factory in the country.  The Tiverton based Church Brothers – Daniel, Nathaniel, Joe, Jim, Isaac, Fisher and George went into business together in 1870.  They commissioned the Herreshoff boatyard in Bristol to build the first fishing steamer – the Seven Brothers.  At first they were fishing for food, but they realized that fish oil and fertilizer from the pogy fish (menhaden)  had potential for profit.  They brought a menhaden processing factory in Maine, dismantled it and rebuilt it on Common Fence Point. The complex cookhouse was 35 ft square and there were two large dinning rooms to feed three hundred workers.  A large building held sleeping quarters and a net mending area.  A cooper made barrels for transporting the oil and there were boat shops.  The Church Brothers Fisheries barn burned in 1928 and that was the last of the Church facilities on Common Fence Point.

Pogy boats
Church facility on Common Fence Point

Common Fence Point gradually developed into a community.  At first many of the houses served as summer homes, but they gradually became occupied year round.  The Common Fence Point Improvement Association has been active in the community since he 1950s and continues to serve the residents of Common Fence Point with music programs, classes, activities for children and as an Arts Center.

(1) Historical and Genealogical Record of the Descendants as Far as Known of Richard and Joan Borden, who Settled in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, May, 1638: With Historical and Biographical Sketches of Some of Their Descendants H.B. Weld, 1899

(2) The Descendants of Thomas Durfee of Portsmouth RI-Vol. 1, by Wm. Reed.  1902.

(3) Genealogical Records of the Descendants of Thomas Brownell compiled by George Brownell, New York, 1910.